Dear Wyoming, don’t fall for the false promise of school vouchers

Dear Wyomingites, 

Hi from sunny Arizona. I wish I had better news, but I’m writing to share the depressing, cautionary tale of Arizona’s private school voucher fiasco. 

As you might know, your lawmakers in the Wyoming Legislature are rushing through a bill to create a private school voucher program, which would use public money to pay tuition for students at private or online schools.

I want to alert you to the harmful impacts vouchers have had on my state. As a hardworking public school educator and proud parent, I’ve had a front row seat to the destruction. Voucher lobbyists like to say the “money follows the child” — but that’s a downright lie. State education funding all comes from the same pot, and more funding for elite private schools means far less funding for rural and low-income schools. 

Vouchers in Arizona benefit wealthy families at the expense of rural, low-income and special ed students. They cost the state far more than their supporters claim. They are a government handout with no accountability, so the program is rife with fraud. And as a result, schools have had to close. Don’t let it happen in Wyoming.

Arizona is considered “#1 in school choice” by the dark money special interests that have spent millions to promote vouchers here. This means public schools have been dramatically underfunded so that more public money can be spent on private school vouchers. Arizona is reeling from the impacts of universal vouchers, which are siphoning nearly $1 billion out of our local public schools this year — or 12% of state K-12 dollars. School districts are forced to make heart-wrenching budget decisions between shutting down schools, laying off hundreds of teachers, slashing bus routes, or firing counselors or social workers. Our class sizes are growing exponentially, while our buildings and buses fall into disrepair. 

Wyoming has a strong public school system, where even small, rural communities have good public schools. In Arizona, our voucher system means that rural students and low-income families have fewer quality choices, while richer suburban families use vouchers as a coupon for the private education they were already paying for.  

To be clear, vouchers do not actually create “parent choice,” as private schools are the ones choosing which students they let in and which they reject. Private schools are also hiking their tuition after vouchers were expanded in Arizona, further pricing out low-income students. My understanding is that your highest concentration of private schools is in Teton County. The wealthy families who already send their kids to private schools there will each get a $7,000-per-student government handout if Wyoming’s voucher bill passes. Why is that a good idea?

Here in Arizona, vouchers have created a nearly billion-dollar price tag for taxpayers like me, with zero accountability, zero transparency and zero oversight for what the money is spent on. Homeschool families who receive vouchers have been approved to purchase appliances, paddle boards, vacation extras, luxury ski trips, and other extravagant items while public schools are going without basic school supplies such as paper and pencils. Meanwhile, our public schools are forced to maximize class sizes, cut enrichment programs and limit access to accelerated courses just to reduce costs.

Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes has announced major cases of fraud and abuse that have robbed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the voucher program, including instances of fake schools, forged birth certificates and “ghost children” receiving voucher funding.  

I’ve heard lawmakers in Cheyenne are trying to say they’ll “do it better” in your great state. They call vouchers in Wyoming “Freedom Scholarships” — ours are “Empowerment Scholarships.” If it quacks like a voucher and walks like a voucher, it’s a voucher, no matter what it’s called. 

The voucher lobbyists are solely interested in forcing through publicly funded vouchers in order to privatize the school system and dismantle public schools. Their playbook in Wyoming has followed one I’ve seen across the nation: Start small, with a targeted program for low-income students, like the one the Wyoming Legislature passed in 2024. Then, once the voucher door is open, millions more will be dumped in every year as the door opens wider. For Wyoming, this could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Wyomingites don’t want school vouchers, trust me. Fight back against the voucher scheme by speaking up in your community and telling your lawmakers to instead invest richly in local public schools as the most important economic driver for your community. 

Use any extra funds that would be diverted to vouchers to pay your hardworking educators like the professionals they are. Keep the promise of public education — your state will be far better off.