Prop 212 exempts students with disabilities from the income cliff. They are not exempt from the July 1 sweep, registration stack, or permanent disqualification. About 16,500 kids are in the crosshairs.
The campaign for Proposition 212 emphasizes that students with a disability are exempt from the $150,000 income cliff. That is true. It is also incomplete to the point of being misleading.
Roughly 19 percent of ESA students — about 16,500 kids — have a disability. Fifty-two percent of them are autistic. They are exempt from the cliff. They are not exempt from the rest of the machine.
What still hits them
- The July 1 sweep — every two years for disability accounts instead of every year, but still a confiscation of saved balances.
- Annual registration fees on every campus, tutoring location, and solo tutor.
- Public records for registration paperwork and supporting documents.
- Permanent disqualification of the student — not just the parent — for a single intentional-misspending finding.
- Reimbursement void if a provider's registration lapses.
- Repeal of the state's burden to prove its restrictions are necessary and not unduly burdensome.
“On July 1 of each year, require the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) to take all ESA monies remaining in a qualified student's account as of that date and transfer 90 percent to the classroom site fund (except that ESA monies remaining in the ESA of a qualified student with a disability shall be taken and transferred every two years)”
Why families save
Disability families save because they have to. An educational evaluation runs four figures. Assistive technology runs four figures. Speech and occupational therapy courses run four figures. The average universal award is about $7,700 a year. Saving across two years is not gaming the system. It is budgeting.
Expenditure rates run at roughly 80 percent of awards — partly because ADE's approval process is slow. A family waiting on the state to approve a purchase could lose the money on July 1 because the state was slow.
Funding irony
Prop 212 funds its new bureaucracy by transferring $1.75 million from the medical marijuana fund — which by statute underwrites autism research, teen suicide prevention, and the Arizona Teachers Academy. Fifty-two percent of students in the ESA disability category are autistic. The measure takes money from autism research to pay for fingerprinting and enforcement aimed at autistic children's families.
The cliff exempts them. The Fascist Education Act does not. Vote NO on Prop 212.