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School choice opponents in Utah tried a new trick, and it’s coming back to bite them.

Last month, Utah passed the country’s most sweeping school voucher legislation. The Parents for Choice in Education Act (HB 148) makes nearly every student eligible for vouchers worth $300 to $5,000, depending on family income. Under the program, school districts continue to receive funding for every voucher student who leaves for five years. So it doesn’t “drain” money from public schools.

Despite this bone, opponents were up to their old trick of amending school choice legislation beyond workability. They pushed for regulations designed to dampen private school participation, and insisted the Parents for Choice in Education Act come up for review two years earlier than originally scheduled.

Opponents prevailed. But this is ploy is coming back to bite them as they try a new trick to stop the program before it begins.

Utah is one of 24 states where the public can overturn recently enacted legislation through referendum. Opponents have until April 9 to gather 92,000 signatures to qualify their school choice recall for the 2008 ballot. With those signatures, opponents would suspend the program set to start on April 30 and delay implementation until as late as 2009.

But here’s how their latest trick is coming back to bite them. School choice opponents filed their referendum petition against the original school choice legislation (HB 148) before the superseding legislation, enacted largely at their insistence, was signed into law (now HB 174). Simply put, they’re going after the wrong legislation.

Opponents can’t target the revised school choice program because any referendum must be filed within five days after the legislative session ends. The amended legislation wasn’t signed until after that five-day window. The amended school choice legislation also passed with majorities exceeding 2/3 in both the state House and the Senate. Under Utah law, such bills are immune from referendum. “This is going to be a true battleground between parental choice and the union mentality,” according to Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, Senate sponsor of HB 148.

The state’s largest teachers union, the Utah Education Association, and the Utah PTA are operating under the guise of “Utahns for Public Schools” to convince the public that parents, not entrenched special interests, oppose school choice. Earlier this week, the Education Intelligence Agency, a private investigative journalism center, reported that nearly 80 percent of the individuals listed as county contacts for the referendum sign-up process are easily identified as paid union operatives, elected union representatives, or regional directors for the PTA.  

“In Utah, parents and the public can only take so much of special interests,” according to Paul T. Mero, president of the Sutherland Institute located in Salt Lake City. “They only care about protecting their turf, not the best interest of the child.” That’s why Utah voters passed payroll protection in 2001.

The law prohibits the teachers union from deducting dues for political activities from workers’ paychecks without express permission. Given a choice, many Utah teachers withheld permission, and union dues collections declined more than 50 percent by 2005.

Even if school choice opponents in Utah get their way and voters do in fact reject the original voucher program, the amended program remains intact with one big difference: There is no statutory requirement to spend the $9.2 million appropriation needed to keep funding public schools that lose students under the voucher program. 

So Utah parents get school choice, students get vouchers, and public schools get no additional funding—no thanks to special-interest shenanigans.

Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute in Sacramento.  A shorter version of this piece appeared in the Orange County Register on March 20.