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Anti-School Choice Petition in Arizona Might Be Doomed Despite Original Lofty Signature Estimate

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The Save Our Schools Arizona petition is presumably going to fail now that it’s become clear that the committee reported a much higher estimated signature count.

Save Our Schools wants to get rid of the recent Empowerment Scholarship Account expansion in Arizona, which allows all students to get up to $7,500 to go toward other educational expenses for a charter school, private school, or homeschooling.

When they submitted the petition on Sept. 23, the group said that they had roughly 141,714 signatures, which is well above the 118,843 needed to get ESA expansion on the ballot.

However, the Goldwater Institute estimated that they only received 88,866 signatures based on the sheets made public by the Secretary of State’s office. ABC 15 Arizona’s Garrett Archer reported that the Secretary of State’s office confirmed that there are 8,175 petition sheets submitted, and there is only room for 15 signatures per page.

In addition, Archer estimated that the maximum that could have been submitted was roughly 123,000, but that would require an extraordinarily high signature verification rate to hit the 118,843 signature threshold.

The executive director for Save Our Schools, Beth Lewis, said that the group now believes they will not be successful in their efforts.

“I think we will end up short, yes,” Lewis said, according to Arizona Mirror.

Lewis said in a statement that the projected signature count was “necessarily estimates” and referred to the Goldwater Institute as “anti-democratic.”

Even though it’s not official, the likelihood that the petition will fail is high, and state Republicans are celebrating the fact that it likely won’t make it to the ballot.

“Chalk up another major victory for Arizona families wanting the freedom to choose the education that best meets their child’s needs. School choice is increasingly popular with Arizona parents, especially those whose children are stuck in a failing school, so I find it baffling that anyone would try so hard to take that choice away from parents. It’s good that they have apparently failed,” Arizona state House Majority Leader Ben Toma said in a statement.

He continued:

“Proponents of the failed referendum built their effort on the fallacy that public schools are harmed by Arizona’s ESA program. That of course is untrue. In Arizona, we have seen that when funding follows the student, the performance of schools and students has improved. Moreover, the dramatic increase in K-12 education funding led by the Republican Legislature in the last several years demonstrates our commitment to all schools and, in turn, we expect them to continue to serve and improve the academic achievement of Arizona’s students.”

The program is expected to be popular, as Arizona has numerous charter schools and alternative education options.

Glenn Youngkin Sends the Left Into Orbit by Blocking Transgender Agenda

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While the news cycle has been firmly focused on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for sending illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard, there’s another Republican governor in the country also delivering results.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin rose to power in 2021 after shocking the pollsters and defeating Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, who was running for a second, non-consecutive term. The Republican’s victory was largely predicated on cultural issues, specifically dealing with what is being taught and done in public schools. On that subject, Loudoun County became ground zero after numerous reports revealed the school board had covered up a sexual assault in a girl’s restroom by a cross-dressing boy.

After taking office, Youngkin signed a series of orders to deal with the situation while the newly minted attorney general, Jason Miyares, began investigations. Now, the fight continues. Youngkin has reversed a policy that required schools to use someone’s “preferred pronouns” and that allowed different sexes to use the bathroom and locker rooms of their “choice.”

Call me old-fashioned, but it remains crazy to me that this is even controversial. Even a decade ago, there would have been little question that you don’t punish teachers and students for choosing to adhere to reality and not “affirm” a transgender person’s “identity.” Yet, the transgender movement has grown more and more dictatorial, bolstered by a political party that is willing to say the water isn’t wet if they feel it will benefit them.

There are real safety concerns regarding letting boys use the same restrooms as girls. But you know what? Even if there weren’t any actual physical safety concerns at play, a girl should still have the right to go to the restroom with some expectation of privacy. I do not want a boy in the stall next to my daughter. Period. The left may call me a bigot, but ask me how much I care.

As to the pronoun thing, anyone who has paid attention to how that works knows how ludicrous it is. It’s not just a matter of mixing gendered pronouns anymore, which is bad enough. Rather, kids are calling themselves animals, inanimate objects, and other ridiculous made-up words and claiming that is their identity. No teacher could possibly keep up with such lunacy even if they wanted to.

Predictably, the left lost their minds at Youngkin’s move. Here’s Virginia politician Louise Lucas, whose tears sustain me, freaking out.

In America, people may have the right to pretend they aren’t the sex they were born with, but they don’t have the right to demand others affirm their mental illness. They certainly don’t have the right to demand others call them xe, per, or ze.

The only way sanity prevails here is if a majority of Americans stand up and say enough. The pushback has been effective, but there’s a long way left to go, and the effort will be led by governors like Youngkin who are willing to put their political capital on the line for objective normalcy.

Pennsylvania high school mistakenly gets shipment of guns

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The idea of guns in schools is a touchy subject. It’s bound to get people riled up on all sides of the issue, which is understandable. We’re talking about our kids.

On one hand, armed teachers or school resource officers may serve to keep the kids safe.

Then you have the possibility of some turd-blossom showing up with a desire to kill. Some think laws banning guns on campuses will somehow prevent that.

But what do you do when the guns just kind of…show up?

Students will be back on campus and roaming the halls in a matter of days, making a recent delivery to one Delaware County high school even more shocking.

Box of rifles were recently dropped at the doors of Chester High School. The delivery was made Friday, and locked inside the school over the weekend.

Police confirmed that there were six firearms inside the boxes, which were apparently meant for someone else and were misdelivered because of a typo.

Talk about an oops.

Of course, a lot of hay is being made about the fact that school is set to start at the school in just a few days, but I fail to see how that had anything to do with anything. Unless the delivery guy just hands packages to random students, there’s not really any risk of someone getting hurt.

Even then, it’s unlikely for there to be a problem.

But this one just struck me as funny. Here we are debating whether law-abiding teachers and school staff should be permitted to carry a gun if they so desire–a position many state leaders in Pennsylvania oppose, including Gov. Tom Wolf–and then a half dozen guns just get delivered to the school by mistake.

Absolutely brilliant.

However, I guess we should take it as a win that this was a good-faith mistake rather than a driver trying to steal guns.

Of course, we don’t know exactly what kind of guns were in the boxes beyond the term “rifle,” which could mean anything from a single-shot .22 to a .50 BMG Barrett. We just don’t know much beyond that, which is kind of a shame because this would be even more hilarious if it were the dreaded AR-15s.

Especially since nothing happened.

Unfortunately, this is kind of the problem with shipping guns. Anything can happen. However, I’m curious just how this one did.

After all, guns can only be sent to people with an FFL. The FFL info should be carefully entered.

This one could have gone differently. Imagine if this had shown up at the home of a convicted felon, one who liked to steal and sell guns? Especially if they’d been something we don’t want bad guys to get their hands on.

Luckily, all of this is for the sake of discussion and argument. None of that happened and the whole situation has been resolved, apparently. No one got hurt or is likely to get hurt.

But I sure wouldn’t have minded if guns were being shipped to schools on purpose, all to be used to protect our kids.