Bill will give Natives more school choice
Apple on top of school books.
CHINLE
A bill passed by the Arizona Legislature last Thursday will give students residing on Indian reservations the option of using their share of state school funding to pursue other educational options, such as charter, home or online schools.
The program, known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, is already available to special needs students, foster children, children in military families and students in districts with failing schools.
State Sen. Carlyle Begay (D-Dist. 7), who sponsored the bill (SB 1332) in the senate, said children living on reservations — especially the expansive, rural Navajo Nation — should be included because “we don’t have any such thing as school choice across the Navajo Nation.”
Under the program, students could take the amount that would have been spent on them in a public school and use it for home schooling, online courses or a charter school. But charter schools are few and far between in Begay’s district — he pointed out that in Apache County, where there are more than 10,000 students in public schools, only 33 attend charter or other alternative schools.
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