Peña urges Yuma residents to reject petition on school choice

Residents in Yuma are being asked to sign a petition at local stores that Michele Peña says would strip away school-choice options for working families, putting a fast-moving Arizona fight over education dollars right into everyday errands across the county. Peña, the Republican state representative from Yuma, is urging people to reject the effort as debate over the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program intensifies again.

The stakes are not abstract in Yuma County. Arizona’s Department of Education said 101,542 students were enrolled in ESAs for the 2026-2027 school year as of May 18, 2026, including 3,346 new students for next school year. The program, created in 2011 and expanded in 2022 to make every Arizona student eligible, became the nation’s first universal ESA system.

That expansion is at the center of a familiar split. Public-school advocates and teacher groups say vouchers and ESAs drain money from district schools, while school-choice supporters say the accounts give parents more flexibility over how education dollars are spent and better match children’s needs. In 2022, public education advocates collected nearly 142,000 petition signatures to force a public vote on universal vouchers, and new reporting in 2026 says competing ballot measures are once again being organized around ESA reforms.

For Yuma families, the debate reaches beyond Phoenix. ESAs can be used for private school tuition or homeschooling, so a successful push to roll back or rewrite the program could change what options are available to parents trying to stretch limited budgets or find a better fit for a child’s education. Peña’s warning reflects how political pressure over school choice is playing out in a district where parents weigh district schools, charter schools, private options and home education every day.

Arizona voters could again be drawn into the fight if ballot campaigns move forward. The current petition drive and the broader push for ESA reforms show that the issue is far from settled, even after universal eligibility turned Arizona into a national outlier in 2022. For Yuma County residents signing at storefront tables, the choice is not just about a petition sheet. It is about whether the state keeps or reins in a program now serving more than 101,000 students.