Proponents of a school voucher-like system have failed to collect enough signatures to put a proposed measure on the November 2024 ballot.

Advocates had hoped to collect 160,000 signatures to set up “school choice accounts” worth at least $7,600 for each school-aged child not enrolled in public school that families regardless of income level could use to pay for private school tuition or to defray home-school costs, among other items. They argued that such a mechanism would give families more control over their children’s education.

That figure is about 70% of what the state funding formula delivers per student, absent special needs or other circumstances.

Another proposed measure the same group, Education Freedom for Oregon, put forward would have guaranteed that Oregon school children could automatically enroll in neighboring public school districts or charter schools without having to pay any fees or jump through hoops, space permitting. If there were more children than spaces, the school district would use a lottery to determine who would receive a spot.

The open enrollment measure also failed to gather enough signatures to make the ballot.

With the July 5 deadline to turn in signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office looming, the group had collected just 43,000 signatures for open enrollment and 52,000 signatures for the educational savings account measure, said organizer Donna Kreitzberg. She said they plan to try again in 2026.

In mid-May, organizers wrote to supporters to acknowledge that they were far off pace to qualify for the ballot. At the time, Kreitzberg wrote to supporters, they had just 34,000 signatures for each potential measure and were collecting more at a rate of about 200 signatures per day, putting them on pace to have only about 25% of the required signatures by the July 5 deadline.

The drive to put the two measures on the ballot, which began last year, raised nowhere near the amount of money required to put a measure on the ballot using paid signature gatherers: nearly $340,000 for the education savings account measure and about $315,000 for the open enrollment measure.

The largest single donor, according to the state’s campaign finance database, was North Bend-based chemical plant tycoon Dennis Beetham, who gave the two initiative drives a total of $320,000 over the past two years. Another major donor was Brent Leathers, whose family recently sold its chain of convenience stores, based in eastern Multnomah County. Leathers personally gave $50,000 and Leathers Enterprises contributed another $100,000.

Education Freedom for Oregon relied on volunteer rather than paid signature gatherers, Kreitzberg said.

Thirty-three U.S. states currently allow some use of public funds to pay for nonpublic education, via voucher programs, tax-credit scholarships and refundable tax credits, in addition to education savings accounts like the one envisioned by the Oregon ballot measure. The movement has gained particular steam since the pandemic’s school closures and switch to online school: EdChoice, a nonprofit that tracks this issue, says that about 1 million students in the country use public funds to enroll in alternatives to public school.

Most such initiatives have taken root in Republican-leaning states. Eleven of those are “universal school choice” states, in which families can opt into tuition payment programs regardless of their income levels.

Such efforts are less common in states with strong educator unions, like Oregon. Public schools advocates say such measures take needed funding away from already strapped public schools and subsequently undermine the political power of educator labor unions, who tend to donate primarily to Democratic-leaning candidates.

— Julia Silverman covers education policy and K-12 schools for The Oregonian/OregonLive. She can be reached via email at jsilverman@oregonian.com. Follow her on x.com at @jrlsilverman.