Utah built a taxpayer-funded voucher program in the same style as Arizona’s, and like Arizona, they turn out to have lost plenty of money to waste and misuse. Carmen Nesbitt reports for the Salt Lake Tribune.
A $6,000 Apple MacBook Pro. A $4,800 Trek mountain bike. A $2,000 Crate & Barrel bookshelf.
Families bought all of this – and more – with taxpayer dollars through Utah’s school voucher program during the 2024-25 school year, according to a newly released report by state auditors.
The multi-million program, known as Utah Fits All, just wrapped its second year and is entering its third. In its inaugural year, 10,000 students each received an $8,000 scholarship.
The money could be spent on a broad range of educational expenses — including homeschooling supplies, private school tuition and extracurricular activities — with few limits.
Much has changed since the program’s debut, including caps on extracurricular spending and prohibitions on purchases like furniture.
Still, auditors concluded that while those legal guardrails didn’t exist during the 2024-25 school year, some scholarship funds were used “for wasteful and extravagant purchases inconsistent with principles of sound fiscal responsibility,” according to the report.
Here’s what the audit found.
The voucher program was approved by the Republican-dominated Legislature in just 10 days in 2023. It became the largest school voucher program in state history, with an initial allocation of $42.5 million. But that allocation was nearly doubled to $82 million – before the program officially began – in a move that lawmakers said was meant to accommodate additional interest.
About 80% of voucher recipients during its first year were homeschoolers, a much higher share than in other states with similar programs, according to state officials.
Auditors identified about $2 million in purchases from the program’s first year that are now prohibited. They also found others that exceeded the new spending caps but did not calculate that total dollar amount.
Instead, the audit singled out several high-dollar purchases including: a $3,000 trampoline from Amazon.com; an $1,800 dumbbell and rack set; and a $5,830 transaction for “volleyball club registration fees.”
Auditors found 943 furniture items totaling $220,189, according to the report. The most expensive was a roughly $3,000 “DreamBox” crafting/storage station from a Lehi-based company called Create Room.