Brine shrimp, like petitions against Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs)—vouchers for families who remove their children from public school and receive about $7,000 per student (more if the child lives with disabilities) to pay for private school and homeschooling supplies—are not as easy as they look. I have worked on two ballot initiative campaigns. The first was to increase taxes on the wealthy to provide more funding to public schools. Although the Red for Ed petition gatherers acquired far more signatures than necessary, the Arizona Supreme Court threw out the petitions because the wording may have been confusing. Just last fall, another petition drive to prevent the universal expansion of vouchers failed because we misjudged the number of signatures we thought we’d gained. “You can’t win for losing,� seems an appropriate expression to cling to. “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug,� fits pretty well, too.
So, in big news, similar to the time we did indeed have enough signatures, let me continue from last month’s brine shrimp saga. If you recall, I put some brine shrimp eggs in some water and waited. And waited. And waited. I gave up and put the Mason jar in the pantry. Every couple of days, I jostled them to aerate the water and to activate life, like some insecure God.
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