Tell ya what I’m gonna do School voucher salesmen. This is getting to be like an old “I Love Lucy” episode. The facts don’t matter. Taxpayers are lining up to be sheared. Friends like Jeff Byant (N.C.) and acquaintances like Jess Piper (Mo.) have hammered on efforts to privatize public schools for years. No matter what they’re called — school vouchers, charter schools, opportunity scholarships — they are schemes for separating public funding from public education and resegregating schools under the rubric of “choice.” For investors and wealthy parents, it’s about the money, either in profits or in tax breaks. Piper is right, BTW: So is Bryant. Charters that were once local and parent-organized are being squeezed out by the big-money boyz: The aim is to bust school budgets and, in the words of Grover Norquist, drown public education in the bathtub so the mandated not-for-profit spending can wind up in the for-profit world. This from Arizona in 2023: Arizona’s universal school voucher program that was estimated to cost only $65 million is now poised to cost the state $900 million over the next year, exceeding its available funding by hundreds of millions of dollars. John Ward, chief auditor for the Arizona Department of Education, said Wednesday the skyrocketing price tag is due to a projected spike in applicants to the voucher program. Ward estimates that the Empowerment Scholarship Account program, as it’s officially known, will reach 100,000 applicants by July 2024, far outstripping initial estimates and surpassing the $500 million dollar…