Utah's school voucher program spent $94.7 million in state funds during the 2025-2026 school year.

Private school tuition accounted for $57 million. Educational goods cost $27 million. Those totals come from the program's first annual spending report, filed to the Utah Legislature in September by Odyssey, the program's manager, and first reported by Utah News Dispatch.

The report showed 14,522 students used Utah Fits All statewide. Of those, 4,686 lived in Salt Lake County, the largest share of any county. No district-level breakdown exists, but the county total means the program touches families across the Sandy area. Canyons School District enrolled 31,933 students in 2025-2026.

Families used scholarship dollars on laptops ($2.4 million statewide), STEM kits ($2.4 million), 3D printers ($1.2 million), tablets ($1.4 million) and headphones ($468,665).

State Rep. John Arthur, a Democrat from Holladay who also teaches elementary school, contrasted the spending with his own classroom budget.

"I had to do a donation drive to get headphones that had microphones into my classroom, so that my multilingual learners who have to take the WIDA test … every February can practice with headphones that have microphones. I had to ask for charity," Arthur said Friday, Sept. 18. "Meanwhile, you've got the Utah Fits All voucher program using tax dollars to buy people headphones that they just get to keep."

Utah House Majority Whip Candice Pierucci, a Republican from Herriman, defended the program. She said no other education program in the state faces an annual audit with such rigid financial requirements. Pierucci also said the Legislature's majority caucus increased public education funding by $1.8 billion over five years, a 44.2% increase.

The report revealed a major shift in who uses the program. In 2024-2025, about 80% of recipients were homeschooled. That dropped to 48% in 2025-2026, with 52% now attending private schools. The change followed lawmakers cutting the annual scholarship for home-based learners: students ages 5 to 11 now receive $4,000 and students ages 12 to 18 receive $6,000, down from $8,000. Private school students still qualify for $8,000.

Lawmakers also banned ski passes, furniture, musical instruments and apparel from allowable expenses. They capped extracurricular and physical education spending at 20% of the scholarship.

Of the 7,450 first-time scholarship students in 2025-2026, only about 17% had been enrolled in a Utah public school the previous year, according to data the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) provided to Odyssey.

No one was on a waitlist.

Administrative costs totaled $4.9 million under Odyssey, roughly half the $9 million the state board had awarded to the prior program manager, ACE Scholarships, before ending that contract after one year.

Utah Education Association President Renée Pinkney said in a statement that public money belongs in public schools and that more than 90% of Utah students attend them.

The program faces a legal challenge. A Utah Third District Court judge declared Utah Fits All unconstitutional, ruling it diverts funds from public schools. Republican leaders appealed to the Utah Supreme Court in April 2025. Legal briefs were filed in early 2026, and the court is reviewing the case. No hearing date has been confirmed.