The Public Battle Over Private Education

Would Voucher Initiative Save Education or Destroy It?

BY ANNE QUINN

Lack of accountability by private schools and the taking of funds away from public education is what opponents fear about most Proposition 38. Giving parents a choice as to where to send their child to school is what proponents like most about the measure.

Prop. 38 has come to be perceived as the law that would save education in California–or would curses it for future generations.

At the heart of this debate, like many another, is money–$3 billion, to be exact. If the measure passes, that’s the amount that will be taken from the state's public school system and given to parents in the form of vouchers good for tuition at private schools.

Proponents suggest that if the state were to issue vouchers of $4,000 or more per student for tuition in private or religious schools, the system would receive a wake-up call. But opponents like Julian D. Crocker, SLO County superintendent of schools, said the measure will cripple public schools financially in order to help people who don't need the help.

The private school vouchers would be worth $4,000 per year–but private school tuition averages $5,500. Opponents point to those numbers as proof that the new initiative would do little to help lower-income families get their kids into private school, but would instead just subsidize wealthier parents whose children already attend private schools.

However, parents currently sending children to private high schools would not immediately receive any benefit, because even if it passes the measure would be phased in over five years, starting with private or religious kindergartens in 2001 and 2002.

Another argument against vouchers is that private schools do not have checks and balances (such as state audits) that make them fully accountable for what’s done with voucher money.

Proponents argue that while private schools are not subject to the official standards imposed by Sacramento on public schools, they are nonetheless accountable to accrediting agencies and, more importantly, to parents, many of whom have became alienated from the public school system.

But perhaps the most serious question is whether private schools would be allowed to discriminate–whether, owing to vouchers, many private schools would become elitist enclaves of affluent white children who do not have significant learning disabilities or physical handicaps, leaving the public system to educate everybody else–and with less money to do it.

Studies in Massachusetts and Minnesota, which passed school initiatives similar to Prop. 38, have shown they their initiatives have led to the creation of alternatives within public school systems. In Massachusetts, some 7,000 families have taken advantage of a program that allows parents to pull their children out of a school in their home district and send them to a school in any other district in the state. A report published by the Policy Analysis for California Education calls the effect "Robin Hood in reverse."

"The vast majority of participating parents is white. Most of them leave integrated schools and head off for better-off, more racially homogenous schools. The state support that went to the child’s old school, often located in a poorer district, now moves with the youngster to a more affluent district," the report said.

In Minnesota, segregation problems have been mitigated by a provision that subsidizes transportation expenses for low-income families who move their children into a new school. That provision is coupled with a restriction that requires each school’s ethnic diversity to be taken into consideration before transferred students are accepted.

Opponents point out that Prop. 38 has no similar restraining provisions.

Father Charles Tilley, principal of SLO’s Mission College Preparatory School, a Catholic high school, said that of his 230 students, several have learning disabilities and receive special tutoring. None of the students there is physically challenged. But the diocese’s bishop would never allow discrimination, which is "fundamentally against what we believe" in, he said.

The matter of vouchers isn't a new debate in California; a similar initiative failed seven years ago. But it is also surely a debate that isn’t going to go away. If this initiative should fail to pass, many people predict that the issue will come up again.

Others predict that even if it does pass, Prop. 38 could be held up in the courts. While most of the hubbub over the initiative has been about money, there’s also a little-discussed provision about private schools–hidden near the bottom, in Section 5 8.7(c)–that could cause a big stink.

That provision says that no regulations affecting land use (or health and safety) of private schools can be passed without a two-thirds vote of the county supervisors and a majority vote by voters within the affected jurisdiction.

This means that any land-use decision affecting a private school on county land couldn’t be made without 4-t0-1 approval by the Board of Supervisors. In essence, if the government was to dictate what a private school was to do on their land, they would have to put it to a vote of the people.

"The bigger issues of the voucher initiative are so controversial, few scrutinize it down to the fine print," said Peggy Guyre of the League of Women Voters.

Senior long-range planner Warren Hoag of the SLO County Planning Department added, "I have a feeling if this one passes it will be tied up in the courts," he said. "It’s definitely a wrinkle," he said. Æ

Reporter Anne Quinn likes to play on the monkey bars.