Doctor Says He Has Cure for Education’s Ills : Politics: Giving up medical practice, Stephen Guffanti launches drive to get school voucher system measure on the state ballot.

Parents for Educational Choice has all the markings of a start-up political campaign. Its sparse, cement-floor office in a San Marcos strip mall houses a handful of office equipment, two cork bulletin boards and a digital clock radio that still blinked “12:00” the other day.

And, like all campaigns, it has its visionary: Stephen Guffanti.

Earlier this month, the 40-year-old Vista physician gave up his 4-year-old medical practice and the $100,000 it brought in last year for the daunting task of putting an initiative on the 1992 state ballot that would create a voucher system in the state’s public and private schools.

The political neophyte also relinquished his seat on the Vista school board, the only public office he has ever held, to head up the fledgling campaign.

When Guffanti talks about his initiative, he alternates between firebrand preacher and family doctor with a kindly bedside manner, his soft hands gesturing broadly as he extols the virtues of choice and the failings of public education.

“I don’t know anybody who wants their kids to learn more than their parents . . . so give the choice to the parents,” Guffanti said.

Guffanti hopes for a November, 1992, ballot initiative that would give parents the option of choosing the school for their child to attend. Parents would be free to choose any public or private school for their child. State funds would follow the child to that school, with parents making up any difference in cost between private and public education.

The state now pays public school districts an average of $4,826 for every student enrolled in a district.

Under the plan, children from low-income families would be the first to receive the vouchers, but the system eventually would apply to all students. The initiative also would institute a test to rate how well public and private schools are educating youngsters.

Opponents of the plan decry the voucher system as a boon to schools in wealthy areas and a tax break for the rich.

The political fight Guffanti faces--and the personal financial drain--is a far cry from his days as a family doctor who actually made house calls a la Marcus Welby to the elderly and families with small children.

“I’ve been broke before, and I don’t enjoy being broke, but it doesn’t scare me. What scares me is 125,000 kids bringing guns to our schools every day,” said Guffanti, who cashed out retirement funds that he had been saving since he become a doctor in 1977.

“Rather than keep the money and wait 25 years and retire and look at the world 25 years later and wonder is this what I really wanted to retire to, I thought I would spend my retirement money now and leave the world a better place,” he said.

Guffanti continues to do part-time work, such as his twice-monthly visits to the Mountain Shadows Care Center in Escondido, which houses 105 developmentally disabled residents ranging in age from 9 to 64.

“It’s really hard to get doctors involved with our type of residents because they are handicapped, and it’s a godsend to find someone who is this caring,” nurse Stacy Miller of Mountain Shadows said of Guffanti.

“He’s very dedicated to what he does, very concerned about the welfare of the residents, and he always makes sure that they get the best possible medical care that they need.”

His wife, Maureen, said she is proud of her husband’s willingness to sacrifice so that he can pursue his goals.

“Steve is doing what he loves, and is following his heart. It makes him really happy,” said Maureen Guffanti, who takes care of their 1-year-old daughter, Stephanie. At first, she said, the loss of income frightened her, a feelings she no longer has.

“I suppose that, when the bills all start coming in and as we get low on savings, I’m sure (those feelings) are going to recur,” she said.

Maureen Guffanti taught at public high schools in Oregon for nine years and said she felt trapped by the inflexibility of those schools.

“I always felt anguished by the kids who were either very bright or very slow, and I felt like a mom spread out to too many kids, not being able to meet each one’s needs,” she said.

Her husband assails the “public school bureaucracy” for evils ranging from the school system’s slowness to change to offering “cookie-cutter education” to dropout rates as high as 50% and more.

“Picture going into a kindergarten class, you know, those 5-year-olds with the big eyes, waiting to learn,” Guffanti said.

“And say to the kids, ‘Line up, we’re going to flip a coin. Heads, you’re out. Tails, you get to be successful in this system,’ ” Guffanti said.

He believes that, without competition among public and private schools, public schools will have no incentive to change. Also, the existing public school system rewards schools for high attendance, not for how well they teach, Guffanti said.

“To me, it’s so perfectly clear that we have a monopoly school system, a one-size-fits-all school system that doesn’t fit anybody,” Guffanti said. “Children learn in their own way, and choice encourages individualized education.”

Guffanti spent almost all of his educational career in private schools.

“I always wanted to be a teacher, I just became a doctor because there’s no money in teaching,” said Guffanti, who now drives a new Lexus, complete with car phone.

While President Bush and others have decided that vouchers are the way to solve many of the problems of the much-maligned American school system, opponents say it offers help to the middle class and rich while leaving behind the poor and underprivileged by allowing wealthy schools to flourish while those in poor areas flounder.

Among the doubters is Marcia Viger, a former colleague of Guffanti who sits on the Vista school board.

There is “something inherently unfair and potentially dangerous” in having state money going to private schools that would not have to follow the same rules that apply to public schools, Viger said.

Despite her opposition to his ideas, Viger said Guffanti was a dedicated and “tenacious” board member during his four years.

Tamara Drean, president of the Vista Teachers Assn., also has strong reservations about Guffanti’s plan: “Steve is very dedicated to what he is doing, and he really believes in it. I personally believe that he is somewhat naive about what would happen as far as the implementation of the program.

“It’s a logical argument, but there’s not enough checks and balances for people who are not wealthy Anglo-Saxons,” Drean said.

There are several organizations, all of them conservative groups with Republican links, across the state considering placing a similar initiative on the state ballot, and it is still unclear which group, if any, will emerge as the primary force behind a single effort.

Guffanti’s registered political action committee, however, with its list of 1,200 members and volunteers, is the most organized and active, said Mike Fredenburg of the state Republican Party’s education committee.

“His is the most energetic group trying to do that,” agreed Steve Hayward of the Claremont Institute, a conservative public policy research organization. “It’s a grass-roots effort beginning with citizens and teachers and so on and not the typical political insiders who see this as a hot issue to raise money on.”

Guffanti said his group has raised $20,000 in the last four months, primarily from local parents, and conducted a statewide poll of 500 voters to get preliminary data on voters’ attitudes toward the choice debate.

A member of the local Republican Party caucus, Guffanti expects to receive much of his support from private schools and industry, as well as from Republicans, who, since the mid-1980s, have advocated tax breaks for parents whose children attend private school.

In stumping for his cause over the last eight months, Guffanti has traveled up and down the state, linking up with similar movements in Los Angeles and San Francisco and shaking hands with school choice activists and potential donors.

“I just as soon stay home and mow the lawn,” Guffanti said. “I’d like to spend more time with my family. There are no days off for me any more.”

Guffanti and his organization of mostly volunteers must gather 615,953 signatures for the initiative to qualify for the state ballot. He hopes to raise $4 million for the campaign, and, although they have only raised $20,000 so far, he has yet to start fund raising in earnest.

“I would say we have a 50-50 chance of winning at this time,” Guffanti said. “And, if we lose, we’ll be back in 1994. I’m not going to go away or roll over and play dead.”