School Voucher Initiative Falls Short of Ballot

An initiative that would enable parents to spend tax dollars on private school tuition has failed to qualify for the November ballot, the secretary of state’s office said Thursday.

But backers of the Parental Choice in Education Initiative have already turned to the courts, arguing in a suit filed Thursday that they have “substantially complied” with state election laws and deserve to place their measure before California voters this fall.

The suit signaled a continuation of the bitter battle over the initiative, which has pitted backers against California’s education Establishment.

With the reporting of the signature count from Los Angeles County coming just hours before the deadline, it became clear the proposal had narrowly fallen short of the number of signatures required in the random sampling method used to qualify the measure.

However, state election officials said the measure probably has enough signatures to qualify for a future state election, including the next regularly scheduled one in June, 1994. That is because the state requires the random sampling method, which is faster and less expensive than a full count, to yield more valid signatures than the number actually needed.

“This is a setback, but not a defeat,” said Kevin Teasley, spokesman for the voucher campaign. “We’ll continue the fight for the ’92 ballot, but it’s important for people to realize that if we fail, we will be on the ’94 ballot.”

The measure would give parents about $2,500--roughly half the amount the state spends per pupil to fund public schools--to apply to private school tuition. Its opponents, who fear it will drain the public system of badly needed funding, expressed relief Thursday at news of the initiative’s difficulties.

“This is very good news,” said Del Weber, president of the California Teachers Assn., a leading opponent of the voucher initiative, who added that he is optimistic the backers’ court challenge will not be successful.

Even if the measure wins a place on the ballot later, “that at least would give us time to make our case to the people. . . . The more time they have to understand (the initiative), the better,” Weber said.

Backers of the voucher campaign, spearheaded by conservative businessman Joseph Alibrandi, see it as a way of helping parents who are fed up with their children’s public schools but who cannot afford private schools. They argue that the measure would have the effect of prodding public schools--which they generally consider to be overly bureaucratic and ineffective--to reform. If required to compete for students, the schools would either improve or close, they believe.

But opponents say the measure would amount to little more than a subsidy of the state’s largely unregulated private schools, a majority of which are religiously affiliated and which can be highly selective in choosing students. Worse, they argue, the subsidy would come at the expense of public schools, which are already struggling under massive funding cuts in the face of a stubborn state budget crisis.

News of the California measure’s setback came the same day President Bush offered a $500-million pilot plan to further his often-stated desire to provide parents with tax money as a way of expanding their choice of schools.

Bush wants Congress to authorize $1,000-a-year scholarships for low-income families, a proposal whose prospects for passage are generally considered dim.

While not endorsing the Bush proposal, Bill Honig, California superintendent of public instruction, said it is “a different animal” from the statewide proposal because the President’s plan would not use money already earmarked for public schools.

Citing recent improvements ranging from stronger curricula to improved standardized test scores to a lower dropout rate, Honig argued that public schools are well on the way to reform despite the “pummeling” they are taking in the state budget fight. Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed deep cuts in education spending to help close a growing projected deficit.

“This was drafted to hurt public schools. . . . It’s dripping with malice,” Honig said of the California measure.

The measure also is opposed by a statewide coalition of more than 20 organizations, including the California Teachers Assn., the California PTA and the California School Boards Assn. The coalition has been meeting weekly to plan strategy and expects to hire a campaign management team soon, the CTA’s Weber said.

But Teasley said the initiative “is designed to put the power in the hands of the children and their parents” and will benefit the good schools, private and public.

“If the public schools cannot stand up to the competition, then yes, they’ve got a problem,” Teasley said. “But we believe this will support any educational institution which is teaching the children and not those who aren’t.”

The measure needs 615,958 valid voters’ signatures to qualify for the ballot. However, to save time and money, the state requires that counties check a random sample of 3% of the signatures submitted. If this method indicates a measure has qualified, it is put on the ballot. But if it falls short, the state orders counties to check all the signatures, a costly and time-consuming process.

To allow for errors, the state requires that the random sampling process yield 110% of the number needed. The voucher measure needed a projected 677,554 signatures to qualify through the shorter process. Even if all of the signatures collected in the four small remaining counties were valid, there would not be enough to put the measure over the top. By late Thursday, the total was 642,864.

Backers suffered a severe blow in San Diego County, where the random sample turned up 20 duplicate signatures and pushed the projected qualifying rate to 59.1%. In Los Angeles, the last big county to report, the sample predicted 49,054 valid signatures, a qualifying rate of 68.1%

The initiative backers’ suit, scheduled for a hearing this afternoon in Sacramento Superior Court, seeks to overturn the 110% requirement and attacks the San Diego count.

State election officials have been sued over substantial compliance issues twice in the last 10 years, spokeswoman Melissa Warren said. They lost one case involving then-schools chief Wilson Riles’ nomination papers, but the Legislature resolved the other before the courts could act. In the second case, the so-called 1982 Victims’ Bill of Rights got slightly less than the required 110% but lawmakers passed emergency legislation lowering the requirement to 105% but only for that initiative.

Times staff writer William Trombley contributed to this story.

TUITION VOUCHER PLAN: Bush outlines a plan to offer $1,000 vouchers for public, private or religious education. A22