PERSPECTIVES / LETTERS : Canadian System Offers Lesson on Vouchers
In response to Father Peter A. O’Reilly’s letter of Sept. 25 concerning school vouchers, Father O’Reilly should visit Calgary, Alberta, a modern city of half a million people in western Canada, and make a study of the operation of its Catholic schools. You’ll learn that their Catholic school system differs from our Los Angeles system like the Renaissance differs from the Dark Ages.
You will encounter a method of school finance (that) you could not have encountered while “on the Archdiocesan Finance Council.” In Calgary, and in hundreds of similar communities throughout Canada, a taxpayer has always had the option of paying his education taxes to the public schools system or of supporting the local Separate School Board.
In consequence, the Separate School Board (which is a body of lay people elected by Catholic ratepayers), is always provided with a designated share of public funds. Calgary’s pastors, in contrast to those stationed here in Los Angeles, are unencumbered by “the pain and worry over where their next dollar is coming from.” Nor do they “need to fret” about collecting monthly tuition. Nor do they worry about paying for maintenance and upkeep of parish convent buildings (there are no parish convents there). Their pastors are out of the financial loop.
And unlike yourself, Father O’Reilly, these Canadian pastors need never “wonder aloud whether the voucher system would really be a help or a hindrance.” In essence, this would be a problem to be settled between the (lay) taxpayers and their elected representatives. Their pastors are out of the political loop.
BERNARD KELLY
Los Angeles
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