Voucher Initiative Forces Ready for Fight : Elections: Both sides campaign hard, but opposition has lion’s share of cash behind it. Groups agree that Ventura County voters are happier with their public schools than are others in the state.

Around the state, backers of the school-voucher initiative pitch the measure as a way to free children from public schools plagued by violence and pinched for money.

Proposition 174, supporters say, would give lower-income parents something most have never had: a choice between public and private schools.

But in relatively affluent Ventura County, pro-voucher forces are finding many parents have already made their choice.

“A lot of people moved to this area to get away from Los Angeles Unified School District,” said Mat Higbee, central coast coordinator for the statewide “Yes on 174” campaign. “Their school systems are good.”

So the initiative’s backers are tailoring their message to local voters.

Thousand Oaks parent Bill Westmiller is campaigning hard for Proposition 174, giving speeches to groups around Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley.

Westmiller said he and his wife moved from Glendale mainly to get their three young daughters into the highly regarded Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Proposition 174 isn’t for families like his, he says. But he supports it for the greater good of all the state’s public school students, he adds.

“The voucher is for people who have low incomes and bad schools,” Westmiller said. “I had the resources to choose which public school my children would attend.”

But anti-voucher forces say the initiative would financially drain public education, undermining even the good schools that drew the Westmillers to Ventura County.

And Proposition 174 opponents have greater financial resources to carry their message to voters in Ventura County and around the state.

“We view this as sort of a David and Goliath campaign,” said Stephanie Thomas, Fillmore coordinator for Yes on 174.

Although voucher supporters say they have 2,000 local volunteers, some of whom plan to begin canvassing neighborhoods this weekend, they said they have raised only a few thousand dollars in Ventura County.

Their opponents, a coalition of local labor unions, public school teachers and groups such as the League of Women Voters and the American Assn. of University Women, have the financial backing of a statewide organization that has raised about $10 million--10 times more than the state’s pro-voucher forces.

With voter lists purchased by the state coalition, voucher opponents in Ventura County are working phone banks nightly to campaign against the initiative.

And local anti-voucher forces also have the benefit of TV and radio commercials that the state coalition is airing throughout the state.

Proposition 174 opponents said they agree that Ventura County voters seem happier with their public schools than residents in some other areas.

But their message in Ventura County is the same as elsewhere.

“We’re emphasizing that Proposition 174 is a huge experiment,” Citizens Against 174 spokeswoman Chris Levesque said. “It’s a huge risk for parents whose children are in schools they’re not happy with. It’s a risk for parents whose children are doing well. And it’s a risk for taxpayers. That’s another very important message for people in Ventura County.”

Called the Parental Choice in Education Amendment, the voucher-initiative on the November ballot would change the state constitution to require for the first time in California history that public money help pay tuition in private and religious schools.

Under Proposition 174, every child from kindergarten through 12th grade would qualify for a voucher equal to half the amount the state spends to educate a public-school student.

At current spending levels, vouchers would be worth about $2,600 each, enough to cover a year’s tuition at many of the dozens of private and religious schools in Ventura County.

Parents who already send their children to private schools could apply the voucher funds to the tuition they now pay.

And parents who can’t afford private schools on their own could put the state money toward covering the costs of any institution that accepts their children.

“As it is now, if you’re not one of the lucky few that can afford to put your child in private school, then you’re forced into public school,” said Arlene Butler, a voucher supporter who has four children in Moorpark public schools. “This will give power back to the parents.”

Many private schools charge less than $2,600 annually. Under Proposition 174, students who use vouchers could accumulate the amounts left over every year to help pay for college.

The initiative would also allow individual public schools to choose to accept vouchers in lieu of other state funding.

But state lawmakers would have to decide how such public, voucher-funded schools would be formed and regulated. So both pro- and anti-voucher forces have focused their debate on how the initiative would affect traditionally funded public schools and private institutions.

Westmiller and other local backers say the measure would force public schools to compete with private ones, lead good public schools to get better and force not-so-good ones to improve or shut down.

Besides allowing all parents a chance to switch their children to private schools, the initiative would give parents who opt to stay with the public schools more power, supporters say.

“I’d like to have the voucher to wave over the heads of my board of education, just to get their attention,” Westmiller said. “That is the benefit I think there will be for me.”

Norm Walker, Simi Valley coordinator for the pro-voucher campaign, said, “This is not about trashing public education. It’s about reforming public education.”

But voucher opponents say Proposition 174 would not reform the state’s public education system, it would kill it.

“Most people I know feel it would be the death knell of public education,” said Ventura parent Virginia O’Neil, who helps raise private funds for local public schools.

If passed, the initiative would become effective immediately.

All public school children and private school students who enrolled after October, 1991, would become eligible for vouchers right away.

Students who enrolled in private schools prior to October, 1991, could get the vouchers beginning in the 1995-96 school year.

Even if no Ventura County students opted to use vouchers to transfer out of public schools, it would cost up to $26 million each year to give the $2,600 vouchers to the 10,000 local students already in private schools.

Statewide, 550,000 students are in private non-sectarian and religious schools.

The cost of paying vouchers to all of them would be $1.3 billion per year, with all of the money coming from the already tight state education budget that funds local school districts.

“It scares me, it does,” said Camarillo parent Helen Gano, a voucher opponent. “If we’re going to take money away from something that already needs support, then it’s like a rubber band that’s going to break.”

Some voucher opponents say that local governments may have to increase property taxes just to cover the costs of school vouchers.

“You’re talking about taking money away from kids,” said Bob Unruhe, a retired Los Angeles teacher running the anti-voucher campaign in Ojai. “There’s going to be a lot of pressure to raise taxes.”

Fear of a tax boost is driving many Ventura County senior citizens to oppose the voucher plan, said Martha Crowe, who is helping to organize her neighbors in Camarillo’s Leisure Village retirement community against the initiative. “That’s on everybody’s mind because many people live on fixed incomes.”

But Proposition 174 backers say that shifting money away from public education would force the state’s unwieldy school system to reform itself.

“The system is a monster gobbling up our money,” said Moorpark parent Helen Taylor, a leader of the county’s pro-voucher forces. “It’s time to take it back and tame it and take control of what is happening with the education of our children.”

Patrick Mierkey, principal of the small Valley Christian Academy in Oak View, agreed.

“If we take away their money, they’ll have to change their teaching,” Mierkey said. “It will take the good educators out of the public system to start private schools.” Moreover, supporters say, Proposition 174 would eventually save money for taxpayers in Ventura County and around the state.

It would be cheaper for the state to pay $2,600 a year to educate students in private schools than continue the $5,200 per-pupil spending in public schools, voucher backers say.

So the state would save billions of dollars once enough public school students opted to use the vouchers, supporters say.

But about 20% of public school students, or 1 million children, would have to cash in their vouchers at private schools for the state just to break even on Proposition 174, according to studies by the state legislative analyst and other independent groups.

If that many students were to leave public schools, however, voucher opponents say there would be no place for most of them. Altogether, the state’s private schools have room for about 50,000 more students, one study shows.

In Ventura County, some private school officials said their facilities could accommodate more students, but many others said they have waiting lists and no space to grow.

“If you’re a good school, you’re close to capacity anyway,” Mierkey said.

Proposition 174 would allow students to use vouchers at any schools that have at least 25 students and meet minimum standards, such as not teaching “hate” or discriminating on the basis of race.

The initiative’s backers predict many new schools would form to accommodate students who opt out of public schools.

“We could start another school in short order,” said Mierkey, whose Valley Christian Academy is at capacity with 85 students. “It’s kind of a one-room schoolhouse concept. The plan is we would basically duplicate ourselves.”

Or parents could follow the example of Cheryl Wade and her husband, who banded together with six other families to form a new school--Fillmore Christian Academy--that opened just last month.

“We felt public education just wasn’t what we wanted for our kids,” Wade said. She and her husband, Mark, wanted their sons, Evan, 10, and Grant, 8, to get an education “with more of a moral basis, where they can discern right from wrong,” she said.

With only nine students, the school meets daily at the home of its teacher, Martha Richardson, on the outskirts of Fillmore.

More parents are interested in the school, which costs $1,575 per year, Wade said. “But a lot of them can’t afford it.”

If Proposition 174 passes, she said, the school may be able to attract enough students to meet the minimum enrollment of 25 students to qualify for vouchers.

But it is precisely the specter of taxpayer money going to such fledgling schools that alarms some voucher opponents.

Except for a handful of laws requiring that private-school students attend class a certain number of days, learn academic subjects and not be discriminated against on the basis of race or ethnicity, the state leaves private schools alone.

And private-school educators say that’s the way they want it.

But even some of them are concerned that new schools with inferior standards would spring up if Proposition 174 passes.

Michael D. Hermes, principal of the exclusive Ojai Valley School, said his school’s board of directors has voted to oppose Proposition 174, although the school would probably accept the state money if the measure passes.

“We are fearful that because the private schools in California are almost all full, many private schools with questionable missions would spring up,” Hermes said. “The thing that makes a good private school a good private school is they have withstood the test of time.”

Other voucher opponents stressed that private schools can select only the smartest or easiest-to-manage children.

Under Proposition 174, opponents say, the public schools may end up with only the hardest-to-educate students--the physically disabled, emotionally disturbed and others who have nowhere else to go.

“Public schools do not pick and choose,” said voucher opponent Barbara Bloise, president of the Camarillo Parent Teachers Assn. Council. “And that’s good.”

Bloise said she is disturbed that the voucher initiative would funnel public money to religious schools, which she and other voucher opponents believe would violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Voucher supporter Francis Brown, an Oxnard parent who sends his two teen-age sons to Catholic schools, said he is confident that using public money at parochial schools would not violate the separation of church and state. Religion constitutes only a small part of the schools’ curriculum, he said.

“It definitely won’t blur the line,” he said.

Thousand Oaks parent Cheryl Heitmann, a co-coordinator of Ventura County Citizens Against 174, said she is upset that the measure would be nearly impossible to change if it passes.

As a constitutional amendment, the voucher initiative could only be altered if 50% of voters passed another proposition. In addition, Proposition 174 would prohibit further regulation of the state’s private schools without approval of at least 50% of eligible state voters or 75% of state legislators.

“To make this kind of radical change in an institution and then to have no way to remedy it is not the way to go,” Heitmann said.

Backers and opponents of Proposition 174 agree that the initiative would drastically change the future of public education in Ventura County and across the state.

But the highly charged issue is likely to be decided by only a minority of voters.

Ventura County Elections Chief Bruce Bradley predicts that only 40% to 50% of Ventura County’s registered voters will go to the polls Nov. 2.

Statewide, both pro- and anti-voucher forces predict about a 35% turnout.

“This is a wild-card election,” said John O’Looney, an Oxnard elementary-school teacher who has helped organize the county campaign against the voucher. “We don’t know who’s going to show up. It’s kind of scary.”

So both sides are marshaling their forces, focusing on getting their supporters to the polls.

“We’re gearing up for quite a battle and we’re calling in the troops,” said voucher supporter Helen Taylor of Moorpark. “It’s heating up right now. This is it. We’re down to the last few weeks.”

* MAIN STORY: A3

Potential School Losses if Prop. 174 Passes

Estimates vary widely on how the voucher initiative would impact public schools’ finances. But both pro-voucher and anti-voucher forces agree that the proposition is likely to initially drain money from public education. The chart below is based on financial estimates for 1995-96 from individual school districts and School Services of California, a Sacramento consulting firm that opposes Proposition 174 and estimates that up to 4% of public school students might redeem vouchers. School officials say all public schools will lose money, even those that have no students transferring, because tuition payments would deplete the state education fund.

Losses if no Losses if 4% students leave of state students District any public school leave BRIGGS $176,204 $ 220,864 CONEJO VALLEY $7,668,780 $9,661,440 FILLMORE $1,463,882 $1,834,912 HUENEME $3,385,200 $4,243,200 MESA UNION $154,040 $193,120 MOORPARK $2,624,832 $3,290,112 MUPU $ 49,476 $ 62,016 OAK PARK $1,178,744 $1,477,504 OCEAN VIEW $1,063,300 $1,332,800 OJAI $1,629,600 $2,121,600 OXNARD ELEMENTARY $5,642,000 $7,072,000 OXNARD UNION H.S. $5,092,556 $6,383,296 PLEASANT VALLEY $2,972,900 $3,726,400 RIO $1,312,850 $1,645,600 SANTA CLARA ELEMENTARY $15,624 $19,584 SANTA PAULA ELEMENTARY $1,378,818 $1,728,288 SANTA PAULA UNION H.S. $ 572,880 $ 718,080 SIMI VALLEY $7,985,600 $10,009,600 SOMIS $128,464 $161,024 VENTURA $6,510,000 $8,160,000

% General Fund cut if 4% of District students leave BRIGGS 17.7% CONEJO VALLEY 13.4% FILLMORE 13.6% HUENEME 14.6% MESA UNION 15.3% MOORPARK 14.1% MUPU 13.8% OAK PARK 14.1% OCEAN VIEW 13.2% OJAI 14.2% OXNARD ELEMENTARY 11.2% OXNARD UNION H.S. 12.3% PLEASANT VALLEY 14.8% RIO 13.6% SANTA CLARA ELEMENTARY 10.7% SANTA PAULA ELEMENTARY 12.8% SANTA PAULA UNION H.S. 12.1% SIMI VALLEY 13.9% SOMIS 14.0% VENTURA 13.6%