Prop. 174 Debated as Business Groups Announce Opposition : Schools: Backers and foes of voucher initiative agree in faceoff that reform is needed. But they differ sharply on plan’s benefits--and costs.

The battle over the school voucher initiative on the November ballot took center stage in Los Angeles’ business community Wednesday as high-profile leaders on both sides of the measure debated its merits at a Downtown luncheon and as local business groups announced their opposition to the voucher plan.

Businessman Joe Alibrandi, chairman of the Yes on 174 campaign, touted the initiative--which would give to parents vouchers worth about $2,600 a year for private or parochial school tuition--as a way to break the “monopoly” of a public education system that he said is failing California’s 5.2 million schoolchildren.

“What we have here is a monopoly that has commandeered a huge portion of the state’s revenue and is accountable to no one for the results,” he said.

But Al Shanker, national president of the American Federation of Teachers, countered by portraying the initiative as a “reckless and irresponsible” measure that would destroy the state’s public schools by reducing their funding and wooing away their best students.

“The question is not whether the public schools are in bad shape. The question is what’s the best way to improve the public schools,” he said. “I would acknowledge the public schools have lots of problems, but is your remedy a cure or a poison?”

The two faced off before more than 200 people--mostly business executives, but including some school district officials and a handful of high school students--at a luncheon debate at the Los Angeles Hilton, sponsored by Town Hall of California.

Earlier in the day, leaders of several business groups, including the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. and Regional 2000 Partnership, held a news conference to announce their opposition to the initiative.

“The idea and the concept of choice is one that is intriguing and has some support (in the business community),” said Ray Remy, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “But Proposition 174 is bad public policy and bad business.”

Because the initiative requires the state to provide vouchers for up to 540,000 children already in private school, Remy and others have predicted that it would result in cuts in public school spending and could fuel pressure for tax increases to make up the difference.

Passage of Proposition 174 would “send the wrong message and, instead of helping us, would set us back in our effort to revive the economy” by making it difficult for the state to attract and keep qualified employees, said Ben Reznick, chairman of the San Fernando Valley business group.

“Public schools are in need of reform; we recognize that,” Reznick said. “But Proposition 174 sends a very wrong signal to the business community, not just here but around the country--a message that California has given up on its public schools.”

The impact of the measure on the state’s public schools was a key element of the Town Hall debate as well. Both Alibrandi and Shanker conceded that public schools are failing too many children. But Alibrandi portrayed Proposition 174 as a way to spur improvements, whereas Shanker pronounced it “a disaster for public education.”

Both men drew frequent applause from the crowd during the 45-minute session, which included questions from the audience and emotional pitches from both men.

Alibrandi began by launching a broadside at California’s teachers unions, which have provided almost all of the $10.7 million raised to fight the measure.

“The question is, why such a fervent desire to battle an effort that would give parents an opportunity to have some say in the educational process affecting their children?” Alibrandi said.

Proposition 174, he said, would break the stranglehold that unions and education bureaucrats have over the state’s public schools and “create the incentive that good people in the public school system have to emulate those programs that have worked elsewhere. The problems (in public schools) have persisted not because people don’t have the talent to fix them, but because they don’t have the will,” he said.

The voucher plan would make public schools accountable to parents by forcing them to compete with private schools for students and education dollars, Alibrandi said.

But Shanker responded that the measure would do little more than provide subsidies to those already in private schools, leaving the neediest children worse off in public schools that will have lost funding to finance vouchers.

“If you pass this thing, you squeeze the public schools even more,” he said. “This will do for education what health insurance has done for the health care system in this country. It will give you inflation in (private school) tuition, it will give you runaway costs, it will give you all sorts of things, but it will not give you higher standards,” he said.

“The whole thing is a big game . . . a horrible roll of the dice.”