OC HIGH / STUDENT NEWS &...

Under Proposition 174, the parents of school-age children would receive tax-funded tuition vouchers, worth about $2,600 a year, to redeem at private schools.

The measure would allow public schools to become independent from their districts and the state. Those schools would give up regular state per-pupil funding and would be able to accept vouchers. Students could attend public campuses outside their home districts and choose which school to attend within their district of residence.

The long-term cost to the state is largely unknown, according to an analysis by the attorney general. However, it is expected that the provision would reduce the minimum amount that the state is required to spend per pupil in the public schools.

Proposition 174’s backers say a voucher system would help break powerful public school unions and curb the state’s power at a most basic level--education. Public schools would improve, they contend, or lose pupils to educational entrepreneurs who would capitalize on a voucher system by opening private schools.

Those against the measure say it would cost hundreds of millions in tax money in initial years and gives the state no authority to oversee private schools’ use of the voucher money. They note that it does not require private schoolteachers to have credentials and would give tax money to schools that exclude children based on gender or religion.

The measure will be decided by California voters on Nov. 2.

YES

The pro-voucher position was argued by Mark Bucher, a volunteer field representative for “Yes on 174, a Better Choice for Education.” Bucher’s responses were gathered by Dan Eastmond, a senior at Newport Harbor High School.

Q. Why do you think the proposed school voucher system is a good idea?

A. Giving parents a choice--there’s no way we can go wrong with that. This initiative gives parents the right to choose where their child will go to school. The current system gives parents no right to choose. This will improve public schools. Public schools will benefit from competition (with private schools). The competition created will force public schools to improve. It will provide the product customers want.

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Q. What will be the most important impact on students?

A. They’ll have the freedom to choose their school. They’re part of the decision.

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Q. How will it change public schools? Could it cause them to close?

A. The worst (public) schools will probably close down--and they should. The best ones are going to stay around.

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Q. How will it change private schools? Will a lot of new ones open?

A. Private schools for the most part are doing a very good job. Especially in the inner cities, there will be schools opening to provide for the needs of those areas. The need for quality education is greatest in inner cities, where you’ll see the most new schools. What you have now are virtual prisons.

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Q. There are students from many backgrounds in public school. Do you think there would be more separation of students by wealth, religion, race and culture?

A. No, I do not necessarily think so. I think parents make a choice about schools based on the individual needs of their child. I don’t think they are going to make them, necessarily, on ethnic or wealth or that kind of line. Parents are far more interested in the type of education their children are receiving than they are about separating them out.

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Q. Most public school students now live in surrounding neighborhoods and can get together easily outside of school to socialize. Would that change?

A. No. I believe schools will be more neighborhood-based than they are now. Schools will be where the clientele is.

Many times kids are bused far out of their neighborhoods. We bus kids all over town. I believe that private schools will be located right in neighborhoods, meeting the needs of those they serve.

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Q. What do you think would be the impact on sports programs and other extracurricular activities?

A. If sports are important to parents, they will choose a school that emphasizes (them). How it will impact depends on the parents’ choice.

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Q. Most of the talk about Proposition 174 focuses on parents having the right to choose where they want to send their children to school. What about students? How do you think they feel?

A. I think students would like the same right.

NO

The anti-voucher position was argued by Susan Allenbaugh of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers. Allenbaugh is an English teacher at Costa Mesa High School. Her responses were gathered by Brian Singer, a senior at Fullerton High School.

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Q. Why do you think the proposed school voucher system is a bad idea?

A. It would take taxpayer money that is now carefully controlled in how it is spent in public schools and give it to private schools that have almost no restrictions on how the money is spent.

Health and safety standards don’t exist in private schools, and anyone who can sign up 25 students can open their own school. It’s easier to open a private school than to add a porch to your house.

There are 500,000 students whose parents have selected for them an alternative educational system. They’ve made that choice, and this would pay for those 500,000 students that the state does not normally pay for.

It would create a incredible bureaucracy because every single private school every month sends an accounting for each eligible student to the state of California. And each month the state of California then sends a check to each school. It says it will eliminate bureaucracy, but it will be an incredible bureaucracy.

This is a constitutional amendment. It would be virtually impossible to change it if there is a mistake. It has got as much substance as Swiss cheese--it has a lot of holes in it.

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Q. What will be the most important impact on students?

A. The impact is that this year over $100 million would be taken out of public education. Students would be caught up in tugs of war between schools and parents (and be uprooted) from their community school.

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Q. How will it change public schools? Could it cause some of them to close?

A. Contrary to what the proponents say, if it passes it would be devastating to public education. The decrease in financial support would make inner-city schools much worse than they are right now. And only the parents with enough education to search out a good private school would do so. The parents with less education would probably not be able to locate and place their students in a good private school.

A conservative figure would be a cut of 10% of the income for public schools. Although it varies from district to district, it would be a sizable figure.

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Q. How will it change private schools? Will a lot of new ones open?

A. There will be a lot of private schools open up. They don’t have to have qualified teachers, so they probably won’t. You don’t even have to be a graduate from high school. These schools would have very little regulation. There doesn’t have to be any curriculum that meets any specific standards.

There are no health standards. I could run a school much more cheaply if I didn’t have to adhere to health standards, credentialed teachers, certain curriculum. No private school will receive funds if it teaches hatred of another group. But monitoring or proving that will be very difficult.

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Q. There are students from many backgrounds in public school. Do you think there would be more separation of students by wealth, religion, race and culture?

A. Yes, because private schools could discriminate on the basis of gender, English proficiency, IQ, family income or religion. (The measure states that there can be no discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin.)

High school is the one time when you have an opportunity to socially interact with more people of diverse backgrounds than any other time. It’s the one time when you can develop understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures. At a single-interest private school, you would be totally segregated without the opportunity to gain any kind of insight or appreciation of the way other cultures enjoy life. This would create cultural ghettos.

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Q. Most public school students now live in surrounding neighborhoods and can get together easily outside of school to socialize. Would that change?

A. Most of the social functions are generated from the local school. And with a number of culturally segregated schools, the inclination to mix would be limited or nonexistent.

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Q. What do you think would be the impact on sports programs and other extracurricular activities?

A. The probable outcome is that one school would become a sports powerhouse. And there would be extracurricular powerhouses as well. There would be a sports-oriented school, college prep-oriented school, fine arts-oriented school, all competing with each other to attract students.

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Q. Most of the talk about Proposition 174 focuses on parents having the right to choose where they want to send their children to school. What about students? How do you think they feel?

A. There’s no kind of generalization that would fit all students. But I think most of them would still accept their parents’ decision (on where to attend school).