Put on Parent Hats and Think of the Kids

If you are a parent and know that a good school is up the street and a bad school is down the street, where are you going to send your children to school? If the state finds that your child is already in a bad school but promises to clean it up, are you willing to keep sending your child there?

Today, these questions are of particular interest to Californians as the state Senate and Assembly have approved two competing bills to deal with our bad schools.

Earlier this year, the Assembly approved Gov. Pete Wilson’s “opportunity scholarship” bill sponsored by Speaker Curt Pringle. This bill would provide parents immediate relief from bad schools by giving them vouchers to send their children to better schools, public or private.

Conversely, the Senate approved President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer’s (D-Hayward) “lifeboat for the schools” bill that would throw $120 million at the state’s worst schools and keep the children in these bad schools for an additional year. If after one year the schools don’t improve, the parents get to choose another public school--no private schools allowed.

The two plans appear to be headed for a showdown with each side saying “no” to the other’s proposal. Lockyer doesn’t want vouchers and Wilson says throwing more money at the schools is not an answer.

Is a showdown necessary? No.

Although the two sides may appear to be far apart, they aren’t. Both Wilson and Lockyer have agreed that we have bad schools and that we need to do something about them. They just don’t agree on how to improve the situation.

To help them see through the fog, they should put on their parent hats and compromise.

After identifying the bad schools, Wilson should give Lockyer the money he wants to try to improve them. Similarly, Lockyer should let Wilson give parents vouchers so they can seek the immediate relief they most certainly want from these schools. The biggest beneficiary of the Wilson plan would be poor families; if parents have the means to take their children elsewhere, they probably have already done so.

By compromising, not only would both sides win one for the kids, parents and schools, but they also would give their parties a boost.

Everybody knows that a potential voucher initiative looms in 1998. And, unlike the Proposition 174 school voucher campaign in 1993, it will have the resources to win. To defeat it, the California Teachers Assn. would need to spend more than $15 million. These are dollars that would be diverted from the campaign coffers of Lockyer’s allies.

This should not go without consideration. Proposition 174’s sucking of more than $15 million out of CTA coffers led to a slew of under-financed Democratic candidates and to the new Republican-controlled Assembly. By agreeing to this compromise, Lockyer would take the wind out of the sails of voucher ’98 proponents and save the CTA’s money for his friends.

Wilson would win, too. In 1993, many of the party faithful were upset with him for turning his back on Proposition 174. He did so on economic grounds. But his own economic advisors, former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, favored the proposition on both moral grounds and economic arguments.

Then Wilson surprised us all with his January 1996 State of the State speech which called for vouchers. Still, many of the party faithful were skeptical of the governor’s resolve.

If Wilson can make this deal with Lockyer, he will become the nation’s first governor to win a full statewide (however limited) voucher program. This will win him kudos not only with the state’s party faithful, but with the party faithful across the country.

Clearly, this is a deal whose time has come. We don’t need another expensive initiative campaign in 1998. The state’s worst schools are bad. The children should be set free. Put your parent hats on, Wilson and Lockyer, and do the right thing.