Low-Income Parents Laud Voucher Idea

Anna Hernandez’s two children attend Pacoima Elementary, but she dreams of sending them to the family’s church school, where they could also receive a religious education.

She might get her wish.

Like other parents across Los Angeles, Hernandez on Tuesday welcomed the news that Wall Street investor Theodore J. Forstmann was to offer $20 million worth of vouchers--$1,000 each--to help low-income families send their children to private schools.

The offer was celebrated as a boon for poor parents and the parochial schools that serve as an inexpensive alternative to highbrow private campuses, where a year’s tuition can cost more than a new Ford.

Hernandez said she hoped to win her share of the funds so she could send 9-year-old Vanessa and 6-year-old Frank to school at the parish where she grew up, Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima.

“They would learn more about prayer and God,” said Hernandez, 30, a clerk typist at the San Fernando Gardens public housing project in Pacoima.

“That’s very, very important. I teach them at home, but they would be able to apply it in their study.”

Forstmann, who is pitching his voucher donations as a way to break up what he terms the ineffective monopoly of public schools, said Monday he would begin offering the vouchers in the fall of 1999. He said at least 5,000 vouchers would be issued annually for four years.

Other public school parents shared Hernandez’s enthusiasm.

Theresa Simpson of San Pedro reluctantly took her 16-year-old son, Bruce, out of parochial school as a child because she couldn’t afford the $1,200 annual tuition. Simpson, a single mother of three living on a fixed income, says she would leap at the chance to return Bruce to a private school with top-flight academics and religious training.

Indeed, the mention of the vouchers renewed Simpson’s hope of finding a quality private school for Bruce, a San Pedro High junior, and her 11-year-old foster son, Carlos.

“If it materializes, I’d jump at the chance,” said Simpson, 41, the office manager of the community group Parents of Watts. “Public schools are not enough anymore. They’re so overcrowded. The teachers have a really hard way to go.”

Struggling parents whose children now attend parochial schools said they too hoped to benefit from the Forstmann initiative.

Darlene Anderson, whose two children attend the school at Our Saviors First Lutheran Church in Granada Hills, said she has been considering pulling her children out because of the high cost of their education. Tuition at the school was $2,750 per student this year.

Anderson, who is unemployed, and her husband, an electronic technician, moved into a cheaper apartment and tightened their belts to pay the school’s tuition. The $2,000 they would receive if they qualify for a voucher would lighten the load considerably, she said.

Parochial schools already are far less expensive than secular private schools.

The average tuition for parochial Catholic elementary campuses in the United States is $1,303, and $3,100 for secondary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational Assn., whose 300 schools account for half of the private campuses across the country.

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By comparison, tuition at secular private schools in the western United States can run as high as $16,500, according to the National Assn. of Independent Schools.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles stands to be one of the big winners. Its affiliated agencies operate 285 Catholic schools--with more than 100,000 students--in Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The archdiocese provides $5 million in assistance to keep tuition low in poor neighborhoods, plus another $3.5 million for families who still can’t afford the lower rates. Schools in poor neighborhoods are operating at about 80% capacity, and so have room to accommodate an influx of new students, said Jerome R. Porath, the archdiocese’s supertintendent of schools.

“It’s positive news for families who can’t afford parochial education,” Porath said. “We have a great interest in expanding Catholic education to low income families.”

Margaret Ash, principal of the 180-student Our Saviors First Lutheran Church school in Granada Hills, said that a larger student body would help attract more federal funding allotted for nonpublic schools. The funding pays for such things as library materials and computer equipment.

More students might also generate enough money to raise teacher salaries, she said. “We could more easily try to meet the public school scale.”

The arrival of voucher dollars in Los Angeles is also expected to benefit moderately priced private campuses, such as Marcus Garvey School in South Los Angeles, where administrators routinely turn poor parents away for their inability to meet the $5,000-a-year price.

“There are a lot of people for whom $1,000 would be a godsend,” said school founder Anyim Palmer. “I don’t see how anyone who has children and is in need of assistance could be against the voucher.”

But the grants will serve little purpose when it comes to the high end of the market.

“I think it will have no impact at all on our school,” said Thomas Hudnut, headmaster of Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, where tuition ran $12,900 this year. “It’s not going to be a blip on the screen here.”