3,750 Get Grants for Private Schools

Demonstrating low-income parents’ pent-up desire to flee faltering public schools, 3,750 Los Angeles families Wednesday won four-year scholarships that will enable them to send their children to private or parochial schools next fall.

The families were among 40,000 across the nation picked at random by computer for the coveted funds, ranging from $500 to $1,600 a year. Los Angeles received the most scholarships; Chicago and New York received 2,500 each.

The lottery, which drew 1.25 million applicants nationwide, was held by the Children’s Scholarship Fund, the nation’s largest private scholarship program.

Launched in June with $100 million in seed money from billionaire Wall Street mogul Ted Forstmann and Wal-Mart Stores heir John Walton, the effort has attracted an additional $70 million in matching funds. That includes $15 million from prominent Los Angeles business figures, including Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz, financier Eli Broad and supermarket investor Ronald Burkle.

Doralee Bridges of South-Central Los Angeles heard about the lottery a few months ago from a niece. At a breakfast for winning families at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Los Angeles, she alternately smiled and wept as she talked about what the aid will mean for her two 10-year-olds.

Four decades ago, Bridges said, Normandie Avenue School provided an adequate education for her and her five siblings. But she feels the elementary school no longer seems to be up to the task of providing a safe and nurturing environment for her daughter, Angel Bridges, and Terry Stevens, a relative she took in as an infant.

The boy is fascinated by gangbangers at the school and “he wants to run with them,” Bridges said. Come fall, she plans to send the children to a Christian school, hoping for a more disciplined, academic environment.

“It should tell the [public] school system something,” she said. “Maybe it’ll make them realize they need to think more about what their educational system is doing to the kids.”

Martha Arellano and Ismael Espitia, a bartender, responded to ads on Spanish-language television about the scholarship program. As a result, they now hope to send their son, Eduardo, to a Catholic school.

Irene Gutierrez of Highland Park gave up on public schools after her daughter’s reading ability flagged. A year ago, she moved her three children to Good Shepherd, a Lutheran school, where she and her husband, Norman, pay discounted monthly tuition of $708. Gutierrez’s entire income as a medical assistant goes for the tuition. All other expenses come from her husband’s wages as a truck driver.

By enabling low-income families to afford tuition for kindergarten through eighth grade, Forstmann hopes to spur competition for “monopolistic” public schools and challenge them to better serve the African American and Latino communities that have been their captive audiences.

But he has also fueled the fiery debate over the use of taxpayer money to send kids to private schools.

Some critics see his fund as an effort to drum up interest in tax-backed voucher programs. Such programs have met with mixed academic success in Cleveland and Milwaukee, where thousands of children are using tax dollars to attend private schools. Florida is poised to adopt the first statewide voucher program.

“We see this as trying to pave the way for a tax-funded voucher program,” said Joseph Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington watchdog group.

Teacher groups also oppose the program, saying it diverts attention and funding from the reform efforts underway in public schools.

However, James C. Courtovich, president of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, said the group aims primarily to demonstrate how competition could improve the overall system. “There is a great thirst [among low-income parents] for the same choice that others have at other income levels,” he said.

Huge Response to Scholarship Offer

Indeed, the robust response of low-income families indicates that many have grown to believe that troubled urban school districts do not have the ability to educate children.

“Nothing . . . could have begun to prepare us for the explosive level of demand we encountered for these scholarships,” Forstmann said in a New York presentation relayed by satellite to a ballroom at the Hyatt.

By the March 31 deadline, he said, the fund had received applications from 22,000 cities and towns, representing all 50 states. To be eligible, families must have annual incomes of less than $22,000 and must agree to provide an average of $1,000 a year toward their child’s education. Nationwide, the average annual tuition for private and parochial schools is $2,250. The scholarship money will be paid directly to the schools.

Courtovich said the Children’s Scholarship Fund is evaluating whether to grant more scholarships next year; he said the group is also uncertain whether it will expand its mission beyond the promised four years.

The fund’s high-powered board of advisors is adorned with names from business, politics, sports and entertainment. They include Jill E. Barad, chief executive of Mattel Inc.; former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros; Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.); Martin Luther King III, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell; longtime basketball coach Pat Riley; Nancy Daly Riordan, wife of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan; actor-rapper Will Smith; and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young. Among other supporters is TV personality Oprah Winfrey.

Although acknowledging the pent-up demand for choice in the inner city, one academician said private scholarships nonetheless pose a policy dilemma.

“The program allows the best and brightest kids and most vocal, committed parents to leave [public schools],” said Bruce Fuller, co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education at UC Berkeley. That could lead, he said, to further deterioration of the widely admired principle of free, public education.

Asked whether the program could speed the downfall of public schools, Andrew Young responded: “What happened to IBM when Apple started making computers? It got better. This should serve to wake up the public schools. If you continue neglecting your lower-income schools, you’re going to lose your [per student] per diem.”