Posted on 06/29/2002 5:25:51 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Despite a Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that allows parents to use government-financed vouchers for religious and private schools, vouchers face particularly tall hurdles in New York State.
Both supporters and opponents say there is strong language in the state Constitution prohibiting government aid — direct or indirect — to religious education. In addition, the power of the New York City teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers, as a political force in Albany may prevent elected officials who are ambivalent about vouchers from supporting them, especially in an election year, when candidates may need union endorsement.
But if vouchers do find a footing in New York, analysts predicted, it will not be among conservative Republicans, but among younger black and Hispanic families dissatisfied with urban schools, and among minority elected officials within the Democratic Party.
In New York, as in other states, Republican voters are concentrated in the suburbs. Although vouchers have been a bedrock conservative issue, suburban voters support their public schools, and Republican candidates may find support for vouchers politically risky.
"I think it's ripe if you have that minority voice come forward in New York," said Joseph P. Viteritti, director of the program on education and civil society at New York University. "It's going to emerge from the cities, not the suburbs, and it has to be a Democratic issue, not a Republican issue."
In Cleveland and Milwaukee, which have voucher programs, a similar dynamic has been at work. In both cities, the impetus for vouchers came from urban minority communities.
In Milwaukee, the fight for school vouchers was led by Polly Williams, a black single mother forced by unemployment to go temporarily on welfare. Drawn into politics by her unwillingness to have her child bused to a school outside her neighborhood, she was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly from the predominantly black Near North district of Milwaukee.
In Cleveland, one of the leaders of the voucher movement was Fannie Lewis, also the black mother of a school-age child, who was elected to the City Council from the low-income community of Hough.
One damper on the voucher movement in New York, however, may be the recent legislation putting the New York City school system under mayoral control, which takes effect Monday. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he had no interest in allowing vouchers to distract him. "I was hired to improve the public school system and that's what I'm going to focus on," he said, adding that the "evidence on whether vouchers work is mixed."
Roman Catholic lobbying groups immediately began to focus their attention yesterday on the Black, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Legislative Caucus in Albany. "A lot of our advocacy really must be geared toward minority communities, to begin to apply pressure on the Black and Hispanic Caucus, who in turn can apply pressure on both houses to get something going," said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference.
The biggest obstacle to minority legislative support, Mr. Poust added, is probably the state teachers union, whose large membership and get-out-the-vote money are critical. "So that puts legislators in a very uncomfortable position," Mr. Poust said.
Mr. Poust said the New York State bishops were planning a pastoral statement to be released in time for the opening of school in the fall on "parental rights in education," which will address not just the voucher decision but other areas where religious schools would like more government support, like transportation, remedial services and computers.
However, even as voucher advocates began planning long-term strategy yesterday, New York's legislative leadership vowed to block efforts to start a voucher program in the state.
Assemblyman Steven Sanders, chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, said that "there is virtually no likelihood" that vouchers would be adopted in New York State.
He pointed out that the state's Constitution, through a provision known as the Blaine Amendment, specifies that neither the state nor local government may give aid to schools "wholly or in part under the control or direction of any religious denomination."
Beyond the constitutional prohibition, Mr. Sanders said, state law provides that only a school district — not a city government — can spend money allocated for educational purposes. It was this provision of state law that defeated Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's attempt to begin a small experimental voucher program for poor children in New York City.
Instead, a group of wealthy Wall Street businessmen, supported by Mr. Giuliani, began the School Choice Scholarships Foundation, which awarded scholarships by lottery for public-school children to go to private or parochial schools. That fund, however, ran out of steam as it became clear that vouchers were not going to be adopted in New York.
"I think there will be some groups that will try to convince parents to leave the system," Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said yesterday.
But Ms. Weingarten said she believed that voucher advocates were wrong if they thought there would be a groundswell of support in minority communities. She pointed to parents who rejected a bid by Edison Schools, the private management company, to take over five New York City schools last year.
"The Edison vote showed that if you could change public schools and make them better, parents would want the public schools," Ms. Weingarten said.
Randi--YOU ARE SO OVER!
The only danger is state education proponents sticking language in constitutions that somehow goes "under the radar" and then people don't even get the chance to see how great educational freedom can be. We had one of these in Florida a few years ago, passed by an astounding majority, to make public education a priority of the legislature. Now it is being used and pointed to by the anti school choice crowd as "proof" that Floridians want public education. (That's not it at all; they just got sucked into thinking the amendment was stated that we should spend good money on children's education)
This is the way the liberal crowd works; through the state courts because they would never win in the arena of public opinion; they get a law or constitutional amendment put in place and it is used by liberal judges to put forth a liberal agenda against the will of the people. We homeschoolers have the HS Legal Defense Association; they are very good at scouting out laws like this and making Homeschoolers aware when dangerous laws come forward.
Homeschoolers have more true freedom of education than anyone else around (Lord, how that totally galls the left - they can't control those kids!) and we would die in the streets to preserve it. We can't go back. 10 years ago I didn't even know homeschooling existed. Once the average parent starts to get a taste of educational liberty, they will never allow themselves to be taken back to state bondage.
Sounds like a win/win (if the Dems don't use it to make private/religious schools as bad as public schools).
Why is this point so often ignored? Many middle-class people live in areas with *good public schools.* They send their kids because they *like* the schools. Nor do they want to pay more in state taxes to support voucher programs - or have the state "dump" students from "failing districts" into their own.
1) You--and I--have choices: they don't. 2) Our public schools are good to excellent; theirs are Hell on Earth.
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