by Elenora Giddings Ivory

[Washington, D.C., Dec. 9 — On December 8 the House of Representatives passed the school voucher plan for District of Columbia children. It was included in the $328 billion omnibus appropriations bill, which passed 242-176. The proposal, and omnibus package, now waits on the Senate, which will probably consider the spending bill late in January 2004.]

For the first time, the Senate has debated the controversial public school voucher program. The vehicle for debate was the annual budget appropriations for the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia voucher plan was seen by its supporters to be a catalyst, or perhaps a model, for the rest of the nation.

This concept has had the vigorous support of the city’s mayor, Anthony Williams, but has been opposed by the District of Columbia’s Congressional Delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Mayor Williams has been a leader in the efforts to push it and had originally asked Congress for $50 million for private school vouchers.

The debate in Congress has divided the community. Supporters of this voucher system say that it should be a matter of ‘Choice’ when it comes to schools for elementary and high school children. Advocates for the proposal would like to see public money used by parents to send their children to private or religious schools.

During its movement throughout the House and Senate process, the voucher program was first attached to the omnibus $5.6 billion 2004 District of Columbia budget. Republicans have been seen as primarily in support, while Democrats generally have lined up on the opposing side. Different versions of the bill passed in the House and Senate. It then went to a joint conference committee to reconcile the differences.

The House had passed its version of the bill in September and allocated $10 million for vouchers and no additional dollars for the public school program. The Senate bill included $13 million for vouchers as well as $26 million for the city’s public school system. According to The Washington Post article of November 17, 2003, “A $13 million voucher plan would provide at least 1,700 District schoolchildren from low-income families with grants of up to $7,500 a year to attend private or parochial schools during a five-year pilot program.”

The plan had the support of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), who won the key support of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), by attempting to amend the Senate version to include language that would prohibit the use of funds for religious discrimination in the classroom. This amended language did not stay in the final Senate version.

As the Senate debate went forward, the language about vouchers was at first deleted because many in the Senate felt this was not something the federal government should be doing. (A majority of Senators still oppose giving federal money to private schools anywhere in the country.) It is generally thought to be a victory for public schools when vouchers for private and religious schools are defeated

But voucher supporters continued to try to get it put back into the conference committee discussions, and eventually succeeded. Eleanor Holmes Norton tried “to keep vouchers out of an omnibus bill,” which seemed possible because vouchers have proved predictably controversial in both Houses of Congress. Holmes Norton has also said that, “If vouchers are imposed, the city will see that far from new money, vouchers have added costs to public education in D.C. If up to 2,000 students leave our public schools on private school vouchers, D.C. public schools will lose up to $25 million in per pupil local and federal funding. Ironically, in addition, the District remains more than $50 million short of promised ‘No Child Left Behind’ funds as the city tries to meet the unfunded mandate of the new federally imposed education standards.”

But on November 19th, Congressional Republicans reached a deal to place the $13 million bill and the District’s $5.6 billion budget into the omnibus spending bill (with no chance of filibuster or deletion).

Legislation agreed upon by the House-Senate conference would allow the start of a five-year pilot program to provide as much as $7,500 to 1,700 schoolchildren to attend private and parochial schools.

Democrats complained that the majority used unfair maneuvers to push an ideological agenda, saying that vouchers are unproven and divert money to private schools.

The measure has now been wrapped up into the $278 billion federal spending bill that must be voted up or down, without amendments, by Congress to keep the federal government running.

Suggested Action

Contact your Members of Congress and the President.

Let them know that diverting public money through a voucher program to private and religious schools is detrimental to the public school system. It also raises the question of the possible violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition regarding the “establishment of religion.” If the government funds religious practice through public funds it could be accused of establishing particular religion.

Although the decision on this bill has been made, it is important to discuss it as something that will continue as a topic across the nation. Many communities have tried vouchers, Cleveland and Milwawkee to name just two. Now that vouchers have been put back into this bill it will be the first time federal education dollars have been diverted from the public school system toward private and religious education for young people.

1987 Statement — PC(USA), pp. 479-486

A Call to Church Involvement in the Renewal of Public Education

Presbyterians are called to join others in their communities:

— to provide public schools that will secure for all children an education that develops their capacities to serve as creative and responsible persons in the common life, and

— to mobilize the resources available in each community — home, church, community organizations (both public and private) — that will support public schools and share in achieving the necessary education of children and youth.

Abiding Convictions

. . . Presbyterians come to the tasks of education with a number of long-held convictions:

— that an education of high quality for all children is an obligation of society and indispensable to the political and economic health of our democracy;

— that all children can learn if given the necessary attention and the resources of proper instruction to meet any special needs — whether handicapped, poor, or especially gifted and talented;

— that education is more than schooling and must be accepted as a responsible function of home, church, and community as well as public schools;

— that a responsible stewardship of God’s gifts to all persons requires the provision of concern, attention, skills, and talents as well as material resources necessary to education of high quality for children and youth in our society;

— that God’s concern is for all peoples of the world, and that public education must educate for global awareness and prepare students to work to remove barriers and liv e in a world marked by growing interdependence; and

— that clarity and consensus about goals of contemporary education are necessary prerequisites for school renewal.

A Call to Presbyterian Involvement in Support of Public Education

Presbyterians are called by God to ministries of healing and service to persons. As God’s people we are enjoined in Scripture to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give care to the imprisoned. In our time, the needs of children and youth for new services that will provide wholeness in their education, growth, and development are especially evident. They are needs of life-giving or life-denying proportions.

Presbyterians in synods, presbyteries, and churches are called upon to:

4. Seek to have included in state and district public school policies and programs:

a. a clearly stated goal to provide education of high quality for all children, one that affirms the right of children with varied backgrounds and levels of preparation to be provided with appropriate conditions for learning;

b. a recognition that in addition to basic literacy and knowledge in math and science necessary to become employable in this era of history, students must be given opportunities, in schools and/or in well-conceived and well-ordered supplemental programs in the community, to develop critical thinking skills, and the ability to analyze causes and effects, so needed by an informed and thoughtful citizenry in a democratic society, and a global awareness for informed participation in an interdependent world;

c. an effort to involve students with teachers as active participants rather than passive recipients in the learning process, and the development of student expectations for self-directed, life-long learning;

d. provision for the development of aesthetic appreciation and skills in the arts, for address to the development of values in learning experiences, and for recognition of varied religious traditions in history and in contemporary cultures;

e. a design for active cooperation with parents in preparing children for schooling, and in creating and supporting goals concerning academic achievement appropriate for their children;

f. plans for cooperation among schools, churches, business enterprises, communications media, service agencies, neighborhood organizations, and other community groups that can enhance student capacities, provide some “hands-on” learning experiences and supplements while relating to classroom learning;

g. personnel policies and levels of compensation that attract and hold academically prepared leadership for the classroom and administrative services and give evidence of sensitivity to creating conditions that maximize the effective classroom instructional time of good teachers;

h. a recognition that testing is most effective in education when used primarily to diagnose and respond to student learning needs with the development of programs and assistance best suited to the special needs of some students, rather than as a tool for tracking, and to erect new barriers to learning opportunities that contribute to student discouragement and drop-out;

i. programs and facilities that allow accessibility for people with special needs.

Work to gain public acceptance and legislative action on funding policies that provide a tax support of public schools which utilizes the range of local, state, and federal sources necessary to ensure that funds for equal educational opportunities are available to all students without reference to resources in their place of residence.

The General Assembly reaffirmed this 1987 policy in 1995.