Californians headed for the polls in November will be faced with an array of crucial decisions to make—from deciding on a new president to saying “yes” or “no” to school vouchers. School vouchers allow parents to defray the cost of private or religious school tuition with taxpayer-funded money.

The state’s voucher proposal—which has qualified for the Nov. 7 ballot and is entitled the Draper Initiative—is named for Tim Draper, a venture capitalist from Redwood City and a former member of the State Board of Education.

If passed, it would provide $4,000 per pupil, allowing parents to send their children to the private school of their choice. The measure would allow the Legislature to replace the current funding system for public schools with a new minimum per-pupil measure at no less than the national average. It would restrict state regulation of private schools, but would require them to provide academic testing to be eligible for the grants.

Draper, a father of four, said the poor education his children were receiving in public schools made him take a hard look at deficiencies in the system. After spending time on the state school board, he realized that repairing the system would be extremely difficult. So he put up $2 million to finance a statewide signature-gathering effort, which collected 1.15 million signatures to qualify the initiative.

Still, Draper’s initiative might be in for an uphill battle at the polls. In a Field Poll released June 28, voters who read a summary of the measure split evenly—39 percent for and 39 percent against—with 22 percent undecided.

Ever since 1954, when free market economist Milton Friedman of Stanford University re-introduced the idea of school vouchers as a way to give parents some choice in where and how their children are educated, vouchers have become a hotly debated, contentious issue around the country.

When one begins asking questions, the devil could very well be in the details, cautions Oblate Father William Davis, assistant secretary for Catholic schools for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Not every parental choice proposal is a good one, he said during a recent Washington, D.C. meeting on vouchers.

Father Davis said his organization reserves the right to review each federal, state and local proposal in order to determine if each proposal is acceptable and appropriate. The priest said the U.S. bishops are in favor of school choice programs as a means to foster educational reform, but that they are also cautious not to accept every voucher measure that comes down the pike.

While the bishops deal with vouchers on a case-by-case basis, not so with teachers’ unions. They traditionally oppose vouchers out of hand, arguing that state money should not be diverted from already struggling public schools. Also opposing vouchers are church-state separatists, who object to them on the premise that the classic separation of church and state is violated when voucher money goes to Catholic and other religious schools.

But other groups have supported vouchers. They span the gamut of differing philosophies and include a mix of Democrats, Republicans, blacks, Hispanics and church communities. Their ranks are filled with parents who say they are fed up with poorly performing public schools.

Working voucher programs are already in place in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida. The Milwaukee model, begun in 1990, gives parents public dollars to send their children to any school—public or private. In 1998, the Wisconsin Supreme Court allowed parents to use their vouchers in religiously-affiliated schools.

When it first began, the program had 341 students. Since the ban on religious schools was lifted, the number of children drawing vouchers in Milwaukee has quadrupled to 6,155 (4,000 in religious schools) and the number of participating schools has tripled to 87. Forty of them are Catholic.

On March 1, a Florida judge struck down a statewide program championed by Gov. Jeb Bush, but it is now on appeal. The Cleveland program, modeled on Milwaukee’s, has been held valid under state law, but it is now beingappealed before the sixth circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

In California, Gov. Gray Davis opposes the Draper Initiative, saying that the measure would undermine the quality of schools and erode accountability.

The California Parents for Educational Choice, a year-old group which favors school vouchers, is still deciding whether it will back the measure. Alan Bonsteel, president, called the initiative “complicated and divisive” and said he can’t predict how his board will vote.

Bonsteel says the proposal is completely silent on special education, and he fears that $4,000 will not be enough tuition for poor children. Because start-up construction costs for new private schools are now up to $5,800 per student, he added, educators would have to charge families extra tuition, which again would mean that “some kids wouldn’t be able to attend.”

Bonsteel also doubts that the Draper Initiative’s assurance of no new taxes could hold up. The state Legislative Analyst’s office has looked at the initiative and predicts taxpayers could end up paying more money, he said.

The California Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of California’s Catholic bishops, is taking a neutral stand, according to Robert Teegarden, associate director for education. Teegarden along with John Coons, a law professor at Boalt Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, and Ann Manchester, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Oakland, agree that the initiative does not go far enough to insure the welfare of the poor.

The Draper proposal fails to follow some of the 14 guidelines crafted five years ago by California’s Catholic bishops, they explain. The guidelines regard parents as the primary educators of their children. They uphold parents’ right to choose a school and participate with teachers in the decision-making processes of that school. In addition, the bishops’ guidelines say that any voucher proposal must have a preferential option for the poor.

Children with special educational needs must have the same range of educational choices as other children and low-income children living in inner cities and rural poverty also must have equal opportunity, the bishops note. They say that a voucher plan must have common good held up as the primary goal and must not increase public spending.

The Draper Initiative does not address the issues of poor children and those with special educational needs, nor does it adequately explain how it can be funded without raising taxes, according to Bonsteel and Teegarden. At stake in the initiative, they say, are basic concerns about whom it actually will help.

Regarding whether the initiative will encourage the building of more schools, Manchester points out that there are only 32,000 available spots in private schools throughout the state, so there would not be enough places for additional children coming to the schools with vouchers.

Even if there were enough spaces in private schools, vouchers wouldn’t help poor children, especially if tuition were greater than the $4,000 voucher. However, more affluent families would have the financial resources to supplement their vouchers with the extra tuition money. “It’s just not a level playing field,” Teegarden noted.

Both Teegarden and Manchester say they are puzzled by the Draper Initiative’s claim that vouchers can be put into place without increasing taxes.

However, according to information released by the voucher initiative’s headquarters, it costs $7,400 to educate a student in the public school system. When parents redeem a $4,000 voucher, it leaves $3,400 in the public school. This would increase per pupil funding in the public school to match or exceed the national average and would not require a tax increase, according to Draper Initiative supporters.

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