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| SCHOOL VOUCHERS | |
 September 2, 1999 
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Less than a day before the 1999-2000 school year in Cleveland, a federal district court judge pulled the plug on the city's voucher plan. A discussion on the issue follows this report by Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW.
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Roteshea Jacobs likes the free breakfast at her
TWENESRA JACOBS: Oh, I thought Metro Catholic was a great school. I went to visit. It was nice. It had no more than 15 or 20 kids. It was diverse, and they were very nice people, and their academic stuff looked very good. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The confusion began after a federal district court
judge issued an injunction halting the voucher program the day before
school was to open. The four-year-old voucher program had survived a
series of legal challenges in the Ohio courts, and had been found |
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| A last-minute judgement | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Voucher advocates filed an immediate appeal, and responding to the pressure, the judge amended his injunction four days later. He said the nearly 3,500 children who had a voucher last year, like Metro Catholic sixth-grader Xavier Galindez, could keep their vouchers this semester; but the 728 students like Roteshea who had a voucher for the first time lost their voucher.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Bert Holt just stepped down as the administrator of Cleveland's voucher program. She vowed to help raise private money to keep the voucher program going. BERT HOLT: We're trying to make it very clear to the parents: Keep your children enrolled, those of you that are newly enrolled in the program, those of you that have been in the program for three, four years, because there are those are who are very concerned about your educational opportunities, to give the very best to your children; so we're going to help raise the money so that you can maintain this education within the school of your choice as we help raise the funds to make that happen and allow the appeals process to continue, on to the United States Supreme Court, perhaps. |
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| Church, state and school | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Richard DeColibus heads the Cleveland Teachers Union. The union, the ACLU and others, brought the latest suit.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: 95 percent of the schools in the Cleveland voucher program this year are religious schools. Metro Catholic's principal, Sister Anne Maline, says there is no doubt as to the place of religion in the Catholic schools. SISTER ANNE MALINE, Principal, Metro Catholic ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But the superintendent of the Catholic schools says the voucher program was carefully constructed to withstand a court challenge. SISTER CAROL ANNE SMITH, Superintendent, Diocese of Cleveland: This isn't a violation of the separation between church and state because the voucher is given to the parents. The parents choose how they will spend that voucher and use it for tuition in the school of their choice. So the funds are not flowing to a religious school. They're flowing to parents. RICHARD DeCOLIBUS: That's just a sham. I mean, what difference does it make whether the state gives the money directly to the school or gives it to the parent and says, "go to the school and give it to them," or sends it to the school in the parent's name? The bottom line is, it ends up exactly with the school, and there's no place else it can go.
MIGDALIA GALINDEZ: Not the way the school system is right now. They have done nothing that would show me anything differently, that would make me change my mind about the school system. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Xavier's never been to public school, but he doesn't like what he's heard.
TEACHER: School will be the very best! No, no, no... |
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: At a nearby public grade school, those attitudes anger Principal Sheila Williams. She touts three years of significantly improved reading and math scores, an emphasis on security, individualized instruction for students as proof of her school's success.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Public schools say the voucher program takes needed resources away. The public school system pays the transportation costs of voucher students. The voucher program is funded by state funds the plaintiffs say would otherwise be used in the public schools, but the Catholic schools deny the charge that the voucher program is a financial windfall for them.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: With so much at stake, the judge promised quick action. He set the trial date on the voucher plan's constitutionality for December. |
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Cleveland
public school, but this wasn't the school her mother wanted her to attend.
Tweneshra Jacobs had signed her daughter up at Metro Catholic Parish
School across town after she qualified for a voucher. The voucher pays
up to $2,500 for tuition. 
constitutional
by the Ohio Supreme Court. The new lawsuit was filed in federal court,
accusing the Cleveland voucher plan of violating the separation between
church and state. The judge issued the injunction because he thought
the suit was likely to win when it came to trial. It was better to stop
the program now, he said, than in the middle of the school year. Jacobs
didn't buy it. 
TWENESRA
JACOBS: I was upset. I actually cried because I wanted my kids to have
a better chance in life, and I was totally upset. I felt that they didn't
care about the kids at all, 'cause they made the judgment, the ruling,
the day before classes were supposed to start, and they could have did
this back in June.
BERT
HOLT, Voucher Advocate: And that's when it became tremendously confusing,
disruptive, because now there's a misunderstanding out there in terms
of who is on first base and who is on third base. 
RICHARD
DeCOLIBUS, President, Cleveland Teachers Union: For 200 years this country
has maintained a wall of separation between church and state, as well
as it can. I mean, it could never be absolute. This is an enormous breach
of that, that wall, because this program benefits almost exclusively
private religious schools. 
Parish
School: We are very open with parents who are Catholic or who may not
be of the Catholic faith as to the fact that we teach religion every
day. We ask them if they consent to having their child in the classes,
and they participate in our prayer services, et cetera, and I have to
say, most parents are very happy and very grateful for that. 
ELIZABETH
BRACKETT: If the voucher program is eventually found unconstitutional
and permanently halted, Migdalia Galindez says she would work two jobs
to keep Xavier and his brother Luciano at Metro Catholic. Never, she
says, would she send her kids to the public schools. 
XAVIER
GALINDEZ: I have one friend that used to go to public school. He says
when you're new there, they usually pick on you, take your lunch money,
beat you up. 
SHEILAH
WILLIAMS, Principal, Watterson-Lake Elementary School: It kinds of,
kind of gets my hackles up when I hear people put down the public schools
without having come to them. You know, I'd put myself, our school up
against a private school in this area any day, and I don't think that
we would come up short. 
SISTER
CAROL ANNE SMITH: The voucher is valued at 90 percent of the tuition
charged. Our tuition is significantly below the cost of the education
that is provided. There is no benefit to our schools. In fact, our parishes,
our pastors, our parish community subsidize each one of the children
who come to us with the voucher.