Milwaukee's Experiment - vouchers for religious schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

National Catholic Reporter, March 26, 1999 by Erik Gunn

`Opt-out provision'

Religious schools taking voucher money in Milwaukee also face pressure on another front: the law's "opt-out" provision, which allows parents to insist that their children be exempted from "religious activities."

What constitutes "religious activities," has never been dearly defined. Schools say they're making little or no change in what they require of their students in the way of religious instruction or activities. Officials from the state, from private schools and even from the American Civil Liberties Union -- which had fought unsuccessfully in court to block religious schools from the program -- all report that they have not encountered a single instance of parents seeking to exercise the "opt-out" provision.

Concern over the potential impact of the clause, however, has made some schools wary of choice. Pius XI High School, for instance, has had a long-standing requirement that all students must attend monthly Mass, though non-Catholics were not required to actually participate in it.

"Is that appropriate under the statute?" Principal Rick Pendergast asked rhetorically in an interview last summer. "Some say yes, some say no."

The opt-out clause helped lead one denomination to skip choice almost entirely: the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Like the much larger Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod is an independent, conservative wing of Lutheranism separate from the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (Mainline Lutherans do not operate any parochial schools in the Milwaukee area.) While the Missouri Synod schools lined up to take part in choice, only one Wisconsin Synod school did.

Dan Schmeling, administrator for parish schools at the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Synod, said the synod's schools already enrolled low-income students who qualified for $100,000 in privately funded scholarships. But schools didn't like requirements that they select choice students randomly and allow them to opt out of religious activities.

"It's our mission and purpose to make lifelong disciples for Jesus Christ," Schmeling says. "We would be saying to people our purpose is to make you disciples of Jesus Christ, but you can opt out of that."

Random selection, meanwhile, might end up bringing in students from families who "may or may not be that interested in what we believe is important in the Christian education of young people."

Both the ACLU and many of the schools agree that so far, the opt-out clause has turned out to be a non-issue, although they don't entirely agree on why.

School leaders say it's because parents who choose religious schools for their children have done so in full appreciation of the religious instruction that comes along with it.

"When people apply for school, they know what that school is about," Smith said. "If you want religion, you go to a Catholic, Lutheran or Baptist school. If you don't, you go to a public school."

Ahmuty argues that sectarian schools have been "marketing to their own members" who qualify for vouchers, reducing the likelihood that those families would seek to exercise the opt-out provision.