Talking turkey

NEA Today, Nov 1999 by Gutloff, Karen

It's Thanksgiving Day. You're seated around the dining table surrounded by family and friends. Above the clank of forks and knives your family chatters away about movies, sports, the latest gossip, how good the food is.

The talk moves from turkey and mashed potatoes to kids and school. Your uncle starts boasting about "finally getting his kids out of those terrible public schools.'

Thanks to a new voucher program, he says, his kids are attending private school. He looks you square in the eye.

"I can't believe you let your kids go to public school," he says, "let alone work there!"

What do you do?

a) Look away in silence.

b) Stammer a line or two about your latest classroom project.

c) Say "pass the potatoes please."

d) All of the above.

If you feel awkward when you're confronted with arguments for vouchers, you're not alone. Many NEA members know in their gut that it's wrong to subsidize private school tuition with public tax dollars. but aren't sure how best to rebut the claims made by voucher promoters.

But other NEA members, like Diana Briseno Herrera, who teaches the Gifted and Talented program at Henry B. Gonzalez school in San Antonio's Edgewood school district, are anything but speechless when confronted by voucher promoters.

Hardly anything, in fact, gets this Texas native more riled up than the claims she hears about vouchers.

"When I run into my neighbors, friends, family-anyone-I go up to them and I tell them, we have a real fight on our hands," Herrera says. "These vouchers are literally taking dollars away from our public schools."

Last year, an organization called CEO America began a privately funded voucher program aimed at Edgewood s largely Hispanic community. Herrera joined forces with parents, community activists, and other educators to fight back.

Together. they formed a coalition to educate their community about vouchers. Then, with help from the Texas State Teachers Association, the group descended on the state capitol in Austin to lobby against legislation that would allow the use of public funds to pay for private school vouchers.

In neighborhoods city-wide, Herrera and other educators spoke sense to parents, warning that voucher schools were only accepting select students from their community.

"The private schools are literally handpicking their students," says Herrera, the recently elected president of the Edgewood Teachers Association. "They only want the cream of the crop."

Adds Herrera: As public school educators, we need to meet the needs of all students, from those with low abilities to the gifted. If a child is in special education, private schools won't meet the child's needs."

Of all the children who left Edgewood public schools for the voucher schools, Herrera points out, only two were enrolled in special ed.

Vouchers for private school tuition, Herrera also notes, encourage the launching of fly-by-night private schools with little accountability.

"Down the street there's a bar and pool hall," she says. "Last year they turned it into a voucher academy. No one who taught there had a degree or was certified,"

NEA member Karen Rodriguez, the former president of the Edgewood local Association, asks parents to look beyond the voucher surface and realize there's no such thing as a free ride.

"It's a Catch-22 for many of these families," she explains. "They get a voucher to a private school, but if they don't have a car, they can't get their kid there. They have to pay to get the child to school."

Corinne Sabo is a public school advocate who works against vouchers alongside NEA members. Sabo's message about vouchers is simple.

"Vouchers are literally tearing families apart in places like Edgewood," she says. "A parent pulls a kid out of public school, and the parent's brother says `Hey, you're taking money away from my kid who's still in public school."'

Because people like Sabo spoke up in Edgewood, the voucher legislation did not make it through the Texas legislature. The state cannot use public funds for private school tuition. Still, educators remain vigilant-on guard for the next voucher offensive.

Will you be ready if that offensive targets your community? At right: some food for thought the next time you hear someone begin talking turkey about vouchers.

-Karen Gutloff

Vouchers don't take money from the public schools.

In areas where vouchers have been introduced, public schools have had their funds drastically cut.

To pay for Cleveland's voucher program, Ohio transferred over $5 million from the public school share of the state's Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid program. The voucher program in Milwaukee is shifting $25 million away from public schools.

These diversions leave public schools students with less money for textbooks, computers, and supplies.

Much has been made about the cleverly titled "opportunity scholarships"-the privately funded vouchers for disadvantaged minority students. These sound perfectly harmless, but their impact on public schools can be just as damaging as vouchers funded by taxpaper dollars.