EW The Dallas Post Dallas, PA Wednesday, April 5, 1995 5 Are school vouchers good for PA? « Parents have the right to choose schools ® By Sister Marianne Addy, IHM Diocesan Coordinator of the REACH Alliance In Pennsylvania there is a con- ‘cerned, active consortium com- posed of religious and secular ‘proponents of “free enterprise in education.” The record of its ‘growth and strength is phenome- ‘nal and its name is “The Reach ‘Alliance." (Reach—Road to Edu- cational Achievement through Choice.) : Governor Ridge and many ‘candidates for governmental of- fices campaigned in the most recent election with parental choice in educating children as ‘one of their major pricrities. The record shows that Governor Ridge’s victory was helped by his advocating this parental right, as were the victories of others. Let us understand that par- ents who opt to send their chil- dren to schools other than the public schools pay the same school axes as their neighbors who send their children to the public schools. In addition, they pay the costly tuition asked of them. . Many countries around the world have einbraced this Ameri- can movement for educational freedom. Great Britain, Sweden, the emerging democracies of Po- land, Russia and the Czech Re- public are adopting bold new approaches to stimulate inova- tion and learning in the class- rooms, to give teachers and prin- cipals more freedom, and to allow parents to choose from a market- place of educational opportuni- ties for their children. Mean- while, resistance to change in Pennsylvania and other states is fierce. Why is there such fear of parental choice? Isn't it time for Americans to realize that school choice will benefit our youthful citizens, that parental choice will not destroy the public schools and that par- ents, not the state, have the pri- mary educational right to adjudge whether they shall enroll their children in private, secular or religious schools or in alternate public schools? Choice remains a fundamental right of parents. This right was affirmed as early as 1926 by the Supreme Court Pierce decision which upheld the exis- tence of private schools and found that “children are not mere crea- tures of the state; those who nurture him and direct his des- tiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obliga- tions.” The General Assembly of the Commonwealth has placed an obligation of compulsory school attendance on the parents of ele- mentary and secondary school age children. The General Assembly also has enacted numerous and varied statutes and programs which afford these parents and children the means to carry out their compulsory attendance in public and non-public schools, as well as in the parental home envi- ronment. Each moment, our children in Pennsylvania are advancing to- ward the day they will enter a very competitive, world-wide market- place. It is not only the obligation of adults to bring about choices in education that will be a bulwark for America’s future; otherwise, the cost of illiteracy wil! be felt in lost industrial productivity, unre- alized tax revenues, welfare, crime, prisons, and related social prob- leras. School choice doesn't guarantee quality By DR. JOSEPH ROGAN In his first budget address, Governor Tom Ridge indicated that he wants to empower Pennsylva- nia’s parents by giving them the right to send their children to the schools of their choice, public, private, or religious. As a first ‘step toward providing “school choice” for all students, he has proposed that the state set aside $38.5 million this year ‘to allow ‘economically poor students to use vouchers, $700 for elementary students and $1,000 for high ‘schoolers. We all have a right to our opin- ions about Governor Ridge’s pro- posal for school vouchers. But it is appropriate to expect that the Governor and our state's legisla- tures form their opinions about vouchers'based on facts. What do we know? “es Voucher Programs Voucher proposals are not unique to Pennsylvania. Illinois’ governor hasbeen pushing to have his state become the first to fund religious schools. New Jersey Governor Whitman promised a private school voucher plan but now urges only a very limited “pilot” program in one school dis- trict at two grade levels. Puerto Rico's plan was scrapped when it was determined to be unconstitu- tional. Wisconsin has the nation’s only state-funded private-school pro- gram. Researchers note that at- trition is high and achievement scores do not indicate that stu- dents are doing better; in fact, reading scores declined. Public Support A 1991 Gallup Poll found that 68% of Americans were against using public monies to fund pri- vate schools. In 1993, Gallup found that 74% were against the idea. A poll by the Carnegie Foun- dation indicated that 70% of Americans are against vouchers. Twenty-five percent indicate only “mild” support. Twenty times in the last few years voucher /choice plans have been placed on ballots. All were rejected, in most cases by wide margins. Proposition 174 in Cali- fornia went down when 70% of the state's voters said no. The propo- sition was rejected in every one of the state’s counties, even those in which citizens espoused other- wise very conservative views. A Colorado choice /voucher plan lost by a two-to-one margin. Cost The Governor's 1995 proposal is a first step. He hopes to expand the program. If only the families of the students already enrolled in private schools accessed vouch- ers, it would cost the state's tax- payers at least $250 million. If one percent of the students now in public schools choose to claim vouchers, it would cost $14.3 million more. Two percent would cost $28.6 million, etc. Addition- ally, school districts would have to cover additional costs for trans- portation and other matters. Nearly two thirds of the funds would flow to eight counties in and around Philadlephia, Pitts- burgh and Erie. Sixty percent of the counties, where choice is not possible because there are so few private schools, would collectively get only one half of one percent of the allocation. Regulation Public schools are highly regu- lated. The bills pending in Penn- sylvania do not propose to regu- late private schools. They could accept or reject students as they see fit, could choose curriculum which is not approved by the state, could choose not to participate in the state's assessment program, could use uncertified teachers, and otherwise could ignore state education regulations and stan- dards. 3 It would seem that just about any group could establish a pri- vate school. After the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, many groups in the South established private, white- only schools. Such lack of regula- tion was a major concern in Cali- fornia when taxpayers turned down theirvoucher proposal. They learned that in Concord, Califor- nia, a group of avowed witches supported vouchers because they “would give us (witches) the op- portunity to not be exposed to things we feel are detrimental, like Christian values...” Discrimination Public schools must educate all students, including those who require extra and very expensive services. For example, public schools provide students with disabilities with free appropriate publiceducations which often cost three and four times as much as it costs to educate average kids. Some guess that the students most likely to choose vouchers could be the more average, easier-to-teach, “educationally cheaper” kids. This would almost be guaranteed by the Governor's plan. It would be possible for private schools to discriminate based on gender, religion, academic status, finan- “cial status, psychological, social and physical disabilities. The easy-to-teach students would be admitted while those who need more expensive and intensive services could be rejected. Stu- dents and parents would not have choices; private schools would. Constitutionality Education is the responsibility of the states. The Pennsylvania Constitution requires that our General Assembly “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of the public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” If the public schools are not doing a good job educating the state's students, as is claimed by some voucher advocates, the state is functioning unconstitutionally. The solution is school improve- ment, not vouchers. The Pennsylvania constitution specifically disallows the spend- ing of public monies on religious schools. Article III (29) states that “no appropriation shall be made for educational...purposes to any person...nor to any denomina- tional or sectarian institution.” The Governor is a talented lawyer and is surrounded by lawyers. He has to know that his proposal will eventually be voted down by the legislature or found to be uncon- stitutional. In 1991, a voucher proposal was rejected in commit- tee by a bipartisan vote. Private vs. Public Schools There are 5,664 schools in the state, public and private. There are excellent and poor schools in both camps. The classic compari- son of private vs. public schools was done in the Alum Rock School District by the Rand Corporation in the early 70s. There a choice program (public only) lasted for five years before being dissolved. Researchers who studied the program found no achievement difference. They looked at other factors and discovered that the families chose “choice” not be- cause the “choice” schools had better teachers or better curric- ula, but because (1) the “choice” schools were more convenient, (2) parents wanted to keep siblings and their children’s friends to- gether, and, most interestingly, parents wanted to move their children toward or away from certain ethnic and/or racial groups. Vouchers lead to segre- gation. The Bottom Line For many reasons, functioning voucher programs are rare. The idea lacks public support, par- tially because voucher programs cost so much. Private school voucher programs are unregu- lated, tend to discriminate, and have been judged to be unconsti- tutional. Even if all of the above were not true, private schools are not automatically academically superior to public schools. In presenting his budget which included funding for vouchers, the Governor noted that “Government cannot be all things... We must choose.” He's right. Based on the facts, the Governor should drop his voucher proposal. If others want to establish private schools, that's their choice. Their freedom to choose should be respected, but their choice should not be paid for with public money. The Governor should focus his energies and our taxpayer's mo- nies on improving public educa- tion. By law, that's what he is supposed to do. The state must have a thorough and efficient public educational system which meets the needs of the Common- wealth. The Governor has no choice. Dr. Joseph Rogan, professor of education at College Misericordia, Dallas, is a ranking member of the Governor's Special Education Advisory Panel and has served on the Panel since 1984. ‘Editor's Note: The Dallas Post encourages anyone with expertise and an opinion about topics of current interest to submit them for publication. Submissions should be about issues that affect people who live or work in the Back Mountain. Send items to: The Dallas Post, 45 Main Road, Dallas PA 18612. Call 675-5211 if you have any questions. Reporter's notebaok Grace R. Dove Since most of my work as a reporter is serious, I try to culti- vate a sense of humor to keep me reasonably sane. One of my favor- ite pastimes is collecting anecdotes of things which don't seem to make any sense at all. e Bureaucracy's finest. Among the plethora of possible fines awaiting the hard-core trucker, one of the most ridiculous is the one imposed on them for hauling overweight loads. According to federal regulations, a tractor-trailer’s legal maximum weight is 80,000 lbs. Since the average rig with full fuel tanks runs about 30,000 lbs., the maxi- mum allowable load shouldn't exceed 50,0600 lb. Sounds simple, right? The Feds, in all their wisdom, have decided to complicate the weight limit by adding something called “the bridge law,” which has nothing to do with the maximum weight a truck may legally carry when it runs into a bridge. Under the bridge law, a truck can still max out at 80,000 lbs., but may carry only a certain spe- cific weight on each axle. Some- times, but not always, the trucker can circumvent the law by moving the axles farther back on the trailer or separating them by about nine feet. Besides bringing in lots of bucks, bridge laws cause many headaches Strange stuff in the news for shippers, dispatchers and driv- ers, who have been reduced to adding up weight on their fingers to avoid bridge law fines. Consider what recently hap- pened to my husband, Matt, on what should have been a routine run to Chicago, hauling a lot of Big Metal Things on a flatbed. His rig weighed a total of 80,000 Ibs. No problem - until he hit the scale and found out that he was 600 lbs. over the bridge limit for one axle, which had already been moved nine feet from its mate. The fine was $1 per hundred- weight, or about a penny a pound. That's a whopping six bucks. Plus $46 in court costs. e The smell of baking bread is bad for you. Our friendly local Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has de- cided that baking bread is un- healthy because it contains etha- nol, a natural alcohol produced when yeast, sugar and flour do their thing together and make dough rise. Ethanol produces oxygen and some other things guaranteed not to give you a buzz when broken down by sunlight. The EPA has decided that etha- nol's components help to form smog, so it has decreed that all bread bakeries install nine-ton pollution caps ($.5 million apiece) on their chimneys. With all of the Superfund sites and undocumented toxic waste dumps scattered across the Ameri- can landscape, why is the EPA worrying about baking bread? e How to avoid paying your property taxes. I overheard this gem at a local township supervisors’ meeting. If you don't pay your property taxes for three years, the Luzerne County Tax Office sends you a festive seasonal invitation to a sheriff's sale, hand-delivered by your friendly neighborhood con- stable. Your home is one of the guests of honor. ; If you move, change your legal address to a post office box and allow it to lapse six months later, you have officially disappeared and the friendly constable can't find you to deliver any more sheriff's sale invites. The courthouse will continue to faithfully send you more overdue tax notices every year, have them returned and add your place to the tax sale list — but it will be pulled from the sale at the last minute because thetitleisn't freeand clear. And it’s all perfectly legal. e No more pencils, no more books... School director Garrett Red- mond of the Cabrillo Unified School District in California recently tried to get homework abolished in his district. He said that homework causes “an unbearable strain” on family life, it's unjust to students whose families can't afford home com- puters and Internet hookups, it's waste of time, it destroys home life, it favors students whose parents are smart enough to do it for them and it's a “financial burden” on taxpayers because textbooks wear out faster when kids carry them | home. Back in the Dark Ages when I was in school, I remember catch- ing heck if I didn't do my home- work. Somehow skipping home- work managed to eventually show up in my grades — and my schools had six marking periods, not four. I also remember getting out of washing the supper dishes a few times because I had a sudden, very pressing assignment. Which planet did Mr. Redmond say he’s from? : Library news Library is now accepting auction donations By NANCY KOZEMCHAK The Back Mountain Memorial Library has some registration forms for voter applicants who need to fill out forms in order to vote in the 1995 election on May 16. The deadline for. voter regis- trations is April 17 to qualify for the May 16 election. These may be picked up at the information desk in the library, and mailed to the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre in time for the April 17 deadline. The Odds and Ends booth at the annual library auction will be chaired again by the Dallas Women of Kiwanis with Sybil Pelton, Mary George and Jean Grimes in charge. All items will be accepted for this booth at the library during regular library hours. Books for the book tent will be accepted during library hours. Special magazines are requested for the book booth; Yankee, Coun- try Living, Crafts, Arts, National Wildlife and others of this nature. These are good sellers at the book booth. Bennie Matchett, Jeff Matus and Ann Aston will be in charge of this tent; and they have advised the tent will be larger this year. jis ‘The 49th auction will be held Thursday through Sunday, July 6, 7, 8 and 9. General Chairman Peggy Harvey will welcome any volunteers to help with any as- pect of the auction. Call the li- brary and leave your name and Peggy will be happy to get in touch with you. New books at the library: “Romance” by Ed McBain is a story of survival and triumph. It is a would-be hit play about an actress pursued by a knife-wield- ing stalker. But isn't it romantic! Before the show can open, the leading lady is really attacked, outside the theater. Before that is solved, she is stabbed again. This time for keeps. “Serendipity” by Fern Michaels is the story of a naive 17-year old, Jory Ryan, who found herself pregnant by one of Philadelphia's most promising young bachelors: lawyer Ross Landers, scion of a prominent publishing family. Their marriage brought no happi- ness, and a miscarriage only added to the couple's pain. Jory fled to Florida to start life again. “Breaking the Surface” by Greg Louganis with Eric Marcus is the unflinchingly honest story of a man breaking free of a lifetime of silence and isolation. Despite his astonishing athletic skill, he struggled with late-detected dys- lexia, prejudice toward his dark skin coloring, and anguish over his sexual orientation, which he felt compelled to hide. “Angel of Death” by Jack Hig- gins shows a world where terror- ism is a fact of life, and no one inspires more fear than “January 30", the mast mysterious terrorist group in Europe, whose targets appear to be everyone. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, Is- raelis and Arabs, American and Russian diplomats. A special investigation is launched to hunt down the members. etters Volunteers made Daffodil Days a success Editor: A most humble and heartfelt thank-you to the people of Luzerne County for their overwhelming support to volunteerism during this year's Daffodil Campaign, sponsored by the American Can- cer Society. This year's drive was a huge success, due to the efforts of many adults and children. They served wholeheartedly as committee members, contact people, school distributors, wrap- pers, drivers, business contacts, and sponsors. Daffodils, designated years ago as the flower of hope, were pur- chased and displayed everywhere by consumers. Money raised from the drive will not only benefit cancer re- search, but will also be allocated to help needy cancer victims in Luzerne County. Thank you, everyone, for sup- porting this worthy cause. Every effort we take as a community will help eradicate this odious dis- ease. Any questions can be directed toward the American Cancer Society at 825-7763. Marilyn Glogowski Daffodil chairperson Photo of LaGrange village store identified Editor: In the March 22nd edition of the Dallas Post, I saw a photo of the Village Store in the Hamlet of La Grange in the early 1900's asking about information. I have the book ‘A Look Back": The Wyo- ming County Sesquicentinial Mozart Club to meet April 10 in Kingston The Mozart Club will meet at the Church of Christ Uniting, Kingston, April 10 at 7:30 p.m., with the program following at 8 p.m. Featured will be the music of J.S. Bach, Chopin, Czerny, De- bussy, Faure, Lecuona, Men- delssohn and Schumann. The public is invited. George Powell is president of the organi- zation, and Ruth Martin is chair- man of the April program. 1842-1992' and La Grange was in Tunkhannock Township, in and around the area, which is now Shadowbrook Restaurant, Golf Club/Resort Area located on Route 6. I found this information on page 112, written by Paul Miller. More information can be ob- tained at the Wyoming County Historical Society, Harrison Street in Tunkhannock. Phone 836- 5303. Dolores Swelgin Shavertown Boy Scouts bowl in fundraiser Boy Scout Troop 232 of Gate of Heaven, Dallas, participated in the 1995 Bowl-a-Thon Fundraiser on March 23 at the New Back Mt. Bowl. The participating scouts were Matt Motyka, Sam Brown, Joey Latosek, and E.M. Hinchey. Scoutmaster is Bob Neher. ~ EASTER GOLF TOURNAMENT at Four Seasons Golf Club Exeter - Sunday, April Sth Tee Times Starting At 7:30 A.M. "Captain & Crew" Format $25.00 Per Person Includes: 18 Holes, Meal, Beverages & Prizes : Call 655-8869 For Tee Times Sik &
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers