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Bush Budget Includes D.C. School Vouchers

President Bush will ask Congress to institute a school voucher program that would allow families in the District to use public funds to attend private schools, according to part of his budget to be released today.

An Education Department spokesman said yesterday that the fiscal 2004 budget proposal contains an estimated $756 million in school choice programs, with a small portion to be used for a pilot voucher plan in the District and several other cities. Spokesman Dan Langan said money would also go toward charter schools and transfers among public schools.

For years, Republican legislators have pushed for school vouchers as an option for low-income families trapped in poorly performing schools. But D.C. school and city leaders have opposed such an approach, saying that it would drain critically needed funds from the school system and that the city already offers forms of school choice to its residents.

"This board is solidly against vouchers," school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said yesterday. "Another thing that really concerns me about this big-time is that this probably reflects lobbying by people whose goals are different than the people who live here."

In a 1981 referendum, 90 percent of D.C. voters rejected a tax credit that would have allowed school vouchers to be used for religious or private school tuition. At the time, D.C. leaders said the tax credit amounted to a voucher.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting delegate to the House, said she was "shocked and disappointed" that Bush would insert a voucher proposal into the budget without consulting city officials. She also said that the District has the nation's largest number of charter schools per capita and that their growth is outpacing funding.

If the Bush administration "is seriously interested in alternative education in the District," she said, "they will allow us to put our share [of the voucher money] into our charter schools."

The Bush administration's proposal to include school vouchers for the District comes at a time when the city's allies in Congress are seeking greater budget autonomy and a historic restructuring of the city's relationship with the federal government.

It also comes as House Republicans have become increasingly confident that federal vouchers for low-income families could win approval because of a Supreme Court ruling last year that upheld the constitutionality of such programs.

House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) has repeatedly introduced a bill that would provide publicly funded scholarships for low-income children who attend failing schools in the District. The measure won congressional approval in 1997 but was vetoed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

District leaders argue that even without vouchers, the city offers a wide range of choices to students and parents. The city has 40 public charter schools that operate tuition-free with public funds outside the school system's bureaucracy.

In addition, at least 10 percent of public school students have chosen to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods.

"It's not that we don't have choice in our public schools now," said Mary Levy, counsel for the education advocacy group Parents United, who has been working closely with school officials on the budget. "We have a city council here. If people here want [a voucher program], the city council will do that. How dare they?"

Informal surveys have shown that there are few openings at the more than 350 private schools in the Washington area. In the District, the private schools that have the largest number of slots -- and the most affordable tuition -- are Catholic schools in the inner city.

Armey's earlier proposal included $3,200 for each voucher -- barely a fifth of the tuition charged at many independent private schools. Opponents of the voucher system say any such plan would effectively subsidize religious schools.

Bush's proposal took city and school leaders, as well as congressional officials with oversight of the District, by surprise. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) said he had not seen the proposal.

D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7), who chairs the council's education committee, said that he had not heard about the move but that he had been led to believe that "a voucher program would not be imposed on the District."

School Superintendent Paul L. Vance did not return telephone calls to his home.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, who has played a key role in overseeing the District's finances, said he was told nothing about the proposal, even during two meetings last week about District issues with White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. and Daniels's aide on the District.

"It was never mentioned," he said. "I'm a little surprised they would put this in before talking to congressional leaders."




— Lena H. Sun and Valerie Strauss
Bush Budget Includes D.C. School Vouchers
Washington Post
Feb. 3, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16542-2003Feb2.html

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