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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fuzzymath who wrote (3362)	10/21/2000 7:40:09 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Is your sister for vouchers, just out of curiosity? I know the details of our school district very well. We have two magnate schools, that draw the best and the brightest. They have waiting lists. We have two underperforming schools- these schools do not underperform because of their teachers, or their administrators, they underperform because of the demographics of the area in which they are located. Many of the children in those schools are not native English speakers. Parents can enter a lottery every year to get into the magnate schools if they choose- so in that sense there is some choice. The private schools in our area are almost all religiously affiliated. Now, if vouchers were implemented the children who are already in private school will siphon away money from public education- that's a lot of money to start with, just gone from public education with no benefit to public education that I can see. Poof- our already bad budget gets worse. Then we will probably have parents running away from the two lower performing schools to private school if they don't win the lottery, and if they can afford to supplement the voucher, leaving nothing in those schools but kids whose parents are really disadvantaged or kids whose parents don't care. How is our school district (which has already had to dip into the required reserve account- because our special education budget is eating our district alive) going to provide a decent education for those children left in our school system, especially at those underperforming schools? The children at our underperforming schools are going to be children with the highest needs, how are we going to spend more money on them for the remediation services they need- which is what we need to do- when we will have much less money than we have now, especially if we incentivise parents who might only be marginally able to go to private school to leave? I don't see how the budget is going to work. I really don't. I don't want a new bureaucracy created in California that ALSO siphons more money away from the schools. I begrudge the administration every penny it already takes away from classroom education- and for oversight of this new program of private schools taking public money that the voucher system would require, you would be building another system of administration- unless you aren't going to monitor the private schools for accountability. I also have a separation of church and state issue with vouchers- which is very important to me. I'd rather take money and pay parents to work in the schools as aides, to bring down the adult to child ratio, than implement a voucher system. Parents want accountability? Let's get them all into the schools one day a week. I'd be for that.