School vouchers have become a hot topic in Colorado and across the nation in the past few years due to education funding cuts and crowding in schools. Vouchers, or scholarships, as they are sometimes referred to, are a way of redirecting educational funding from school districts to individual families. Because of the overcrowding of D 49 schools, some may seek vouchers as a solution.Those who are in favor of vouchers advocate that a parent’s freedom to choose and the competition between public and private schools improve education for all children. Those who oppose vouchers believe they create a competitive market atmosphere that is not well suited in the field of education. Some also believe that vouchers move necessary funds from public schools that are already under-funded to private schools where the taxpayers’ money would be unregulated.In 2003, Senator Nancy Spence wrote a bill that was developed to implement the use of vouchers. In her address before the Colorado General Assembly, she described HB 03 1160 as “a bill modeled after the public schools contract program that is used to purchase services from the private sector for special needs students. This bill is also for special needs students, although not the statutory definition. Low-income and minority children who are struggling in public schools could be considered youngsters with special needs, special needs that are not being met in many of the regular classrooms in public schools.”Congress and Gov. Bill Owens passed the bill, but it was never put in place because the court system declared the bill unconstitutional. “[Judge] Robert Meyer III declared it unconstitutional on grounds that it was in violation of the local control statutes, which are in [the state] constitution,” said Spence. Because part of the money that was going toward voucher implementation was local funds, the judge deemed the bill unconstitutional.According to a May 5, 2005, article on www.Stateline.org, Colorado is one of 36 states that include a Blaine Amendment in its constitution. These amendments “named for a late-19th century Republican legislator from Maine” sprang from anti-Catholic sentiment and contain various restrictions on aid to private and religious institutions,” the article states. This amendment caused the courts to rule as they did in Colorado.Spence said the governor appealed the decision to the Colorado State SupremeCourt, but to no avail. “They did say that if the bill did not use local funds that it would possibly be in compliance with the constitution,” she said, “but when I took the bill back at the end of 2004 when the Republicans were the majority in both the House and the Senate, I still lost the bill by one vote.”If the bill had passed, the voucher system would have worked where a Colorado school district having eight or more schools that received a “low” or “unsatisfactory” academic performance rating would be required to provide assistance for an eligible child to attend a private or religious school.Spence said she was disappointed that her bill did not pass, but still hopes that one day Colorado will have a voucher system. “The thing that disappoints me the most is that there are so many struggling families who would like to get their child in a better school,” she said. “But they can’t because they can’t afford to be in a better neighborhood. Or they can’t afford to send their child to a private school.”Daphne Greenwood, director for the Center for Colorado Policy Studies at UCCS, disagrees with Spence. She said that although vouchers will help the kids who are eligible and actually use the vouchers many kids who need help would be left behind. “To me it is just the wrong solution,” Greenwood said. “My concern is we’re going to help the people who are already sending their kids to private schools. Sure, they would like the help, but we really need to get serious and get all these schools turned around. When I say turned around, I mean overall they could do better. It isn’t all [the school’s] fault. They have a lot of really difficult kids and difficult circumstances, and it’s hard to teach under those conditions … They don’t have a lot of resources.”According to www.SchoolChoices.org, “More than two dozen private voucher programs exist in cities across the United States.” Milwaukee is has used vouchers since its 1990-1991 school year; the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is a system similar to the one described by Spence. The program started with seven schools participating in its first year of operation and included 341 students. In the 2004-2005 school year, the MCHP Web site reports 117 schools participated with 13,978 students.Although Milwaukee has had some success with their voucher program, there have been negative impacts. “Vouchers have been in Milwaukee for 15 years now, and they’ve had numerous occasions of unscrupulous managers of schools who have taken the money and run. Some schools will not allow anyone to observe the schools. They won’t let anyone in to see how they are doing,” said Representative Mike Merrifield, chairman of the House Education Committee, who opposes school vouchers.”Some teachers are paid less than $10 an hour with no diploma,” Merrifield said. “There’s no state oversight, which is increasingly evident, and needed to shut down some of these really horrible conditions in some really bad schools. And they continue to run because they don’t have any jurisdiction over them. That needs to be looked at.”Although the voters and the Supreme Court have deterred the progress of instituting school vouchers in Colorado, it could be one of many solutions on the table in the future to deal with the problem of overcrowding in schools, specifically in D 49.
