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Fighting Vouchers--It's Everybody's Job

NEA members have four good reasons to defeat voucher initiatives in California and Michigan.

In Macomb County, Michigan, these NEA activists are fighting vouchers by publicizing what's great about their public schools. Their slogan: "P.S. I love you."

While undergoing chemotherapy to beat cancer, California guidance counselor Erma Kyser has both "good" and "bad" days and knows she has to work hard to avoid infections and to "just feel good again."

Yet somehow, this NEA member has also summoned the will to fight Proposition 38, a November ballot initiative that would amend California's state constitution to authorize an annual $4,000 voucher for every student--rich or poor--within four years.

One day recently, Kyser opened her home to phone-banking volunteers from the Sacramento City Teachers Association/CTA. Fifteen educators, munching on pizza and Chinese food, paced back and forth with cell phones, explaining to fellow Association members why they should help defeat Prop 38.

Kyser, a 25-year Association activist, says she made her house available to help save another--the house of public education.

"Allow vouchers inside, and people start taking pieces of structure away, until that house falls down," she stresses. "If I didn't do this, I'd be shirking my responsibility to protect kids."

Dedication like this you just can't buy, even with the $20 million that Prop 38 sponsor Tim Draper has pledged to sink into the campaign--or the iMac computers, Macy's shopping sprees, and Hawaii dream vacations this Silicon Valley billionaire has awarded his Prop 38 campaign "team leaders."

And that's pretty much the story this autumn in two key states, California and Michigan. In both places, big-money backers of voucher initiatives are coming up against dedicated NEA members and other public education advocates, unified in broad-based "vote no" coalitions.

In California, Draper--a free-marketeer who considers public education "socialistic"--is opposed by a diverse anti-voucher coalition of educators, parents, elected officials, business groups, Republicans and Democrats, taxpayer advocates, ethnic minorities, seniors, and community activists.

Bolstering their cause have been anti-voucher commercials featuring Governor Gray Davis and Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamente, and statements of opposition to Prop 38 from Presidential candidate Al Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman.

In Michigan, the pro-voucher Prop 1 is being bankrolled by the ultraconservative DeVos family--founders of the $5 billion-a-year Amway soap and direct marketing empire--with added donations from the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monahan, and the Michigan Catholic Conference, among others.

Fighting Prop 1 is a broad coalition uniting every organization from the Michigan NEA state affiliate and school boards association to the Episcopal and United Methodist churches.

And lending strong support are public officials like state Attorney General Jennifer Gran-holm and Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer.

On paper, the two state voucher initiatives are significantly different.

California Prop 38 would make vouchers available to all students within four years, while Michigan Prop 1 would lift a ban on indirect public aid to private schools and authorize $3,100 vouchers in districts with graduation rates of under two-thirds.

The Michigan initiative would also make it easy for district voters or school boards to adopt local voucher plans and would require "teacher testing" in both public schools and private schools that redeem vouchers.

But, in reality, the California and Michigan initiatives would inflict the same damage on public schools. Both schemes would:

• Cost taxpayers billions of dollars. NEA affiliates in both states estimate huge losses in state per-pupil payments to local districts, up to $1 billion a year when the Michigan initiative kicks in, and a whopping $3 billion in California within four years just to provide $4,000 vouchers for that state's 700,000 private school and home-schooled students.

  Add in administrative costs for these ambitious programs, plus the diversion of funds from other education programs--like class-size reduction and building renovation--to pay for private and religious school aid, and the fiscal drain becomes a budget buster.

• Provide no accountability to taxpayers. The California and Michigan initiatives would send public funds to totally unregulated voucher schools that can make financial decisions in secret and are not required to undergo a financial audit.

  In fact, the California measure stipulates that voucher-redeeming private schools be "free from unnecessary, burdensome, or onerous regulations." That means everything from teacher credentialing standards to building fire codes.

• Hurt kids. Voucher schools, not parents, would choose which school students can attend and be allowed to reject children for almost any reason, including gender, religion, language, ability to pay, or academic or physical ability.

  "What really aggravates me," says guidance counselor Erma Kyser, "is that voucher promoters target minority kids without letting them into voucher schools!"

• Abandon neighborhood schools. Vouchers would cut funding to local public schools, meaning fewer educators, fewer supplies, and more overcrowded classrooms.

"In Michigan, we know from experience with enrollment loss to unregulated charter schools that the first jobs to be cut will be ESP jobs," says David Hockaday, president of the 562-member Lansing Educational Assistants. "Our district already plans to close four small neighborhood schools because of declining enrollment. Vouchers would double the damage.

"Some 87 percent of our paraeducators live in Lansing neighborhoods, and 60 percent of them are single wage earners," Hockaday adds. "If their jobs are cut, their work won't go away."

Private and religious schools, he notes, only take the students they want. Children who are at-risk or have special needs will be left behind--and they're the ones who need extra help.

"Getting out there to fight voucher initiatives," sums up Hockaday, "is the job of every NEA member.

For more info on this fall's voucher battles, go to the California Teachers Association Web site at www.cta.org and the Michigan Education Association site at www.mea.org.

For an update on the nation's biggest voucher battle this fall, see www.novouchers2000.com.

Voucher Pushers Outspend Us, But They Can't Outwork Us

NEA members fight vouchers by reaching out and speaking out, for kids and public schools.

NEA members may not be able to outspend the high rollers who are funding voucher initiatives this November in California and Michigan. But they can certainly outwork them.

In both states, Association members are working with "vote no" coalition allies--everyone from school administrators to religious leaders--and fighting back by:

• Being visible. Hundreds of thousands of anti-voucher yard signs have sprouted in California and Michigan, while NEA members are proudly sporting "vote no" buttons--which in Michigan are in the same distinctive black-and-green colors used on all public school signs.

• Being heard. Coalition-sponsored media spots and press events are informing the public about the dangers vouchers pose to children and public education. These messages are bolstered by volunteer phone banks run out of local Association offices.

  "We've got 17 phone lines, used by educators from different schools at different times," reports Sacramento City Teachers Association President Tom Rogers. "And we're competing with our colleagues in Elk Grove and San Juan to see who makes the most phone calls!"

• Staying organized. In both California and Michigan, anti-voucher coalition coordinators are directing local-level "no" campaigns that include phone banks, precinct walking, and literature distribution. "Our state's All Kids First coalition has a full campaign plan in each county," reports Michigan Education Association staffer Al Short, "and it has two Detroit coordinators, who work closely with Mayor Dennis Archer, the NAACP, and major ministers' organizations."

• Talking up public schools. In Macomb County, Michigan, the Warren Education Association's 14-member Public Relations Committee, working with "PR reps" in each of Warren Consolidated Schools' 26 buildings, has already spent years publicizing what works right in their district. Warren activists do press outreach, essay contests, and mall exhibitions that include actual classes.

  This PR Committee, chaired by Sandy Kush, is now channeling positive local vibes about public schools into a comprehensive anti-voucher campaign, complete with a "P.S. I Love You" slogan created by member Lucile Demanksi and a sticker designed by Warren Mott High School art student Karen Roney.

  This campaign--uniting teachers, ESP, administrators, and members of the Warren chapter of Parents for Public Schools--is using everything from phone banks to friend-to-friend postcards to urge district residents to vote against the pro-voucher Prop 1.

• Being aggressive. The California Teachers Association can't match billionaire Tim Draper's fortune, but he can't match the "strength, perseverance, and determination on our side," says CTA President Wayne Johnson.

  "We have people everywhere who are working for what is right for our children and public education," says Johnson. "Draper may have the money, but we have the people, and we'll be out there convincing the public to vote 'No on 38' every day until Election Day."