By Rep. Maria Chappelle-Nadal
Missouri House of Representatives
District 72, University City, Missouri

March 3, 2005

Dear Friends & Neighbors,

In the past week, I attended two meetings with common themes. Both meetings clearly endorsed taking away money from public schools to put into non-public schools, both meetings had a moderator or a chairman who was in favor of using the state to encourage diverting money from the public school system to private schools and both meetings misrepresented the facts and blurred the issue in order to promote their own position. Although I was concerned about the content of these meetings, I did not expect the obvious bias that was apparent in both of them.

On Monday, February 28th, the University City Community Forum (UCCF) held a meeting on “School Choice and Educational Options.” This meeting was advertised as a chance for the schools that are available in U City to come and present what they had to offer to the residents of the city. Instead, it was dominated by its moderator, Martin Duggan and his wife, the President of Citizens for Educational Freedom, Mae Duggan. They used the panel as an opportunity to push what they referred to as “voucher” legislation and repeatedly referred to newly filed “voucher” legislation and encouraged those in the audience to support it.

This brings me to the second meeting that I attended, the Special Committee on Urban Issues. Last night, they held a hearing for the House Committee Substitute for House Bill 639 (HCS HB 639). What confused me was that this bill proposes state tax credits, not vouchers, for monetarily encouraging students to switch from public to private schools. Under the bill, money donated for scholarships is then distributed to students to assist them in paying for a private school. I called and checked with House Research and they confirmed that there had been no voucher legislation filed, and through my own research, it occurred to me that the tax credit bill is the only legislation that would use public monetary incentives to help students pay to attend private schools.

After the committee meeting, I had a hard time understanding why proponents of this legislation had so easily referred to it as voucher legislation on Monday but yet on Wednesday repeatedly stated that this legislation is NOT a voucher program. My question was answered by a quote from Andy LeFevre that we found while researching tax credits for education. He says that tuition tax credits, “are looked at in a little more favorable light in states than vouchers…the end goal is the same as a voucher, it’s just a different way to come about it.”

Andy LeFevre is the past director of the Educational Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). That is the same Task Force that Rep. Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield), the sponsor of the tax credit legislation, is currently serving on as the Public Sector Chair.

In the face of public backlash against vouchers, opponents of the public school system have turned to using the educational tax credit language. I spoke last week about why I took issue with this type of legislation, but here are a couple of specific things that upset me about the current legislation.

1) If the goal of HCS HB 639, as it has been stated, is to help low-income students in unaccredited or provisionally accredited school districts receive a better education, then we should not be awarding scholarships to families of 4 that make almost $100,000 a year. What we should be doing is awarding the scholarships to families that can truly not afford to send their children elsewhere. We are already running on a tight budget, and decreasing the amount of general revenue will leave programs beyond education to run on even less.

2) The scholarships proposed by Rep. Cunningham will pull money out of the school districts of children who participate in the scholarship program. If the issue in these districts is the poor environment (large class sizes, outdated resources, overworked teachers), removing money will only tighten the squeeze. Reducing a class size does not lessen the need or cost for the teacher or the classroom, effectively leaving a class of students with the same monetary needs to run the room and curriculum with fewer resources to do so. This is going to occur to our most vulnerable districts in the state.

Across the nation, we’ve learned that developing our public schools by improving the working conditions and resources for teachers is what leads to better performing schools, not creating a competition for resources.

If this legislation is really just private money for private schools, then why is it necessary for legislation to regulate it? This is the question I will continue to make an effort to answer in the weeks ahead.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on this legislation, please don’t hesitate to contact me.