Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Choice Schools/School Vouchers

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Ross, Matt wrote:

> Interesting topic, thought I'd inquire opinions on it.
> 
> Schools in Milwaukee have started using vouchers that let
> parents pick which school their kid gets "public education" at.  
> The new twist is parochial schools being included.

Actually, this was a way twistier case than that for the Supremes.
Any private school religious or otherwise could have participated in
the voucher program, but all of the secular and/or suburban ones
declined for a variety of reasons, which then made this a 
public/parochial choice.

> Aside from the "separation of church and state" issue, there is
> the issue of flooding out the good schools.

How so?  Every school has an absolute enrollment limit, and you 
could always assign spots in a popular school by lottery (this was 
done when I was in elementary school in my town, by the way).

  In Jefferson City,
> for example, there are two high schools, JCHS, and Helias
> (catholic school).  Helias costs $3000 + books + misc.  JCHS is
> free + misc.  Helias has a highly respected education program,
> has a staff well trained to keep their students in line, and
> tends to turn out a lot better statistics. 

Ah, but what about their sports teams. :-)

[snip]

> Imagining that this voucher system was implemented in JC, and
> considering over 2000 students attend JCHS, and about 1/3 as
> many attend Helias, and both are above fire code for their
> buildings.  How screwed are both going to become?

Well, I'm glad that somebody realizes that these questions aren't
completely cut-and-dried.  A system to provide schoool choice
is not very likely to work if there are in fact no choices that
can be made or realistically accomodated.  

In this particular case, there could be a third answer if the
voucher consisted of the entire amount of per-student spending from
all sources.  In 1998, the Missouri average for that was just about
$5600; I expect Jeff City was probably somewhat higher.  If 2001
kids go to JC and 667 go to Helias (and spend $3000 to do so) under
the new regime, there are two possibilities:

1) Everybody now gets a $4200 voucher (since the same money 
   now has to cover 33% more people).

2) Everybody gets maybe $5000 if the state pitches in more
   now that per pupil spending went way down.

In case 1, the public school would basically implode if forced to do
the voucher thing all at once (no organization can do a 33% cut in
funding on a dime and be at all the same).  So let's go to case 2.  
That case forces the public school to take a 12% cut in revenue, and
this is unlikely to make it look very attractive in the short term.
Helias, on the other hand, would be getting 70% more in tuition than
what they had been getting (although I'll bet the diocese would trim
support on their end at some point).  $2000*667 students is $1.3
million per year that Helias could immediately use to build more
capacity (directly, or by paying off a mortgage), in theory anyway.
In practice, more of their student population will likely come from
the more expensive student categories if they have to be less picky
in their admissions or retention.  For that matter, given the
availability of a $5000 voucher, I would expect some other 
contenders possibly to get into the act as well.  The net effect
on school quality could be almost anything.  To the extent that 
the number of students leaving JCHS reduces over-crowding, 
that could put them in a better position competitively.  On the 
other hand, they have less money to work with, and we can't pretend 
that their union contracts disappeared.

jking


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