Wisconsin: Parochial Schools May Join Expanded Voucher Program

The financial worries of inner-city Catholic schools in Milwaukee are driving an effort to expand Wisconsin’s state-funded, school-choice program to include religious schools.

The move is being hailed by national school-choice proponents, who are looking for rallying points after the massive defeat of a school-voucher referendum in California last fall. Meanwhile, in Arizona, the governor and top two legislative leaders have come out in favor of school choice. That state has now emerged as having the best chance to implement a full-scale statewide program.

Since 1991, Wisconsin has been a choice trailblazer. That year, several hundred students from low-income families in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) began attending, at no charge, their choice of several nonsectarian private schools in the central city. The state pays the private school, on behalf of the pupil, an amount equal to the district’s per-pupil state aid and subtracts that amount from aid it pays to MPS.

The author of that program, state Rep. Polly Williams, a Milwaukee Democrat, says that students and their parents in the program have come to see its benefits and advocate the expansion of school choice. But opponents, led by the state teachers’ union, note that students in the program have not pulled ahead of others academically.

And to date, the state’s educational bureaucracy has made sure that no religious school becomes a participant. At Messmer High School in Milwaukee, state officials two years ago even counted crucifixes on the walls and carefully examined athletic trophies for religious symbols to verify the nonsectarian nature of the former Catholic-owned school.

Parochial school closing

Recently, the dynamics of the issue changed dramatically when the city’s Catholic archdiocese announced that it will close one of its three inner-city schools. Sandra Smith, assistant superintendent for the archdiocese, says, “It’s just not financially feasible to support three separate buildings with a total enrollment of 360.”

Williams and Scott Jensen, a Republican representative from suburban Milwaukee, quickly introduced a bill in the state legislature that would open the choice program to religious schools, increase the enrollment ceiling to 5 percent of MPS from the current 1 percent lid, and raise the maximum income of choice-eligible families.

The proposal got a big boost in the form of enthusiastic support by Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, a staunch supporter of choice, even though he is a mainline Democrat.

From across the political spectrum, individuals have been backing the initiative for including religious schools in the choice program. Several Democratic legislators, including Milwaukee Rep. Antonio Riley, who met with black parents from his district, have rallied behind the measure in response to the support for school choice from voters.

The bill was stymied on procedural grounds in the legislature’s spring session. And opponents remain staunch. The proposal, opined the Milwaukee Journal, “is a needless distraction from a more fundamental and crucial public policy question: How can the public schools that the majority of Wisconsin children attend be reformed, and properly funded, to become more effective?”

“We’re in this battle for the long term,” says Jensen. “Our goal is to continue to advance the choice agenda piece by piece.” Under-tapped sympathizers such as Catholic-school supporters, he believes, will help.

The Wisconsin bill already is turning heads around the country. “Because Milwaukee is so far along already and has such a great support network for choice, some people believe it would be easier to get that program expanded to parochial schools than for any other state to start fresh,” says Jeannie Allen, executive director of the Center for Educational Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

By Dale Buss in Milwaukee.

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