A plan to offer education for all
Illustration by Barrie Maguire
It is surprising how much debate the Urban Schools Scholarship Act, now before the Legislature in Trenton, has engendered. The pilot program is modest, and the track record of success of similar programs is well documented.
The program would work simply enough. Corporations that donate funds to a scholarship program for nonpublic (including parochial) schools or to an educational service organization that provides tutoring, enrichment, or other services to public school students would receive a state tax credit for their donation.
Corporations become active involved partners in their local communities, not one dollar of funding is taken from any public school, and students get more resources for their education.
What's not to like?
After all, the constitutional concerns over these types of programs have been safely laid to rest, time and again. Tax credits and deductions have been explicitly ruled constitutional. And general aid to nonpublic — even religious — schools is "Supremely" kosher, so long as it's for clearly secular purposes. Thus textbooks and transportation are absolutely permitted — with the 40th anniversary of the Everson decision just having passed. Even the strictest church-state separationist now concedes theses types of programs are legal under current (meaning nearly a half-century of) Supreme Court jurisprudence.
People of good faith can of course argue that something permitted still isn't good policy. But, to paraphrase Senator Pat Moynihan, folks may have their own opinions, just not their own facts. And the facts are that tax credits are not a vast right-wing conspiracy. They have been supported by liberal stalwarts such as Moynihan himself, as well as former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. Programs have been expanded by stalwart Democratic governors Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania.
In New Jersey, the bill has the support of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (Dist. 20), the chair of the state Democratic Party; influential state Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Dist. 20); Newark Mayor Cory Booker; and a unanimous Newark City Council, which hasn't a Republican in the bunch.
New Jersey is already funding public schools at a rate higher than almost anyone else in the nation. What is also indisputable is that students in chronically underperforming districts, such as Newark, Orange, and Camden, deserve help now. Money alone isn't the answer. But targeted help to them, either to help get after-school programs or to go to a private school, will help those students get a better future.
In other states, these programs have poured new money into schools, either for scholarship funds to private schools or for enrichment and after-school services to public ones. Jewish day schools in Pittsburgh just raised more than $1 million in a recent year to help struggling parents pay tuition. Three public schools in Tempe, Ariz., raised more than $2.5 million in 2005. Some Arizona districts have an advertising jingle telling taxpayers to give it to the freshman, not the tax man.
In politics, being what it is, entrenched interests that are afraid of change fight to preserve the status quo.
But this isn't about politics, elections, or campaign contributions. Frankly, it's not even about teachers or schools. It's about children, and their future. So let's be clear.
This program is set up to help struggling lower- and moderate-income families provide a quality education for their children. Similar programs, as we've seen above, have succeeded in doing just that. The costs to the state treasury are modest. The costs to the public schools are zero — in fact, they can raise funds for needed programming from local businesses.
Yes, lower- and middle-income Catholic and Jewish parents (among others) may see limited scholarship help for their high tuition bills. But this is no grand plan to destroy public schools. The help to parents, while welcome, is modest, and again, public schools will be raising funds under the program as well. And let's be quite up front: Parochial schools couldn't handle the influx of every public school student, just as the public schools would buckle if every private school closed up shop. Both sides are partners in the critical work of educating children. This program doesn't pit the sides against each other, but treats them as the partners they are. Those who send their children to private school have every interest in seeing a vibrant public school system; so, too, public schools need a solid nonpublic school community.
This program meets the needs of the state, of parents, and of children in need. It fulfills the highest ideals of tikun olam, hesed, and tzedaka at once, and is deserving of the active support of everyone, especially the Jewish community.
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