Voucher plan is eliminated from House budget bill

That is good news for public school advocates, who strongly oppose any attempt to create private school voucher programs under the guise of hurricane relief.

The prospect of Congress actually authorizing the nation’s largest and costliest K-12 private school voucher program in U.S. history energized local school board members across the nation, as well as NSBA and the state school boards associations, to campaign against vouchers through numerous letters and telephone calls to members of Congress.

About 30 California school board members contacted the office of House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (R-Calif.) to urge him not to allow the voucher bill, sponsored by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, to be incorporated into the budget measure.

While there was strong Democratic opposition to the Boehner bill in the House, it was of great help to public education advocates that 23 Republican House members signed a letter to Dreier opposing the voucher bill’s inclusion in the budget measure.

The Boehner bill -- which had already been rejected by the House education committee -- would have authorized “family education reimbursement accounts,” providing up to $6,700 per student to students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. 

There’s still a possibility that Congress can approve a voucher program, however, because another voucher plan had been added to the Senate budget reconciliation bill earlier this month by voice vote. That means vouchers will be on the table when a conference committee is convened after the Thanksgiving recess to resolve the differences between the two bills -- assuming the House passes its bill, which remained in question at press time.

The Senate plan would provide vouchers worth up to $6,000 per student (and $7,500 for students with disabilities) to aid public and private schools that have enrolled displaced students.

It was sponsored by Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Michael B. Enzi.(R-Wyo.) and Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), and Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Rather than vouchers, NSBA believes the best way to assist private schools is by following the Title I model, in which public school districts provide federal funding in the form of instructional equipment and services to private schools on an equitable basis -- and not sending dollars to private schools.

“Congress should not create a new private school program as it considers cutting funding for public education nationwide,” says Marc Egan, NSBA’s director of federal affairs.

Meanwhile, there was another victory for public education advocates, as the House voted Nov. 17 not to accept the conference report on the fiscal 2006 funding bill for the departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.

It is not clear what happens next. The funding cuts in that bill could be incorporated into another piece of legislation or Congress could maintain current funding levels through a continuing resolution.

The conference proposal under discussion would have cut total education funding by $59 million for fiscal year 2006.

The bill would have provided an increase of just $100 million for Title I for a total of $12.8 billion. That is $9.9 billion less than what Congress and President Bush had committed to spending in the No.Child Left Behind Act.

The bill also would have increased funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by just $100 million. It would have funded IDEA at $10.7 billion, which is $4 billion below the amount prom­ised in the IDEA Improvement Act of 2004, which committed to fully funding IDEA over the next seven years.

The conference proposal also would have cut Title V grants for innovative education by nearly 50 percent and education technology state grants by 45 percent.

“For many school districts, these funding levels would represent a federally mandated property tax increase, because of the shortfall in federal funding,” NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to members of the conference committee. “They would serve as a sharp indicator to our students, teachers, parents, administrators, taxpayers, and 95,000 school board members that Congress is divesting federal resources from education and that Congress is retreating from its commitment to leave no child behind.”