House Dems looking to kill vouchers set up roadblock to reauthorization
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
February 25, 2009
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Supporters of D.C.’s landmark, federally funded school voucher program are accustomed to critics clamoring for its demise. Language inserted by House Democrats into a 2009 budget bill could strike the fatal blow.
“It is our hope that everyone involved in our program realizes how much of an enormous benefit it is,” Gregory Cork, president of the Washington Scholarship Fund, which administers the voucher program, said Tuesday. “We’ve certainly been working really hard for five years to offer families the services and educational options they deserve.”
He added: “Certainly the language presents real challenges to the program’s continuation.”
Vouchers provide about 1,700 eligible low-income families up to $7,500 per student annually to attend a private school rather than a D.C. public school. The program has not yet proved successful academically, but parents are generally satisfied with their children’s new schools, according to a June 2008 U.S. Department of Education review.
The $410 billion appropriations bill offered by House Democrats does not kill vouchers per se, but it does bar future reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program without congressional and D.C. government approval — a difficult sell when both are under solid Democratic control. District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, has sought to end the Bush administration-backed voucher program since its start in 2004.
Mayor Adrian Fenty told The Examiner he would not commit to supporting or opposing the program, but signaled he was open to keeping it as part of the “three-sector approach” to education, composed of the traditional public schools, the public charter schools and vouchers.
“I’ve never been a proponent of vouchers,” said Ward 6 D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells. “That was not an initiative that came from D.C. I’m working to make Ward 6 schools the best they can be.”
The budget bill allocates $14 million for the scholarships in the 2009-2010 school year.
Explaining the legislation in a written statement, appropriations Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., urged D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to “promptly take steps to minimize potential disruption and ensure smooth transition” for voucher recipients who must re-enroll in the DCPS.
Rhee has not taken a formal position on vouchers, her spokeswoman said Tuesday. A statement issued by Rhee’s office last fall said the chancellor “disagrees with the notion that vouchers are the remedy for repairing the city's school system.”
Northeast Washington’s Patricia William has her two sons enrolled in the Sacred Heart School, thanks to the voucher program. Twelve-year-old Fransoir, in his fifth year at the private Northwest school, is more inspired, more self-confident, more focused and more successful than he would have been in a public school, William said.
“I’m really scared because the environment where we come from, [public school] has not been the right setup for him,” William said. “I’m just praying this will not be the end.”
Examiner Chief Congressional Correspondent Susan Ferrechio contributed to this report.
