D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said Wednesday she wants Congress to eliminate the District’s federally funded school voucher program, and route kids using the stipends into charter schools.
The five-year pilot D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, started in 2004, provides vouchers of up to $7,500 per child per year to attend one of 60 private schools. More than 1,900 students are participating this year.
President Bush included $18 million in his 2009 budget proposal to continue vouchers into next year.
But Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting Democratic delegate, said the program has been a failure. She is seeking language from House Appropriations leadership to require the “appropriate placement” of children receiving vouchers in either a public or charter school.
“There are long waiting lists for children who want to get into the D.C. charter schools,” Norton said during an appropriations subcommittee hearing on D.C.’s budget. “That’s where it seems to me after this year the money should go.”
But Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, asked Mayor Adrian Fenty if he would support increasing the dollar amount for vouchers. Fenty said no.
“The program since its inception has enjoyed broad bipartisan support,” said Gregory Cork, president of the Washington Scholarship Fund, which runs the voucher program. “By all means, we support the continuation of a program that has been wholly beneficial to our families.”
Testifying before the subcommittee, Fenty said he backs the so-called “three-sector” federal funding formula for D.C. education — equal dollars going to public education, charter schools and vouchers.
“It would be hypocritical of me not to recognize that there are other ideas outside the traditional public school system,” Fenty told the panel, chaired by Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y. “If someone is providing an excellent education to a child of the District of Columbia, they have the support of this administration.”
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray said he wouldn’t want to do “anything at all that results in kids, because they have to move, being harmed.”
