RACINE — The Racine Taxpayers Association wanted a quiet talk about school choice vouchers, but the group didn’t get its way.
An information forum held Thursday night on how families could take advantage of vouchers this coming school year quickly turned into a debate about the pros and cons of voucher programs. Attendees questioning voucher panel members argued with them so much that RTA Program Director George Meyers had to grab the microphone and moderate questions.
“Ma’am, this is not a debate and you’re debating,” Meyers told Jennifer Levie, a Fratt Elementary School teacher who asked voucher panel members how the voucher program could do any good when it takes money away from public schools.
Vouchers allow lower-income Racine-area students to attend participating private schools. Individual student vouchers of $6,442 are paid for in part by taking per pupil state funding away from the home school district, in this case Racine Unified. Teachers and other educators have denounced vouchers for that but voucher panel members said districts can save money by educating fewer students. They also said taxpayers will save money.
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“There will be savings for every single (voucher) child,” said panel member state Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, a voucher advocate. Vos explained that educating a single student in Racine Unified costs about $11,000 a year while a voucher is only about $6,400 a year. Because local taxpayers would pay about 30 percent of either, they’re looking at an education cost of $1,920 with vouchers versus $3,300 without, he said.
And, Vos added, for the lower price, voucher schools achieve academic results no worse than public schools, according to several studies.
As Vos answered other questions during the forum, at Gateway Technical College, 1001 S. Main St., he was repeatedly heckled. At one point a man yelled that Vos was a moron over and over while another man yelled over and over for the first man to shut up.
“I would have ended (the forum) but the speakers seemed interested in dealing with the format,” the RTA’s Meyers said later.
Most of the about 20 people who spoke during the forum’s question portion, many of them teachers, were hostile toward the panel, which in addition to Vos included Terry Brown, a representative from School Choice Wisconsin, a nonprofit that supports voucher expansion and other forms of parental education choice; and Laura Sumner Coon, local representative for School Choice Wisconsin and executive director of Scholarships, Opportunities & Access in Racine, or SOAR, a nonprofit that tries to make private school education accessible to economically disadvantaged students.
While Vos took heat for vouchers coming to Racine at all, Brown and Sumner Coon fielded other questions about voucher program specifics. They told the about 50 attendees that busing for voucher students would be provided by Unified if the students live more than 2 miles from school, special education students would be eligible and voucher students would need to reapply every year but would be given preference over new students. Reapplying students would not need to continually prove lower family income but would need to continue proving they meet residency requirements.
CORRECTION: This article originally gave incorrect information on applying for school choice vouchers. Students receiving vouchers would have to reapply every year but would be given preference over new students. Students would need to prove they live within the Racine Unified School District every year but would not have to continue proving they meet low-income requirements. The error occurred because The Journal Times was given misinformation. The error has been corrected above.
