DENVER — It was a nightmare come true for public-education unions everywhere: scores of minority youth hugged a conservative Catholic governor outside the Colorado state capitol, seeking his autograph and thanking him for a law that will pay their way through private schools.

With a swipe of Gov. Bill Owens' pen on the capitol steps April 16, Colorado became the first state to enact a statewide school voucher program since the U.S. Supreme Court voted last summer to uphold citywide vouchers in Cleveland. Opponents of the Colorado law fear it will set a trend for other states; supporters hope they're right.

“What just happened in Colorado may open the floodgates nationwide for a school finance system that favors the interests of children, not just the desires of an education union with a content-deprived educational philosophy that's a proven failure,” said G. Daniel Harden, a Catholic lecturer and professor of education law at Washburn University in Kansas.

Minority parents and guardians of inner-city children expressed similar sentiments about the new law.

“I myself came from a migrant family, with low income,” said parent Lawrence Luna. “We as parents want our children to have better opportunities. I'm just thankful, and grateful that this passed.”

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput said he is pleased with the new law, saying that it honors the parental role in education.

“In the long run,” he said, “I think all schools will benefit from this kind of common sense — public, religious and private — and I hope it sets the stage for similar action in other states.”

After signing the bill, Owens told the Register that Catholic legislators and business leaders are largely responsible for passage of the bill, which cleared the Colorado Senate 36-28 on April 10 with bipartisan support.

“Catholics have been a crucial part of a coalition that made this happen,” said Owens, who is Catholic. “The Catholic Church and Catholic business people have worked well with many other groups to make this happen.”

Opportunities

More than 600 mostly black and Hispanic children from low-income neighborhoods were bused to the Capitol to celebrate the new law, which took effect the moment Owens signed it.

Those who weren't swarming Owens for autographs clustered around businessman John Saeman, a Catholic philanthropist and retired cable executive who spent decades of time and piles of money fighting for the new law.

Saeman argues that vouchers will give opportunities to children who are stuck in public schools with test results that show “unsatisfactory” or “poor” performance as defined by the state.

As future beneficiaries and other supporters of the bill waved American flags, sang, danced and cheered, leaders of the Colorado Education Association — a local union affiliate of the National Education Association — bemoaned the law as a defeat for public schools and Colorado children.

Colorado Education Association president Ron Brady said the voucher law violates the Colorado Constitution. Association spokes-woman Deborah Fallin accused voucher supporters of race baiting.

“Why weren't those children in school, instead of on the capitol steps?” Fallin asked. “Thousands and thousands of Colorado children, of all colors and from all backgrounds, are succeeding in public schools. The voucher and tuition tax credit people have been using minorities to further their cause.”

The crowd was primarily comprised of minorities, said organizers of the support rally, only because they'll be the first to benefit from vouchers.

“Of course they [opponents of vouchers] are upset,” Harden said. “Almost anyone gets upset when the legally protected, publicly financed monopoly they've enjoyed starts to crumble. Monop olies are wonderful things if you happen to own one. The National Education Association, along with all of its state affiliates, is watching the breakup of its education monopoly.”

The Colorado program initially applies only to districts with eight or more schools that have received low or unsatisfactory academic ratings. Most of those 11 districts serve impoverished inner-city neighborhoods with high minority populations. Any of the state's other 167 school districts can opt into the voucher program at any time at the respective school board's discretion.

Education union officials argue that the new law violates a state constitutional provision that says no state funds shall be appropriated to “any denominational or sectarian institution or association.” The state constitution also forbids appropriation of funds to “support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatsoever.” The union is considering a lawsuit.

Owens and other backers of the bill — including former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer and Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar — argue that state funds won't be allocated to private schools. Under Colorado's school finance formula, the money belongs to the kids. The so-called “voucher” is a check for $5,000 — equal to about 75% of the cost of one child's public education — to each qualifying pupil, issued in the name of the child's parent or guardian.

“They're laundering the money,” Fallin said. “Each school district will literally have to write checks, in the names of parents, and send them to the private schools those parents tell them to. Then the parents will endorse the checks over to the private schools. It's a thinly veiled move to get around the constitution.”

Voucher supporters take issue with complaints that the program will diminish public school funds. Schaffer argues that because public schools will keep up to 25% of the tax money for each pupil who leaves for a private education, the affected districts will retain a projected $32 million each year for students they will no longer be burdened with teaching.

“They say we'll be better off, because we'll keep some of the money and we won't have to educate as many kids,” Fallin said. “But it doesn't work that way. Our overhead doesn't drop just because a few kids leave for private schools. We still have to keep the entire school open and staffed.”

Harden encourages backers of the voucher movement to keep a vigilant eye on the inevitable efforts of opponents to publicly regulate private schools.

“The statist opponents of vouchers believe that the money belongs to the state, rather than the kids,” he said. “But the legal doctrine here, as established in Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, is that the money belongs to the child.”

Wayne Laugesen writes

from Boulder, Colorado