A voucher here, a school gone there

Free public education is as American as the Star -Spangled Banner. Using public dollars for private education is not. About 25 years after the anthem was first sung, Horace Mann, a member of Congress, defined what public education in a democracy is. He issued no manifesto, he sang no song, but it is clear what he had in mind: education free to the students, as local as possible, non-sectarian, publicly financed, available to everyone.

School choice has been with us since then as the reality, not as a slogan. Parents could use free public education or choose to pay for private education, usually religious. It had been the choice the early 1600s. What we didn’t have was publicly financed private schooling.

Gov. Kim Reynolds is no Mann. I can vouch for that. Her commitment seems not to the public good in education, but to private gain. My tax dollars, and yours, go through the government we vote for to a public system designed for all our kids. Poor kids don’t naturally go to private schools, and no one, rich or poor, should go on my money. If anyone wants a child to go to a parochial school, they already have that option. A private school, if I have the money, is also a choice I can make. I don’t pass the hat in the neighborhood. I choose private; I pay. So should everyone else in Iowa.

Reynolds and most of her conservative allies performed a miracle making our currency into pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, and vouchers. Those vouchers are a special device that makes it possible to use my taxes and yours to support private and parochial schools I have no interest in and may very possibly dislike. I am not alone in the hope that those dollars seek to create excellence for the 90 percent of our kids who are in public school, not the 10 percent who are not. Public schools are often understaffed and teachers over worked and paid too little. But that is often true of private schools as well. The pupil teacher ratio is close. Public schools are about 14 to one; private 11 to one, hardly enough to make a difference in quality.

School choice for some means no choice for others. Rural schools will “consolidate’, a slick slogan for longer trips for kindergartners. It means small towns suffer economically. An empty school employs no people. Parents who came out of the fields tired at the end of a long day, but used to attend local school board meeting, are now faced with 50 miles of travel they won’t have the energy to take. Parents, students, economy all suffer. School staff are an important part of a town’s economy. economy. Unemployed don’t have much to spend at the local grocery, hardware store, gas station or even their church.

Governor, to use some of my tax dollars to send one child to a school that says Roe V. Wade was appropriately overturned and that abortion is a sin makes me complicit in something I abhor. That should not be your right or the state’s. I may withhold $10 from my income tax payment. It won’t stop the vouchers, but it will certainly make me feel that I stood up for what I believe.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.