Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 22, 1998
TOP POLITICAL STORY
Backers of school choice go on air in D.C.
By Nancy E. Roman
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Radio and TV ads featuring low-income Washington, D.C., residents who plead with President Clinton to support a Republican-backed school choice plan will hit the airwaves next week.
"I'm Virginia Walden and my son William is fortunate," she says in one radio ad. "My neighbors got together and helped me rescue my son from the violence and chaos of the D.C. school system. Now William is learning in a private school that is safe and disciplined."
William attends Archbishop Carroll in Northeast D.C.
Mrs. Walden, a single mother of three who lives in Northeast, directs listeners to call the president and urge him to sign a school choice bill that would provide scholarships to children from low-income families in the District.
The $130,000 ad campaign, developed by Americans Education Reform Foundation, a group that promotes school choice across the country, is aimed at turning up the heat on Mr. Clinton, who has said he will veto school choice.
"There is is little understanding of school choice in the city of Washington, D.C.," said Kevin Teasley, president of Americans Education Reform Foundation. "It is the unknown that is scaring so many people."
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat from the District, said the ads will have no impact on Mr. Clinton, "who has a good alternative."
The president wants to assist local governments with school construction projects by paying the interest on the bonds that fund them at a cost of $11 billion over $10 years.
The Senate rejected that proposal 56-42 yesterday, with four Democrats joining all 52 Republicans in voting it down as an alternative to education savings accounts.
The parties are in an intense struggle for the upper hand on education, and most Republicans believe school choice is the GOP's best answer to the abysmal performance of many schools.
The House will consider a bill next week that provides scholarships for 2,000 D.C. students. Children from families earning at or below the poverty line -- $16,405 for a family of four -- are eligible for the full scholarship of $3,200. Families earning 185 percent of the poverty level -- or $30,349 -- may receive $2,400 per child.
That would be enough to pay the $1,570 annual tuition at St. Margaret's Elementary in Seat Pleasant, Md., the $2,700 tuition at St. Mary's Place in Laurel, Md., or the $2,500 tuition for Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Washington's Anacostia neighborhood.
"Mr. President, if you let me go to a better school, I'll study hard, I promise," says the voice of a young boy at the end of the ad that will air on WTOP and other radio stations during drive time.
"I can't imagine how anyone alive in the world can hear that little voice and not want to sign something fast," House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, Texas Republican, said of the ad.
Mrs. Norton said similar voucher programs have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional because they funnel tax dollars to religious schools. She predicted the vote will be close and that Republicans will cross lines to vote against it.
But Mr. Armey was adamant that it will pass with some Democrat support including Reps. James P. Moran of Virginia and William O. Lipinski of Illinois.
The House has considered school choice before, but only as part of broader legislation that ultimately got bargained away under threat of Mr. Clinton's veto pen.
This time will be different.
The Senate has already passed school choice for the District, so if the House passes it, the bill will land on the president's desk uncomplicated by other issues.
"He won't have anything to hide behind," said Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for Mr. Armey.
Mrs. Walden said she was frantic about what to do for her son Walden last year. The 14-year-old was struggling at Roosevelt High.
"I didn't know what I was going to do with him other than send him away to my family in the south," she said in an interview yesterday. He was running with the wrong crowd -- "just turning into a hoodlum," she said.
Her neighbor, Bob Lewis, organized an effort with six or seven other neighbors to chip in and pay the tuition at Archbishop Carroll High School.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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