The Return of Segregation?

Do School Vouchers Turn Back Clock

Darren Camper

Texas Editor

Austin - The 1896 court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson ushered in an era of “separate but equal” facilities and treatment for blacks and whites. In the area of education, it was felt that the children of former slaves would be better served if they attended their own schools and in their own communities.

The images of schools from the past show that black schools and facilities were indeed separate, but never equal. Black schools suffered and barely survived, while White schools flourished.

In the age of men crying out for school vouchers to send children to private schools, it appears history is setting up to repeat itself again.

Three new proposals in Austin promise seek to change the course of education in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, but the reality of it is it takes away the opportunities that public education provides that helps urban Black children escape lives of poverty, hopelessness underachievement and a lifetime of low wages.

The Louisiana state courts ruled against Plessy, and his subsequent appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court was denied in 1896.

The impact of Plessy of that case was to relegate blacks to second-class citizenship. They were separated from whites by law and by private action in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, churches, cemeteries and school in both Northern and Southern states.

Utah, Ohio, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia are offering publicly funded voucher programs and Texas wants to be the next state to step in that direction.

African-Americans need to beware and think twice before jumping on a bandwagon that puts us in a time machine that sends us spiraling back to the days of segregation and unequal education.

House Bill 1263

It creates a vastly expensive pilot voucher program for educationally disadvantaged students in counties with a population of more than 800,000 people. Those counties include Harris (Houston), Dallas, Tarrant (Fort Worth), Bexar (San Antonio) and Travis (Austin).

Authors of the bill include Reps. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving; Jodi Laubenberg, R-Parker; and Carl Isett, R-Lubbock; Rep. Howard, R-Sugar Land; Rep. Paxton, R-McKinney

District eligibility requirements are so broad that nearly all the school districts in San Antonio, for example, would be pulled into the voucher program. Eligible students would include those who have dropped out of school, are at risk of dropping out, come from low-income families, are victims of certain acts of violence, and are eligible to participate in a district’s special education program or have limited English proficiency.
However the biggest problem is the loss of funding and services to children left behind in poorer urban districts.

Every urban district stands to lose money and that affect the education of Black children who are not accepted or do not and cannot qualify to attend those private schools.

A look at participating school districts in 2005-2010 shows about how much public money could be lost to districts due to vouchers in the first two years:

• Austin ISD could lose: $74 million
• Dallas ISD could lose: $165 million
• Edgewood ISD (San Antonio) could lose: $13 million
• Fort Worth ISD could lose: $79 million
• Houston ISD could lose: $200 million
• North Forest ISD (Houston) could lose: $9 million
• San Antonio ISD could lose: $54 million
• South San Antonio ISD could lose: $9 million

House Bill 12

It would drain money from neighborhood public schools by establishing a private school voucher program in the state’s six largest school districts – Austin, Cypress-Fairbanks, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Northside (San Antonio) Independent School Districts.

The author of HB 12 is Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio.

Some drawbacks associated with this are a voucher program that leaves private and religious schools unaccountable for failure. It also opens the gate for screening, discrimination and does not prohibit or control private and religious schools from discriminating based on factors such as a child’s gender, race, citizenship or limited English proficiency.

Other concerns with the voucher proposal is that it does not require private and religious schools to provide special services to students with disabilities and allows a private school to continue to receive tax funding even if students do not perform satisfactorily on state assessment tests.

House Bill 3042

It opens up private school vouchers to any student in the state who is eligible for public school. It would include 1031 school districts and 215 charter school districts.

Authors of the bill are Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball & Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land.

The bill offers minimum accountability and no consequences for failure.
There are guarantees and absolutely no consequences for poor academic performance, no school accountability ratings, no financial accountability, and no cutoff of state funding for failing private schools.

Vouchers are a controversial proposition to use tax dollars to fund tuition at private and religious schools, according to the Texas Freedom Network.

Black parents need to ask if draining money from neighborhood public schools and taking money away from poor Black children for the privileged and rich is a good idea.

A pilot voucher program targeted at large urban school districts like Houston and Dallas would do nothing to help cash-strapped schools in small towns and rural areas.

Poor Black children stand to lose with Whites clamoring to get more state aid and tax dollars for their private and religious schools.

Many want to remove their children from public schools taking them away from the need to socialize, connect and associate with people from different races, religions and beliefs.

It is a push for racial and religious isolationism that will destroy the delicate fabric that helps stabilize and build communication and understanding between the races. It is a move that shrink the total education dollars available for all public schools.

This stands to be the knockout punch for struggling inner city and urban school districts across Texas since White flight gutted the inner city and took many White children to the suburbia, private and parochial schools.

This legislation brings more money to private and religious schools and allows the screening out, separation and sets up a pattern to leave poor Black children behind. Without the proper tools and funding for education, urban schools will suffer a mass exodus of teachers, facilities and equipment will deteriorate and the children will see a return to the days of hand me down school books, used equipment and hand me down supplies.

Vouchers represent the new “white sheets” worn formerly worn by the Ku Klux Klan. The sheets may be white and clean on the outside, but underneath are the dirty motives and warm blooded spirits of racism that seeks to resurrect the idealisms that separate Black from White, rich from poor, inner city from suburbia and penalize the disadvantaged children for being born poor in America.

It is Black children in Texas major cities that stand to lose the most if the state Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry signs off on school vouchers.

This watcher on the wall aggress that diverting money from schools that serve all children to aid a few students who might be accepted to private schools is simply bad public policy. It is indeed the resurrection of segregation.