Bayou Business Review, September 6, 1999

By now, most children between 5 and 17 have begun a new school year, but not without some unfortunate snags. In a nearby school district parents are keeping their children away from school in protest of an administrative decision at a high school. Eleven hundred miles to the north, in Cleveland, Ohio, a judge has made an eleventh hour ruling to disrupt the education of hundreds of students from poor families. The situations in these two school districts are not as unrelated as they first appear.

Ed. Cancienne, the new Superintendent of Schools for St. James Parish School Board, reassigned Ridgely Mitchell from the principal position at St. James High School to a new alternative school for children who are discipline problems in the school system. Parents have boycotted the parish's schools for at least 10 days (as this is being written). While I hope that a resolution to standoff between parents and school system can be found before this column is distributed to readers, there has been no indication that either the parents or School Board will stand down.

In Cleveland, U.S. District Judge Soloman Oliver, Jr. first ruled that Ohio's pilot voucher program in Cleveland, which began four years ago, would have to be suspended because of the possibility that the program is unconstitutional because it may have the "primary effect of advancing religion." It should be pointed out that his ruling came before the hearing in the case, a case set to begin in mid December. The reason for the ruling is that most of the schools that are participating in Cleveland's voucher program are religious schools. The judge later reversed himself, allowing all of the students who received vouchers to attend private schools last year to continue in the program, but denying that same right to approximately 600 hundred students who were expected to join the program this year. Fortunately, most of the schools participating in Cleveland's voucher program are allowing those students to attend until the case is decided.

The U.S. Constitution does not require a separation of Church and State, but denies governments in the country to do anything that serves to establish a religion. Vouchers do not do this. Instead, vouchers allow parents to send their children to schools made more affordable to them because of the voucher. Neither the constitution nor the rulings of the Supreme Court have suggested that parents cannot choose to have their children exposed to religious teachings of their own choice.

Vouchers when used to pay for education at religious schools no more establishes a religion than food vouchers, known as food stamps, establish a religion when spent at church-run food bank or food cooperative. Vouchers certainly do not serve to establish a state religion any more than did the G. I. Bill, one of the most successful of federal programs, which was a voucher program for higher education. Pell Grants, which are federally funded higher-education grants or vouchers, can be used at religious based colleges and universities, such as Loyola University in New Orleans.

Based on knowledge of Ed Cancienne's abilities (my wife once taught in a school system headed by Cancienne), I fully trust his judgement on personnel choices. Cancienne has a track record in educational leadership that is to be envied. That said, parents who are dissatisfied with the education their children are receiving should be able to do something about it. They should be able to pick the schools that their children attend. This is the principle of consumer sovereignty. It is not that the customer is always right, but that the customer is always the customer, the one to be served. If a customer is dissatisfied with his or her doctor, bank, car dealership, or clothing store, the customer should be free to go elsewhere (isn't that what the so-called "Patient's Bill of Rights" that is undergoing discussion in Washington is largely about).

As an immediate solution to what has become a standoff in St. James, vouchers probably will not help; there is no provision for voucher-funded schools in Louisiana. The voucher debate in Cleveland, Wisconsin and Florida should at least remind us that poor parents as well as affluent parents are more satisfied with their children's education if they have more say in the education their children receive. The only form of "school choice" now available in Louisiana is the "charter school" form. Perhaps, dissatisfied parents in St. James should petition to start charter schools and send their children back to school until charter schools can be set up.

In choosing between consumer sovereignty on one hand and the tyranny of bureaucracy and the tyranny of the majority on the other, I'll take consumer sovereignty. However, I can't help but recall the humorously cautionary words of a professor I had at LSU, who said that "people deserve to get what they want, and they deserve to get it good and hard." A wise person knows when to defer to the judgement of others.