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Voucher Plan Termed Legal
The Record, Tuesday, October 18, 1994
by Neal Thompson
As debate heats up over his proposal for a school voucher program in Jersey City, state Education Commissioner Leo F. Klagholz has begun to defend one of the most central and emotional aspects of the plan: its constitutionality.
Critics of Klagholz's plan, which he unveiled two weeks ago, say that using public money to send students to private schools would violate the ban on church and state entanglements in both the U.S. and state constitutions.
But Monday, in an editorial board meeting at The Record, Klagholz said such criticisms are off base because millions of dollars in public funds already are given to private schools with religious affiliations, and the constitutionality of that has not bee
n challenged.
For example, private schools in New Jersey, including those affiliated with a church, receive about $100 million in state aid, Klagholz said. The money buys textbooks and pays private schools that provide remedial and special education to students referr
ed to them from public schools. An additional $300 million is spent by the state to bus private school students. And many publicly funded scholarships are used by students who attend private colleges with religious affiliations, such as St. Peter's Coll
ege in Jersey City, Klagholz said.
"There is no separation of church and state in education funding, that is my feeling," Klagholz said.
Some powerful groups are lining up to oppose the assessment and to fight Klagholz's plan, which would give vouchers to the parents of first and ninth graders in Jersey City that could be used to offset private school tuition. The New Jersey Education Asso
ciation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Educational Law Center are among those promising a battle.
That was evident last weekend at Liberty State Park, where Jersey City
Mayor Bret Schundler, who initially proposed the voucher plan for his city, held a rally that was joined by former U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander. Less then a mile away, vo
ucher opponents held their own rally, attended by hundreds of teacher, parent, police, and compounded a confrontation between members of the opposing rallies escalated into a brawl, in which punches were exchanged and a few people were arrested.
Klagholz said Monday that he anticipated strong opposition to his plan and fully expects a legal challenge based on the constitutions argument. But he called opponents of the experiment "intellectually closed."
"It's premature to make an informed judgement on this," he said. "My feeling is: let's see if it works. But I am sure it'll be challenged. If it is, then we'll know the answer."
Klagholz is correct to anticipate lawsuits, said Marilyn Morheuser, executive director of the Education Law Center, which has already challenged the way public schools throughout the state are funded. Both her group and the ACLU are putting together laws
uits, she said.
A lawsuit by her group would likely attack the voucher plan's funding mechanism, she said, so she will wait until July, after the state budget is adopted. But the ACLU suit is "ready to go", Morheuser said; that suit would likely portray vouchers as a vi
olation of the state's constitution, which is more specific than the U. S. Constitution on the separation of church and state.
"We'll respond when there's a proposal that's introduced in the Legislature. If and when something passes, we'll be ready at that time to litigate it," said Edward Martime, executive director of the ACLU in Newark.
Murheuser said vouchers represent "excessive entanglement of church and state," which is illegal. Furthermore, she said, the state's constitution's "establishment clause" bans New Jersey from favoring one religion over another. Since most private schools
in Jersey City are Catholic, a voucher plan would represent preferential treatment of the Catholic Church, she said.
The next stop for the Klagholz plan is the Legislature, but Klagholz said a committee is still a few weeks away from completing proposed legislation. Because many details of his proposal are still being worked out, he said, it is too early to debate the
specifics of a plan that has few.
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