Sunday, June 15, 2003 in Sunday Advocate (Baton Rouge)
by Charles Lussier
Lucille Gray’s son, Hase, spent his first years in school at South Boulevard Elementary School. He learned how to speak a little Spanish – he can still count to 12.
But his mother, while she liked the school, had other plans. She wanted a smaller school with smaller classes, and especially, Christian values. She quickly settled on Charity Christian Academy, a small, mostly black, private Christian school off West McKinley Street. This was important to her since she had spent her childhood in a Christian school (www.ellenbrook.wa.edu.au) so she wanted her son to have the same values.
Once there, Hase had classes of no more than 15 students a class, and a daily dose of chapel and prayer. Soon, the family joined the church affiliated with the school.
Shy at first, Hase, 10, has become a talkative, though soft-spoken young man who likes spelling and science and to run around and play video games.
After four years at Charity, though, Hase is heading back to South Boulevard, where he will enter fifth-grade. The reason is simple: the boy’s scholarship, which paid half of the $240 monthly tuition bill, has run out.
“At first, I felt bad. I felt guilty, but being a single mother is hard, and I couldn’t do it,” Gray said.
And unless something changes, as many as 70 other local children could join Hase.
They are among 34,000 underprivileged children throughout the country who received private school scholarships in 1999 through a nationwide lottery sponsored by the Children’s Scholarship Fund.
Established by international financier Ted Forstmann and Wal-Mart heir John Walton, the fund has become the nation’s largest experiment with privately financed private school vouchers. In 2001, the fund added another 14,000 scholarships. In all, the fund has donated about $210 million for scholarships.
Baton Rouge is one of 44 communities that took part when the program started in 1999. Community leaders, including Gov. Mike Foster, donated their own money to help pay for the four-year scholarships. Their money was matched by donors to a national scholarship fund.
But Rolfe McCollister, publisher of the Baton Rouge Business Report and a local organizer for the scholarship program, said the local donors, who raised $300,000 in 1999 to fund their share of the scholarships, don’t have the money to continue.
He said that since Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the downturn in the economy, local philanthropists are getting lots of pleas for money. They are reluctant to make more commitments.
“Non-profits are really struggling,” McCollister said.
Nationwide, according to the national office of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, Baton Rouge is one of only about six participating communities that so far are not continuing the scholarships, at least for those who are have scholarships already.
The scholarships fund between 25 and 75 percent of the bill, depending on how far below the federal poverty line a family falls. The scholarships top out at $1,750 a year for students in elementary or middle school, and $2,200 a year for students in high school. The families pay for the rest themselves.
In fact, for the 70 local children who are using these scholarships, the average family contribution is about $1,250. The average family income for scholarship recipients is just $17,420.
About 40 schools agreed to consider scholarship students, and about 31 ended up enrolling such students. That has dwindled to 24 schools. Many of those left are private, Christian schools like Charity Christian Academy. Seven of them are Catholic elementary schools. Even one public tuition-paying school, Southern University Lab School, participated.
Participation has declined considerably since the program started. The original goal was to give out 250 private school students, but only 205 students accepted the scholarships and enrolled in private school in fall 1999. By last year only 71 students were still participating, barely a third of the students who started.
McCollister said in most cases either the families couldn’t afford to continue or they moved. He said he’s not aware of scholarship children getting kicked out of private schools or otherwise losing their scholarships.
Schools themselves, however, appear to be happy with the students.
In an initial survey conducted in spring 2000, participating schools reported that the students had grown accustomed to their new schools, and were all making academic progress, though to varying degrees. Still, 54 percent of the scholarship students were considered at least above average students.
In most cases, students who took advantage of the scholarships transferred to private schools from public schools, though a small percentage were already in private school.
Charity Christian Academy, with about a dozen children receiving scholarships, is one of the biggest local beneficiaries of the program. Principal LaKesa Dixon said that while some of the scholarship children arrived in fine shape, others were far behind. She recalls one girl who entered the school in second grade unable to read. Now four years later, she is on the honor roll and one of the best students in her class.
Dixon, a former public school teacher, worries about the fate of children like Hase if they return to the often larger and more impersonal classrooms of public schools.
“He’s very quiet, almost an introvert to where if he was in system with lots of kids, he would get lost, because he would not make himself known,” she said Dixon said she hates the prospect of Hase and the Children’s Scholarship Fund children leaving, not because of the money, but because of the upheaval for the children.
“If they can possibly keep it going for the sake of the children, they should,” Dixon said. “Otherwise, the four-year-foundation that the parents and teachers have invested in could go to waste.”If nothing else, the Children’s Scholarship Fund has revealed an intense demand in poor communities for a chance to attend private schools. In 1999, the fund received an astounding 1.25 million applications for just 40,000 slots.
In Baton Rouge, the fund received 5,568 applications for scholarships, representing about 20 percent of those eligible to apply.
Families knew going in that the scholarships might well end after four years, but many signed up anyway. At least 17 participating families have written letters to donors thanking them for the chance to attend a private school. The letters, which McCollister has placed in a small booklet, are plaintive and heartfelt, sometimes written by the children themselves and usually containing a smiling picture of the child.
“I love my school, and my friends. My grades are very good, and I try hard not to miss school. I’m eight years old,” wrote Jonathan Wiley, who attends St. Francis Xavier Elementary.
“She has really opened up,” Janice Jones wrote about her daughter, Iris Williams, who attends Jehova-Jirah Christian School. “She loves her school and the staff. She is on the honor roll and she is also captain of the cheerleader squad.My son enjoyed a wonderful four year stay at a school that I was tremendously pleased with,” Lucille Gray writes in her letter.
But with typically four or more years of school until their children graduate from high school, these families are having to make hard choices.
Al and Julie Arriaga plan to stick it out in private school, at least for one more year.
Their daughter, Allie, has spent the last four years at Brighton Academy, where she was diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia. Julie Arriaga said Allie, now 11, arrived four years ago unable to read. Now she reads at a high school level and is keeping up with her classmates in her other subjects.
“When you see those children on TV, they’re so full of rage. That was my child,” Julie Arriaga said.
In kindergarten, Allie was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but even after taking medication, Allie was still a troubled child. She quickly fell behind at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic School and later at LaSalle Elementary school.
Julie Arriaga said she would work with Allie for hours on homework, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She decided her daughter needed a school that specialized in troubled children and grew interested in Brighton Academy.
The private school caters to children who suffer from dyslexia and reading-related learning disabilities. But Brighton’s tuition and fees cost about $8,000 a year, far more than the Arriaga’s could afford.
But then they learned about the Children’s Scholarship Fund. They applied and were lucky enough to be randomly selected.
Now, with the scholarship running out, they say they are going to do what it takes to pay for the tuition. Julie Arriaga is defiant.
“I don’t need a car. My daughter needs an education. I don’t need a house; my daughter needs an education. I don’t need to eat; my daughter needs an education.”