Cancer
saver:

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Fight Heats Up

Voucher debate on agendas,
as proponents seek petition signatures.

Cancer Vaccines:
A New Weapon
in the War on Cancer

DIANA LIEBERMAN
Staff Writer

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1999
20De_trait_lewisb_News

he vote to allow state funds
to be used as vouchers for
private and parochial
schools won't take place
until November 2000 — if voucher
proponents obtain more than 302,000
validated signatures.
Despite the long lead-time, organi-
zations, educators and private citizens
already are lining up on both sides of
the issue.
On Sept. 17, Kathleen Straus, pres-
ident of the Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit and
vice president of the state Board of
Education, told members of the
Detroit Women's Forum the proposal
was another step in an ongoing effort
to tear down public education.
"That's not to say every school is
doing as well as we'd want them to do,"
she said. "Our goal should be to make
every public school a great school, not
),
to tear down what we have.
After the meeting, Women's Forum
chair Arlene Frank said she was con-
vinced vouchers would be of little help
to the most needy families. "It adds
up to leaving the people who are the
most vulnerable with the least options
and the fewest choices," she said.
Straus took issue with "pervasive
attacks on the so-called 'failing' public
school system," saying "public educa-
tion is the bulwark of our democracy."
Ninety percent of students in the
United States go to public schools, she
said, and the country continues to
become richer and more successful in
every arena. "In no way are the public
schools failing."
But Anita Nelam, speaking Sept.
27 at Birmingham Temple, said public
education has been such a failure,
especially in Detroit itself, that only
meaningful competition will bring
about change.
"We are attempting to give children
a chance," said Nelam, a former
admissions director at the private
Friends School in Detroit, who now
runs an educational consulting group.
Nelam also works with Kids First! Yes!,
sponsors of the voucher campaign.
Her arguments were countered by
Robert Harris of the Michigan

Educational Association, who warned
"vouchers are only snake oil bottled as
champagne.
He forecast that most of the stu-
dents using the plan would be those
already attending private schools,
draining about $770 million from the
state's $13 billion education budget in
the first year alone, without helping
those children who need it most.
Nelam, however, claimed the
voucher proposal was not against pub-
lic education. "I believe traditional
public schools can compete," she said.
"I just believe we need to give them
some incentive."
Nelam said she opposed vouchers
until her goddaughter, a gifted child,
enrolled in a Detroit public school.
The teacher said the girl was a trou-
blemaker, and that he wanted to "tie

Kathleen Straus

her to her seat." When Nelam corn-
plained, the child was skipped a grade,
without the family being consulted.
The child was subsequently trans-
ferred to the Friends School.
While audience members were
sympathetic to Nelam's plight, most
felt that it did not justify overhauling
the state Constitution, nor that it
addressed the voucher. question.
The MEA's Harris raised another
issue: the voucher proposal poses seri-
ous problems to the principle of sepa-
ration of church and state.
Eighty-five percent of Michigan's
private schools are religious in nature,
he pointed out. In other states using