The school voucher proposal will be on the statewide ballot in the Nov. 7 general election.

Placed on the ballot by petition drive sponsored by a well-funded outfit called Kids First! Yes!, the proposal if approved by voters would create a voucher program for students in schools where the graduation rate is less than two-thirds during the 1998--99 school year. Students in these districts would get a publicly funded voucher worth $3,150 to help pay tuition at any public, private or religious school.

To my mind, there are three big problems with the voucher plan.

First, the proposal won't affect just poor, badly managed districts with low graduation rates, such as Detroit. A section of the ballot proposal would amend the state Constitution to let voters in any school district decide whether to adopt the plan. To get the voucher plan on the ballot in any given school district in Michigan would require only a petition signed by 10 percent of district voters who voted in the school election the previous June.

Most local school elections have pretty low turnouts, sometimes as low as 50 votes cast in an uncontested school board election. And 10 percent of this small number is a very small number, indeed. For ample, all it would take to get the voucher proposal on the ballot is 11 signatures in Fowlerville, 22 in South Redford or 62 in Bloomfield Hills.

Skeptics of the voucher plan have been quick to charge this rovision in the proposal is nothing more than a device to open the door to wholesale privatization of the public school system in Michigan.

Advocates say that's OK, because all it does is give local voters a choice.

I think it's a dangerous proposal because it provides a way for an organized minority to dabble with serious issues: separation of church and state and the future of our public schools. Serious matters should require seriously large public participation.

Second, the voucher proposal would authorize $3,150 in public tax dollars for each voucher to fund private and religious schools. However, these schools are not subject to a variety of accountability and public disclosure statutes that public schools are, despite the fact that they would be receiving public money.

Private school boards are not subject to the Open Meetings Act, for example. So a private school getting public voucher money would not have to hold its board meetings and transact business in public. And religious schools are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. So a parochial school receiving public tax funds would not be subject to scrutiny about how the money is being spent.

This is not an abstract concern. One of the biggest problems with charter schools, which also receive state per pupil support, is that many object to public scrutiny of their activities. An investigation two years ago turned up well-documented cases of abuse -- the principal of a charter school renting a building owned by his brother, for example.

If we are serious about supporting private and parochial schools with public tax dollars, at a minimum we ought to make sure these schools are required to be subject to the same protections of public accountability and open decision making that public schools are.

Third, the voucher proposal in effect overturns the long-standing principle that public funds should not be used to pay for religious or private schools.

If parents wish their children to attend a parochial or private school, that certainly is their choice, which they pay for with their own dollars. But it's hard for me to see why my tax dollars should be used to subsidize another family in sending their child to a religious school whose doctrines I oppose.