Clergy & Citizens United
A Position Paper on the Proposed Voucher Amendment

The people of Michigan have historically valued public education as part of the genius of American democracy. They underscored their commitment to public education in 1970 by amendment the state constitution (Article VIII, Sec. 2) to prohibit the use of tuition vouchers for private schools.

Now a campaign is underway to undermine that commitment. Anti-democracy forces would reverse that 1970 action and permit public monies to fund private schools, including sectarian schools. Should that campaign succeed, the explicit ban on such funding wisely enacted by Michigan voters nearly 30 years ago would be overturned.

Clergy & Citizens United, a coalition of nearly 500 clergy and lay leaders, opposes any constitutional amendment that would cause public dollars to flow to private schools.

Parents have the fundamental constitutional right to send their children to private schools, but they must do so a their own expense. They cannot expect the state to subsidize that choice. Public dollars support public schools. Private dollars support private schools.

The fallacy being promoted by the voucher lobby is that tax dollars are essentially private funds, that sales or property taxes, or portions of the same, that go to public schools represent unfair levies on people who do not choose to avail themselves of the benefit of public schools.

Tax dollars of any kind are public monies rightfully owed to the governmental units represented in the body politic for the benefit of all. To say that a taxpayer has or ought to have the right to withhold those taxes he does not wish to pay and to use them for other purposes as he pleases is to undermine the common welfare.

Under the proposed amendment, the state would be compelled to return a portion of taxes paid to support the common welfare to fund students' tuition in private schools. Thus would public dollars be used to support private and religious schools-a violation not only of Article VIII, Sec. 2, but of Michigan's long-standing commitment to the democratic value of its public schools.

The proposed voucher program is couched in terms of giving parents of children in purportedly "underachieving" school districts a so-called "choice" to use public funds to attend private and religious schools. But this program is only the first step in an effort to subvert public education in Michigan. If this program were adopted, the next step doubtless would be to propose to extend this "choice" to all parents and to establish a "competition" between public schools and private schools for students and public funds. The distinction between public education and private education that is now embodied in Article VIII, Sec. 2 would cease to exist, and public funds would be used "across the board" to support private and religious schools.

Michigan's constitutional commitment to a system of free public elementary and secondary school education for all of Michigan's children is in grave danger of being destroyed by the proposed "voucher amendment." The solution to the problem of "underachieving" public schools is not to divert students and public funds form those schools. The solution is to try to improve the quality of those schools, as well as the range of choice for public school children-including charter schools. Those persons who believe that children attending "underachieving" public schools should have the "choice" to attend private and religious schools should be using their own funds and funds that they have raised to support the attendance of these children at private and religious schools.

It has been a long-standing principle in Michigan that public funds support public schools and private funds support private schools. The People of Michigan should reject any proposal that would depart from this principle. They should reject the proposed "voucher amendment" to the Michigan Constitution.

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