THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 21, 1995 TAG: 9501210149
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
For the past decade, Vernon L. Robinson has been working on the fringes of the legislature, seeking changes in state law to give parents more choices about where to send their children to school.
Robinson, a conservative minister, is a former college professor whose primary political experiences have been unsuccessful runs for the state Senate in 1988 and the Republican nomination for state school superintendent in 1992.
All the while he's been trying to change the educational system because, he contends, the state's public schools are monopolies, and they have lost their competitive edge.
By allowing parents to choose where to send their children to school and by giving tuition grants to help parents pay for private schools, he said last week, the state would encourage its public school system to become more competitive.
Competition would lead to improved education, he said, because the public school system would have to improve in order to continue to attract students.
``The current system is not responsive,'' he said. ``The current system is a political bureaucracy that is not going to change unless their monopoly is taken away. Parental authority needs to be restored.''
Over the two past weeks, Robinson has brought his campaign for school choice to eastern North Carolina twice - meeting with one regional chamber of commerce in Greenville and a group of parents in Tarboro.
Both meetings, he said, indicate the growing interest in school choice issues statewide.
In the past, most of the state's political power brokers simply dismissed Robinson, lobbyist for the N.C. Education Reform Foundation, and his school-choice ideas as being too radical.
That all changed Nov. 8.
When the General Assembly convenes Wednesday, Robinson stands his best chance yet of seeing some of the changes he has advocated for the last decade approved by state lawmakers.
Many of the newly empowered Republicans headed for the General Assembly already have endorsed the idea of school choice as have a number of Democrats returning to the Senate this year. The idea of school choice also was endorsed last fall by the General Baptist Convention, a group that represents hundreds of black churches and 455,000 members.
And Robinson, who has long toiled on the fringes of state politics, suddenly finds himself in the mainstream.
While many eastern North Carolina legislators and school officials are wary of this change, others say some form of school choice is likely to be approved this year.
``I'm for giving the authority to local school districts to decide whether they want to offer choice,'' said Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare County. ``I shouldn't try to micromanage education in North Carolina. I should give people the authority to try to make things work.''
Nationwide, school-choice legislation is moving forward in a growing number of states, according to an annual survey of school choice measures by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In 1993, the latest year for which figures are available, some form of school choice legislation was introduced or pending in 34 states.
States and territories in the United States have generally chosen among three general types of school choice systems:
Vouchers: Gives parents tax credits or refunds on their state income tax if their children attend private schools.
Currently, only a handful of states and territories - including Wisconsin and Puerto Rico - have enacted some type of legislation allowing these tax credits or refunds either statewide or as a local district option. Some programs prohibit the use of the vouchers at religious schools.
Open enrollment: Gives parents the right to choose the public school their child will attend either within a school district or between school districts.
As of 1993, six states offer open enrollment within the confines of their child's school district, while 10 states have enacted plans allowing parents to choose any public school within the state, not just within their local district. Seven states now have voluntary plans under which school districts can choose to offer open enrollment and six states have plans under which individual cities have implemented choice programs, according to The Heritage Foundation.
Charter schools: Schools run by teachers, parents, principals and others outside the education bureaucracy. Before 1993, only two states, California and Minnesota, had enacted charter school legislation. By 1994, an additional seven states had approved charter school legislation.
Critics of school choice, including the North Carolina Association of Educators and the North Carolina PTA, say the vouchers would badly damage public school systems.
Several local legislators and school officials are wary of the proposals and say they'll have to be convinced that most school choice measures are a good idea and will work in local school districts.
``I'm not sure that the voucher idea is a good idea,'' said Rep. Zeno Edwards, R-Beaufort County, a former school board chairman. ``And I don't know if open enrollment would work either. It would create some major problems.''
Rep.-elect W.C. ``Bill'' Owens, D-Pasquotank County, agreed.
Advocates of school choice ``will have to prove the case to me,'' Owens said. ``Right now, I'm not sure that's the way to go.''
In many counties, open enrollment, the idea of letting parents choose where to send their children to school, would present a number of hurdles for local schools to overcome, including geography and transportation issues, limited space in school buildings and class size restrictions.
``I do think healthy competition is good,'' said George Thigpen, superintendent of Beaufort County schools. ``This discussion is forcing us to deal with these issues. A lot of schools and other institutions are having to stand up and take notice.
``It's pretty clear these issues in some form are going to pop up. But I'm not sure any of us are prepared for it.''
Rep. Stephen W. Wood of High Point, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee in the 1993-94 session, is on the record as supporting vouchers parents can use to pay private school tuition and has said the time for choice has arrived.
Rep. Carolyn B. Russell, R-Wayne County, who has been helping chart the House GOP education agenda, said pilot projects testing choice options in some school districts are probably a safe bet.
``North Carolina is probably ripe to pilot some form of school choice,'' she said. Under the Republican education agenda, ``schools will be able to experiment with things that work and . . . other systems will then be able to borrow from that experience,'' she said. by CNB