MILWAUKEE TOUTS ITS
 SCHOOL CHOICE PLAN
 SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS
 SERVICE

 Date: Friday, November 19, 1999

 Section: Source: By LINDA SEEBACH

 Scripps Howard News Service

 Memo: For SUNDAY release
 (Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the Denver
 Rocky Mountain News.)

 Edition: 

 Emissaries from Milwaukee's school-choice program
 visited Denver last week to spread the news: the program
 works.

 It works for parents like Zakiya Courtney and Pilar
 Gonzales, who spoke about the benefits for their own
 families as well as their outreach work to eligible families
 in Milwaukee.

 And it works for the Milwaukee Public Schools, said
 school board member John Gardner. With more than
 8,000 children using vouchers, the 101,000-student
 district has seen reduced overcrowding, increased
 per-student spending and expanded services.

 Since the voucher program started 10 years ago, Gardner
 said, Milwaukee has gone from one full-day program to
 72, serving 18,000 students.

 "I'd love to tell you that we did it out of the goodness of
 our hearts," he said, "but the truth is, it was the threat of
 competition."

 In 1989, Gardner said, the public schools spent $7,900
 per student. In 1999, it is $9,400. The maximum amount
 for a voucher is $5,100, and the district keeps the
 balance. So the effect of the program on the district's
 finances is that it has 8,000 fewer students to educate
 and roughly $32 million extra to spend.

 Milwaukee's program is limited to low-income families,
 and they can send their children to any of 91 schools, 64
 of them religious. Wisconsin courts said that was
 constitutional and in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court
 declined to rule on the case.

 Schools that accept vouchers can't set admissions criteria,
 even though many public schools do. In religious schools,
 students of other faiths can opt out of religious activities,
 but none do. Islamic parents, Gardner said, often tell him
 that their faith is more honored and respected in Catholic
 than in public schools.

 Courtney and Gonzales worked on the campaign to
 organize parents to lobby the Wisconsin legislature for
 the school-choice program.

 "We brought parents to the table first," Courtney said,
 because they were the best lobbyists - all they had to do
 was tell their stories.

 "We had five community organizers," she said. "We
 could do a literature drop on Sunday and hit all the
 churches."

 She recruited Gonzales in 1994 to work with Hispanic
 parents.

 "Recruiting parents was the easy part," Gonzales said.
 "We took busloads of people to the Capitol."

 Both emphasized that they are campaigning for parental
 choice, not against public education.

 Gonzales has four children, two in public schools and
 two in a private religious school.

 "I pay $2,500 in taxes," Gonzales said, "I pay for the
 schools that fail my children time and time again."

 One of her children has a hearing loss and ADD
 (attention deficit disorder), she said. "There goes the
 argument about skimming the cream of the crop."

 Courtney has six children and 14 grandchildren. "I have
 enough kids to have them in everything," she joked.

 Private schools have sprung up to serve special-needs
 children, she said.

 "It's very entrepreneurial, and some schools specialize in
 special needs."

 Gardner added that there has been an explosion of
 services for special- needs students in district schools.
 "They were the ones leaving," he said. "We improved to
 keep them."

 Last week's forum was a start, to use Courtney's words,
 on bringing parents to the table. It was arranged by the
 Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic
 Chamber of Commerce in Denver, the Urban League of
 Metropolitan Denver and the Aurora Chamber of
 Commerce, with the assistance of the Greater
 Educational Opportunities Foundation. But it also brought
 other important players: Denver's new school
 superintendent and the president of the school board;
 Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife Wilma
 Webb, who is the regional director of the U.S.
 Department of Labor; a member of the state board of
 education.

 School choice in Milwaukee got off to a rocky start
 because of the entrenched opposition of the educational
 establishment. Now it has wide public support and a
 pro-choice majority on the school board. In Milwaukee,
 everybody's at the table.