The Million-Dollar Failure Of PCE
Out of state corporations invested close to a million dollars to destroy public education in Utah’s 2006 legislative elections.
The Background
Utah has a lot of children. Utah government spends lots of money on corporate welfare instead of education. Therefore, even with high taxes, we spend the lowest amount per pupil on our public schools of any state in the nation.
We have school choice programs within larger districts and a charter school system that provides novel and innovative schools a chance to exist within our public school system.
Some miscreants like Representative Ferrin (R-Utah County) have exploited loopholes in the charter school system to take millions of state dollars in advance payments for the non-binding promise to educate students for years in the future. Most of the advance payments are justified by construction costs and other start-up costs. It is unlikely that any of the schools set up this way will last long enough without any other capital costs to justify the millions given to the corporate welfare collectors.
Most charter schools are not run like that. I’m a proud graduate of a charter high school myself and I’ll work for real choice whenever it is offered. But a system with even more ready cash and less oversight than the charter system we have now is a recipe for disaster and discredit for the very existence of school choice.
The Danger
For years opponents of public education (and opponents of real choice) have worked to create ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits’ which would transfer about $3000 per student from our public schools to private corporations running their own schools. Eventually the corporate welfare queens expect even more millions to reward their political pull at the expense of Utah’s children. Existing private schools that will lose autonomy when they have to take public money are just collateral damage to these pirates.
In 2004 the pirates won Jon Huntsman the Republican nomination for governor and subsequently the governorship so any bill through the legislature is likely to be signed and drain scarce remaining public school money away for ‘vouchers’.
The Villains
An organization called Parents For Choice In Education collected and spent between half a million and a million dollars from out of state donors to promote challengers to incumbents of both parties who have voted for public education and against unsupervised vouchers in Utah. That is a giant amount of money within the underfunded world of Utah politics. We don’t know the exact amount because our campaign disclosure laws are weak. But we do know the results.
The Republicans
PCE targeted two Republicans in the primary process. Dave Cox of Lehi didn’t have the support of the public school advocates either as he had upset them with advocacy of an untried process for school district splitting. Sheryl Allen of Bountiful was a long time public education advocate. Cox was eliminated at convention and Allen had to face a primary election. Corporate welfare pirate Ferrin of Utah County was also forced into a primary over his scheming with the charter school system.
Allen won her primary to return to public school advocacy; Ferrin lost his and will have take his bilking to the private sector. So far, no big victories for PCE.
The Election
In the general election, PCE targeted top Democratic advocates for public schools. Reps. Lou Shurtliff (D-Ogden), Karen Morgan (D-Holladay), Jim Gowans (D-Tooele) and Carol Spackman Moss (D-Millcreek) are former teachers and PCE attacked them because they could never be persuaded to betray Utah’s children. Others like Rep. Roz McGee who ran a children’s advocacy group were also targeted. And some like Rep. Carl Duckworth just didn’t vote to help the pirates steal from our kids and they were targeted. All of these Democrats were in swing disricts.
What Did PCE Do?
Every targeted Democrat was attacked with thousands of mailings and flyers accusing them of immorality, cheating disabled children, taking money from sick medicaid recipients for their own use, and worse.
None of the mailings admitted, of course, that the senders wanted to institute vouchers and decimate public schools because Utahns are against that. And PCE knows Utahns oppose their agenda.
PCE couldn’t recruit volunteers for their efforts so they hired temporary workers to do poll watching for all their campaigns and turn out the Republican vote without ever telling the voters or even most of the pollwatchers what they were doing. They hired the largest team of pollwatchers seen in Utah within living memory.
The Result
Every target of PCE survived to serve in another legislature except one.
Carl Duckworth (D-Magna) faced a lot of negative press and criticism these past two years for his work in the House. The criticism was over issues unrelated to education. He also cast some crazy votes like the vote for H.B. 100 of 2006 which — in complete ignorance of the Constitution — asserted the authority of the Utah Legislature over federal courts, especially where environmental matters are concerned. Even Jon Huntsman could see that embarassment needed to be vetoed. And Carl Duckworth may have lost to a PCE candidate by 25 votes. But there are still ballots to be counted and Duckworth could still pull this out.
All the other candidates hit by this unprecedented attack are unbowed and ready to stand again for Utah’s children.
The Future
The last voucher bill lost in a 34-40 vote in the House. This year there will be two or three fewer pro-children Republicans to add to the solid 19 Democrats to reach the needed 38 votes to stop the pirates from robbing our kids.
Find your legislators and tell them to fight for public schools and against ‘vouchers’ or ‘tuition tax credits.’
November 15th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
[…] Earlier I told the story of the massive million dollar failure of Parents For Choice In Education to bankrupt Utah’s schools at the ballot box. Today we look at one aspect of the campaign. […]
November 15th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
Brian - This is a great - Thank you for your thorough analysis. Another area where the voucher supporters were very active was in the state school board races. 7 of the 15 seats were up this year, and 5 of the sitting school board members had challengers - all challengers supported vouchers, either publicly or privately. My representative for the board faced a challenger who spent at least $40K of his own money, had unlimited signs, tons of full page newspaper ads, 5 mailings from his campaign in the last week, TV ads, and a mailing from Parents For Choice. Thankfully, the voters saw through it, and the challenger lost 60-40. Unfortunately, two of the incumbents lost. As I see it, Parents For Choice has a goal to get a state school board that will pass a resolution in support of vouchers, will work to eliminate the accountability of charter schools, and will stop working to make our public schools strong. I love that you call then pirates. Good call.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Thanks for covering some of the State School Board races on your site, Natalie. They are important but I didn’t follow them during election season because I was focused on several partisan races and my home district wasn’t up this year.
Congratulations that your local candidate won.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I’m a conservative Republican, but I’ve never seen anything like PCE and their willingness to do whatever it takes, including whatever deceptive tactic they can muster, to get their agenda across.
I see few people who see what’s really happening though. Some can’t get past liquor laws and the Mormon Church while others see the “sugar coating” and say, “Oh that sounds great.” I have called the voucher liberals (my name for them) on some of their statements and don’t get any reply in return.
One of my questions to them is always involves something like–why should I, as a person who has wanted to raise a child for years and hasn’t had that opportunity, have to pay for your child because of your “lack” of choice when you DO have that “choice” to raise a child? I haven’t had any takers on that one. I suggested maybe they could send some of their tax exemptions to kids found at Primary Children’s Hospital. So far no takers on that either.
We need to get a group of people who want REAL education reform, who are committed to making our school system truly better instead of cut and run solutions like the voucher liberals favor. I guess it’s not welfare if it supports their political philosophy or when they get the money. To the rest of us who will pay for their subsidizing of a personal choice, it is. We might as well pay for abortions too.
I’m not one much for teachers’ unions, but I am one fro people who really put their efforts where their mouths are. We need a REAL change in attitude in Utah and more people working together on education, not necessarily heaps of more money, but more people working together. If we had all of our schools become “choice” schools, would not the educational choice be even higher?
What can those of us whs support education do?
For me, it means starting in my own neighborhood and community.
Let’s bring down things to a community level and REALLY work to make them stronger.
November 21st, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Thanks, timetostop, both for supporting quality schools in your community and for visiting my weblog which is not always an easy place to be a conservative Republican.
You’ll see at the top today that the one victory of PCE has been overturned in the final general canvass. That’s something to celebrate.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:08 am
[…] I saw this on my way through Salt Lake City today. The house on the right has two “I’m For 1″ signs supporting the pirates trying to raid our public schools. On the left there is a hand made banner declaring “Impeach Bush And Cheney.” The ‘ch’ from ‘impeach’ and the ‘Ch’ from ‘Cheney’ are artfully shared. […]