Kevin Riordan: Students pitch tax credits for private schools

Until Wednesday, Rachel Barton and Glenda Rodriguez had never testified at a public hearing.

But the two Camden teenagers were poised and persuasive as they urged members of the New Jersey Assembly Budget Committee to support the Opportunity Scholarship Act for students at private and parochial schools.

"Everyone can do something amazing," said Barton, 13, an eighth grader at St. Anthony of Padua School in the city's Cramer Hill section. "They just need a chance."

Preceded by a camera-ready rally of about 100 students organized by the pro-OSA "We Can Do Better" campaign, the hearing at the Blackwood campus of Camden County College offered real-life lessons in politics - particularly, the art and science of media relations, lobbying, and spin.

I'm referring to the sheer quotability of the students, the crisp design of their OSA T-shirts, and the fact that the incendiary word voucher was nowhere to be heard.

OSA is "not a voucher system. It's a tax-credit system," rally organizer Wendi Lyons told me later via e-mail.

Corporate donors would get a tax break for contributing to OSA, other supporters explained; school districts would be at least partially reimbursed for students who used the scholarships to transfer to a private or parochial school.

OSA, said another rally organizer, Christine Healey, "is revenue-neutral."

It's no such thing, according to the state's largest teachers union, which brands OSA - a key component of Gov. Christie's education agenda - as a "scheme" to drain dollars from public schools.

"Let's call it what it is: a voucher program that uses public money to subsidize private and religious schools," said spokesman Steve Baker of the New Jersey Education Association. "They don't call it a voucher program because they know that a majority of the public opposes vouchers."

Noting that Christie's previous cuts in public education aid have been declared unconstitutional - the state Supreme Court will now take up that question - Baker called OSA "completely misguided."

OSA has passed Senate and Assembly committees and awaits floor votes; a typically intense lobbying effort by the NJEA may well have slowed its progress.

Wednesday's hearing was one of about a half-dozen such public sessions being held statewide on Christie's $29.4 billion spending plan for fiscal 2012. By law, New Jersey must adopt a balanced budget by July 1.

Representatives from about 40 organizations, ranging from the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey to the Camden Fire Department, from the N.J. Salt Water Sportsmen's Alliance to the Spanish American Social Cultural Association, were signed up to testify.

The NJEA wasn't on the list, but Camden Partnership Schools, a private organization that raises money for five parochial elementary schools in Camden and Pennsauken, sent several busloads of students to the rally.

Officials of the partnership want the public to see OSA as a tool to rescue students from failing public schools, particularly in urban areas. Camden would be one of 13 school districts included in the pilot program.

At Woodrow Wilson High School in East Camden, "I couldn't get an education," Rodriguez, 16, told the legislators.

She described her former school as beset by violence. "I got jumped, and then I got kicked out for trying to defend myself," said Rodriguez, now studying with the alternative Community Education Resource Network program in Camden.

"I'm not concerned for me but for my friends - because they go to Woodrow Wilson," she added.

Barton, who will attend Camden Catholic High School in Cherry Hill in the fall, said she, too, was concerned for her fellow students.

"I have been very lucky because I have a four-year scholarship," she testified. "I could not be happier.

"But most of my friends do not have this and will not be able to attend a good high school. The [OSA] will change that."

Whatever happens to the legislation, I'm struck by the fact that the students are getting a chance to experience - there's no other word for it - democracy in action.

AnnaMae Muryasz, St. Anthony's principal, attended the rally with about 35 of her sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

She said it was important for the youngsters to see "how things go" in the legislative process.

Particularly, she added, "when it's their own future" on the table.