Neighborhood Ministries

Teachers unions say the public schools will be seriously hurt by the loss of money and students if vouchers are given to children to take to the school of their choice, but areas using vouchers have found public schools improve, sometimes dramatically when vouchers are introduced. Our public schools have become lazy and inefficient because they have not had any real competition in the past because private schools are so expensive. When vouchers are introduced, public schools trim fat and improve teaching to avoid losing students. Currently, most parents are forced to send their kids to public schools because they must pay all or most of the tuition themselves to send their kids to private schools, where public school students are supported by taxes spread out over all residents of the school district. In fact, parents who wish to send their kids to private schools must pay the private school’s tuition in addition to paying taxes to support the public schools since they do not get any refund of their school taxes if their kids attend private schools. Shouldn’t all parents have a right to send their kids to the school that is best for them, not just the rich?

Liberals are claiming that the Supreme Court has violated the separation of church and State by ruling that Maine can provide services that do not include religious instruction (meals, transportation, etc.) to religious schools. It is not supporting religion since the services do not include religious teaching. In addition, since the parents are paying public school taxes and the services are provided by the school district to non-religious schools, to deny religious schools the funds, is discriminating against religious schools because of their religious base. In addition, since the schools are in areas not served by public schools, no public schools will be hurt by it and the children would be denied access to schooling if the religious schools were not able to serve them.