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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Spiteful voucher ruling

Web posted August 30, 1999

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

In what is touted by some as a great ``victory'' for the public school system, a tyrannical Ohio federal judge last week crippled Cleveland's 4-year-old voucher program one day before schools were to open.

Couldn't U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. have made his wrongheaded decision -- that taxpayer-supported vouchers violate separation of church and state -- in a way that wouldn't have created mass confusion, not only for the thousands of voucher students, but for both the public and parochial schools so unexpectedly impacted?

All schools didn't know where they stood. But to the credit of 12 voucher schools, they told parents to keep sending their youngsters anyway -- and that they'd deal with the problem of getting payments later. (A few days later, after scorching criticism, the judge backtracked -- somewhat. He agreed last year's voucher students could temporarily continue, but new students couldn't use a voucher.)

Cleveland's program, which gives low-income parents up to $2,500 in taxpayer-funded vouchers for tuition at private or parochial schools, is one of the first and most successful in the nation. The Clinton-appointed activist judge just had to throw a monkey wrench into it!

How could Oliver's edict possibly help the kids' education? After all, isn't that what school is supposed to be about? And why wait for the program to be fully developed over four years before putting the kibosh on it?

With more choice programs spreading around the nation, concerned parents and educators can only keep their fingers crossed that this ruling is an anomaly that won't set a precedent for other federal courts.

In Cleveland, they can only hope that Oliver will be overturned on appeal. Lacking that, perhaps a higher court would at least give the community time to adjust to the new reality. The problems that yanking vouchers will create can't be solved in a day.