Still Undecided

I'll let the subject go after this, but I just had to laugh when I got the mail and there were two anti-voucher program mailings in the box today.

So for equal time on the issue (see yesterday's post), here are two bewildering statements from today's mailings.

Quote 1

"Should Utahns fund unaccountable voucher schools instead of improving our public schools?" This question is misleading for two reasons.

(1) Voucher schools would not be entirely unaccountable. For example, students would be required to take annual performance tests. The anti-voucher campaign could claim that they don't think voucher schools would be accountable enough, but of course that is too subjective to be persuasive.

(2) The statement sets up a false dichotomy. Funding voucher schools and improving our public schools aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact voucher advocates argue that the voucher program will actually help improve public schools. Plus, I'm guessing that if the legislature matched the voucher program funding with an equal amount of additional funding for public education, that wouldn't resolve the issue.

Quote 2

"Referendum 1 would divert $429,000,000 of our tax dollars away from public schools, according to the State's Impartial Legislative Fiscal Analyst."

My understanding (based on a conversation I had with a neighbor who is a public school counselor) is that this statement refers to the $429,000,000 that would be pulled over the coming years from the state's general fund and put into the state education budget specifically to cover the costs of the voucher program. And if Referendum 1 doesn't pass and the voucher program ceases to exist, that money will go back into the general fund.

So the statement could be technically correct if it read that "Referendum 1 would divert $429,000,000 of our tax dollars away from the state education budget." But even then it's misleading, because the only reason the money is there is to fund the voucher program. It can't be used for anything else.

The bottom line for me? I'm still undecided, but I'm also not sweating the outcome of the vote. I think both sides have very compelling--albeit mostly theoretical--arguments. It would be interesting to see if the voucher program does pass how things actually play out--no one really knows at this point, it's all conjecture.

I just wish both sides would have trusted us voters enough to put their arguments out there in a straightfoward, honest way. Instead we got a whole lot of emotional manipulation and half truths. Blech.