Guest Post by Morbo
Every now and then, folks in a red state do something surprising.
Consider Utah, for example. States don’t come much redder than Utah, where socially conservative Mormons account for 70 percent of the population. They vote reliably for the Republican Party. As the Carpetbagger noted recently, 71 percent of them went for George W. Bush in 2004.
Members of the Utah legislature undoubtedly felt safe, then, when they passed a private school voucher plan earlier this year. The plan, based on model legislation cooked up by a right-wing group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is quite far-reaching. Basically, anyone with school-aged kids would qualify for a voucher. There is no income cap. You can be filthy rich and still get $500 to $3,000 annually for private school costs.
It’s an odd plan for Utah. The state is mostly rural and has very few private schools. In fact, 96 percent of Utahns send their children to public schools. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints does not run its own school system.
You may be thinking that’s because the church by default runs Utah’s public schools. But that’s not quite right. Many public schools in Utah allow something called “released time.” During the school day, children whose parents have given approval leave the building and receive religious instruction for an hour at a nearby Mormon facility. The arrangement is legal. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld it in a 1952 case called Zorach v. Clauson.
The fact is, many residents of Utah don’t care for vouchers.
Public education groups immediately began collecting signatures to put the new law on the ballot. In about a month, they collected 131,000 signatures. Only 92,000 signatures were needed, so it’s virtually a lock that this question will appear before the voters. (Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a supporter of vouchers, will decide when.)
Voucher boosters accused teachers’ unions of getting the signatures from their pals. That explanation doesn’t wash. The population of Utah is 2.2 million — but many of those are children because as a rule, Mormons like big families. And Utah is not exactly a union-friendly state. Clearly, backers of public education have tapped into a vein of discontent.
If history is any guide, vouchers will not fare well in the Beehive State. In 1988, backers of tuition tax credits, which are similar to vouchers, collected enough signatures to put that proposal on the ballot. Voters shot it down, 70 percent to 30 percent.
The situation in Utah is complex because two voucher bills were passed, and the referendum targets just one. Some court action looks inevitable, but if Utahns vote by a wide margin to dump vouchers, lawmakers would have to be nuts to try to force them through anyway.
Voucher boosters like to claim that the people support extending tax aid to religious schools. They cooked up a few polls with slanted questions to back that up. But when people are given a chance to vote directly on vouchers, they always reject them. Americans want a functioning public school system, not a network of tax-subsidized religious schools that have the right to teach creationism, homophobia, male supremacy and other right-wing ideas, and that can fire teachers because they are gay, are the “wrong” religion or simply because the principal does not like their lifestyle choices.
With lots of hard work and some luck, vouchers will go down to defeat again, and Utah — that arid, bright red nest of right-wing Mormons — will lead the way in defending public education.