Home

Gov. Chris Christie, a vocal critic of teachers unions throughout his first year of office, is hardly reticent about what direction he thinks the state's education system should go -- more charter schools, vouchers for private and parochial schools, and merit pay for teachers.

The question, then, is not so much what the governor wants, but rather what he thinks he can get.

"The governor doesn't use traditional timelines and generally ignores conventional wisdom on how much can be done in a given year," Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, told The Jewish State. "He's been pushing for an aggressive agenda on a whole host of issues and I don't think he's going to stop."

The issue of school vouchers is of particular interest to New Jersey's Jewish residents who send their children to day school and incur the high costs of a private education.

On May 3, speaking in Washington, D.C. at the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy organization, Christie endorsed a bill (S1872) currently going through the legislature that would permit a limited number of low-income students in "chronically failing" schools to receive scholarships they could use to pay tuition at private schools or public schools in other municipalities.

Christie called the bill "the first step" that will "lead to school vouchers across the state of New Jersey."

"A single mom in Newark, working two jobs to keep a roof over her child's head, should have no less of an ability to make that choice than my wife and I had to make that choice for our children," Christie said of his family's decision to send their four children to Catholic school. "Her child's life is no less precious than ours. Her child's future is no less promising than ours. And the great things that her child will do with his or her education, will mean just as much to the great state of New Jersey as what our children will do with their education."

While any plan to institute a voucher system would face significant constitutional, political, and economic challenges, Dworkin doesn't doubt the governor's sincerity in wanting to see this part of his agenda carried out.

"I don't think this was just a trial balloon," he said of Christie's Washington speech. "I think they're very serious about pushing this, and pushing it in the next few months."

The governor's office declined to say what actions they will take next on this issue, stating that they remain focused on getting the current scholarship bill passed into law.

"We're focusing on getting the first step completed which is passage of S1872, which we believe will provide options for students and families in New Jersey," Sean Connor, Christie's deputy press secretary, told The Jewish State.

Joshua Pruzansky of Highland Park, director of Agudath Israel of New Jersey (AINJ) and a strong supporter of school vouchers, agreed with Christie that the pending legislation would lead the state closer to vouchers for private and parochial schools.

"It's an important first step, because there haven't been any steps," said Pruzansky, who was in attendance at the speech.

Pruzansky also declined to say when he thought such a voucher program would be instituted, noting that he is focused on the current bill.

"If [vouchers] happen in the future, great. However that's not on the table today," he said. "This is the first step towards school choice." Dworkin predicted that such reform would likely be carried out incrementally.

"A bill that provides vouchers is one step, a bill that provides school choice is another step, these things might not happen in one comprehensive piece of legislation," he said.

Dworkin said that a school voucher bill would likely face opposition on both constitutional and fiscal grounds. In order to avoid a church-state conflict, any voucher legislation would likely create a fund for private donations as opposed to direct state funding.

School vouchers, which are meant to improve public schools through increased competition, are also an expensive investment with questionable outcomes, he added.

"We're talking about the need for a tremendous amount of money, a lot of donations are going to have to be made in order help subsidize families who are already in the [private school] system," he said.

Furthermore, Dworkin added, some private or parochial schools might not even want to accept vouchers because they would then have to follow state regulations.

"This is a complicated issue," he said. "The governor is going to be pushing for it. I think they are going to be taking some incremental steps towards it, but there are a lot of details to be worked out and we'll have to wait and see how all that plays out in the legislative process."

Jacob Toporek, executive director of the New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations, expressed skepticism about the prospect for school vouchers.

Although his organization does not take a position on this issue, Toporek said that the current fiscal climate would make it difficult politically to enact such changes.

"It seems to me that it would be difficult to do that," he said of enacting a school voucher program. "How do we justify cuts to social organizations and make those kinds of allocations?"