Danielle Dreilinger, The Times-Picayune
Louisiana voucher assignments were scheduled to be mailed to parents and schools this week. But they will be delayed until April 21, as a result of the latest court order in a politically charged lawsuit pitting the U.S. Justice Department against the state Department of Education.
U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle on Tuesday issued the order outlining information that the state must provide for the Justice Department to monitor the program, which the federal government contends might have worsened public school segregation. The Education Department must disclose data on voucher applicants and the private schools they are assigned to attend 10 days before alerting families and schools.
State Education Superintendent John White announced the delay to April 21 in a Wednesday letter to voucher schools. He painted it as a minor annoyance. “This will not significantly impede the program,” he wrote.
New Orleans voucher enrollment is handled through the OneApp process that manages signup for most of the city’s public schools. Those public school match announcements will still be sent out this week.
The new reporting requirements for the voucher program also push back and shorten the second round of voucher enrollment by one week. Applications now will be available April 21, not April 14, with a May 9 deadline.
“We do not anticipate any further delays or negative consequences for schools and parents,” White wrote.
Jan Lancaster, superintendent of metro New Orleans Roman Catholic schools, was not concerned. “We understand with the growing program that there can be administrative challenges,” she said.
The voucher program, officially the Louisiana Scholarship Program, lets low-income students attend participating private schools at public expense. They must be entering kindergarten or now attending C-, D- or F-rated public schools.
About 6,750 students participated this year. Education Department spokesman Barry Landry said Wednesday that application numbers are up for 2014-15.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder originally sought to block voucher assignments altogether in 33 parishes that remain under long-standing school desegregation orders, unless a federal judge first cleared the assignments. By the time of the November court hearing, however, Holder had downgraded the request and asked only that the state provide information about the program.
Lemelle agreed to that in November. Since then, the parties have been hammering out the specifics, arguing over such things as the exact timelines and the definition of “African American.”
In the end, Lemelle came down on the state’s side. For each round of voucher awards, Louisiana must submit a list of participants with demographic information at least 10 days before sending voucher matches to families. The Justice Department had requested 45 days’ notice.
Lemelle also decided, contrary to the Justice Department’s request, that the state need not submit analyses of how the voucher program affects segregation in public schools. And he exempted the state from naming the public schools to which students would have been assigned in their home school system. There is a generous amount of time granted to report actual voucher enrollees each fall: six weeks after the state finalizes student counts.
In addition, the state must submit an annual list of all its public schools and their performance scores, as well as documentation showing voucher schools do not discriminate by race.
Gov. Bobby Jindal, a would-be candidate for president in 2016, has made political hay of the Justice Department’s suit from the start. He will not appeal Lemelle’s latest decision, considering it a victory.
He said he was “pleased that the court did not issue a ruling that would obstruct the state’s established process of awarding school choice scholarships.” Voucher advocates feared the monitoring requirements would be so onerous and time-consuming they would essentially end the program.
White also characterized Lemelle’s order as a victory, writing, “We are grateful and proud to have overcome another hurdle in our continued mission to provide every Louisiana family the ability to choose the schools that will best prepare their children for lifetimes of success.”
Other voucher proponents praised the developments. They expressed relief the delay wasn’t longer.
“Though we would have preferred to see minimal federal oversight on this program, a 10-day deadline for review of applicants is not overwhelmingly onerous,” said Eric Lewis, Louisiana director of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. The group had sought to intervene on the state’s side on behalf of voucher parents. “Our main concern was that the program not be burdened with unnecessary red tape, and we believe this ruling is a strong deterrent to that threat.”
Lewis said he hadn’t heard much concern from families in the program. The voucher law survived a 2013 state Supreme Court constitutionality challenge; Lewis was in Baton Rouge Wednesday preparing to testify against bills that would limit voucher eligibility. “There’s always threats to the program,” he said. “I think people have come to expect it.”
Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, said Lemelle’s order “takes a lot of the teeth out of the Department of Justice’s original efforts to block the Louisiana Scholarship Program.”
But Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who is running for governor, said the decision was still too intrusive. It “only brings federal bureaucrats into Louisiana children’s personal lives,” he said.
Holder, however, also painted the decision as a win. “We welcome the court’s order as it rejects the state’s bid to resist providing even the most basic information about how Louisiana’s voucher program will affect school desegregation efforts,” the attorney general said.