"Stick 'em up, kid-hand over your school!"

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"CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PAY RAISE... IT SHOULD JUST ABOUT PAY FOR THIS YEAR'S TEACHING SUPPLIES."

The voucher fraud is back again, this time under the title, "Parental Choice Scholarships" initiative. Hustlers are out on the streets collecting petitions to place this disgrace on the November 1992 ballot in California.

It would be a constitutional amendment because it would require using public school funds for private and religious schools. The initiative transfers funds directly out of the public schools and offers a "scholarship" voucher that can be claimed by any student attending a private school, with no accountability placed on the school.

If a "Tammy Faye Bakker's Christian Elementary School for Cosmetics and Music" had pupils, they could get their share of public school funds. Or a "David Duke Elementary School of Hype and Hyperbole" could also stick their slimy hands into children's pockets and pull out $2500 for their " white students only" school.

It's a sure bet that if this bunco initiative is passed, "fast buck" artists like Bakker and Duke By would open their private school doors the very next week.

Parents of public school children are critical of the education their children are receiving, and every school district across the country is papering the country with this year's latest improvement plan, which usually includes fighting school fund cutbacks by laying off more teachers, office personnel, librarians, school nurses, social service workers, etc.

In other words, as far as educating our children, they are fighting off a tidal wave of funding cuts with a sieve. So every year educational standards go down and the right-wing religious sharks await the final sinking of the public educational system with "voucher initiatives".

What would it take to save our schools and educate our children? First put teachers in the class rooms. That helps! Lower the class size to no more than 20. With 20, rather than 40 children per class, the teacher would actually get to know each of her or his pupils and their needs. Every school should have after-school recreation and remedial classes with qualified, credentialed teachers.

Every elementary school should have attached to it an early childhood development center. These centers should be open to all children, regardless of family income, from the age of two. These centers should have qualified, early childhood developmental-credentialed teachers.

All schools should have free meals, free medical care, free transportation, and parent education classes. Schools should stay open until six o'clock for the convenience of working parents.

They should be bi-lingual and include all of the arts, music, dance, and sports, such as gymnastics, etc., free! This would give our children a very early knowledge of the workings of their wonderful young bodies and minds. It would encourage them to keep themselves healthy forever.

The majority of children in public schools are being raised by one or two working parents. These parents need an expanded support system to help them raise healthy, well-educated children. Only the public schools can provide it.

Unlike the 1930s and '40s, when most jobs required less skills in math, language and science, today's job market requires far higher knowledge and skills. Most youngsters did not graduate from high school in the '30s and '40s, but managed to make a living and support a family as blue collar workers. Not today. It almost takes a college degree to get through door any job.

What's wrong with the system? The ruling class of this country wants to take back the social gains won by working people in great class battles.

Workers fought for federallyfunded social support systems, like compulsory education through public schools, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and medical care.

These reforms were originally designed to make the capitalists pay for programs intended to guarantee that every child, every sick person, every senior citizen, every worker thrown on the scrap heap of the unemployed, had a fighting chance to survive in this dog-eat-dog capitalist world.

Now, the ruling class is trying to cut back on all of these gains, especially public education for our children. They want to place the burden of education directly on the family. They want to take public school tax monies and give them to the rich in the form of even more tax breaks.

That's why we now have the "voucher" initiative. They are trying to get thousands of signatures to put what is really a child-abuse initiative on the ballot. It will amount to a mass escalation of child-victimization to allow only those who can afford it to get a decent education.

If approved, the rest of our children-working class children-will have to scramble for class seats in even more overcrowded, unhealthy, dangerous schools. JUST SAY NO! to the voucher initiative.