Of the 31 Catholic schools in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, 19 are educating a combined 423 voucher students, and the system overall is ready to accept and teach more, diocesan Superintendent Melanie Verges told state Superintendent of Education John White this morning.
“I have some schools with waiting lists in every grade,” Verges said prior to the meeting at the Catholic Schools Office on South Acadian Thruway between White and principals of the 19 schools currently educating voucher students. “But we do hope to have some more schools come on every year.”
White, who was in Houma on Tuesday, is on a tour of schools and communities around the state to learn firsthand how educators, students and parents are dealing with the new voucher system, in which 119 schools began participating this fall.
Some principals complained that the voucher system—approved by the Legislature this past session—was untimely, coming after schools typically register students in February and March.
Verges also notes that the burden on schools to verify the financial background of families to qualify students for vouchers “was sort of out of our realm.”
White acknowledges the system wasn’t perfected before final approval, but says repairs can be made to the structure of vouchsafing thousands of voucher students.
“Had it not been for you, thousands of students wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” White says.
Almost every principal that spoke this morning noted how astonished many voucher parents were at the level of engagement teachers have with their children.
Jose Becerra, principal of St. Thomas Aquinas High School, says there was “an awakening” among parents and students when he and other educators discussed test scores with them. They had come from receiving no feedback to the other end of the spectrum.
Another principal noted how a parent wanted to take her child out of school because the homework was too hard, but the principal convinced the parent otherwise.
“They sent their kid to school, and the school sent them home,” Bern Legendre, principal of St. John Interparochial High School in Plaquemine, says of her voucher students’ previous education, “and they didn’t have homework.”
However, Legendre says now the parents of those students are calling the school “and asking, ‘What can I do to help my child?’ ”
Verges and the principals acknowledged that the majority of voucher students are below average in reading ability. But the shortcoming hasn’t affected the education of any of the students in their schools.
“They do exactly what they need to do to help those students,” says Erica Walker, principal of Redemptorist Elementary School, noting the school already had a reading lab in place to tutor students lagging in reading standards.
Some parents of students that were already in the schools were apprehensive at first about voucher students attending their schools, principals acknowledged. But that apprehension faded when those parents realized they couldn’t distinguish the voucher students from the non-voucher students.
Other parents, however, felt they were failed by the voucher system because they themselves had gone to great financial lengths—such as taking out a loan—to enable their children to attend a Catholic school, Verges says.
“There should be some mechanism where they can go back in the hopper,” Verges says. “We also know that we can make room.”
