Grassroots school-choice backers build on court success

A grassroots movement to expand school choice in Missouri is gathering momentum in our state's urban areas, home to two of the most troubled inner-city school systems in America.

Much of the ferment is coming from Kansas City, where grassroots leaders are looking beyond the cliches and pat answers of the Education Establishment to demand more options in how their children are to be schooled.

The creation, at the national level, of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, an organization of African Americans, is one of the promising developments of the last couple of years.

A chapter of BAEO has formed in Kansas City and is joined by allies in the newer, rapidly growing Hispanic community, who have formed their own organization to push for school choice, as well.

Key to the latter group is the energetic Sandy Mayer, a principled leader who shows every sign of being an activist on a mission for the cause of giving parents more choices.

Sandy Mayer is bringing the national leader among Hispanics in promoting school choice, one Robert Aguirre, to Kansas City Aug. 2 for a series of meetings among parents and choice supporters.

In St. Louis, birthplace of the school-choice movement back in 1959, tireless supporters Martin and Mae Duggan are planning a big Sept. 28 dinner celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court decision confirming that school-choice vouchers are constitutional.

New allies and converts from among the ranks of public-school superintendents are joining our ranks.

Foremost among these is former superintendent Diana Bourisaw of St. Louis, a private consultant and widely respected educator with national connections. Bourisaw was key to helping this writer and leaders of the Church of God in Christ, a rapidly growing African American denomination, to start two new schools in the troubled inner-city of St. Louis last summer. At dinner last week, she told me she is more committed to this effort than ever.

Next month will find this writer at a meeting in Orlando, Fla. with the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Rodney Paige. Sources report that the only person more committed to school choice in the current administration than President Bush is Secretary Paige.

With support building at the grassroots, with the stamp of constitutionality from the nation's highest court and a sympathetic national administration, one senses we are on the verge of major breakthroughs, if not in Missouri then in another state.

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Update on lawsuit against Holden: Aug. 21 is the date for the appellate hearing on the lawsuit (Kinder et al. vs. Holden) filed by this writer, joined by a broad coalition of Missourians, against our governor. The suit seeks to overturn the governor's June 2001 executive order establishing collective bargaining for state workers. We're in the Western District Court of Appeals in Kansas City that day, on appeal from the Circuit Court of Cole County.

Implicated in my lawsuit are constitutional issues of the utmost gravity. As the Springfield News-Leader reminded the governor, he was elected governor -- not king. I continue to be optimistic that we will succeed in restoring the proper constitutional balance by getting a court to agree that this order must be overturned.

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.