22
LIBERTY
test scores in the various subjects remained
roughly equivalent.
Not to be outdone, the Milwaukee pro-
gram also has had its share of problems and
“invisible” students. For example, Adrian 1.
Hipp. founder and former executive director
of a Milwaukee “alternative” school, was
found guilty of falsifving attendance records
to receive a $42,000 overpavment under the
Wisconsin school voucher program.
Circuit court judge Michael J.
Barron decided in an August 1997
ruling that 90 students that Hipp
said attended his Exito High
School did not exist. In addi-
tion. Hipp supplied state offi-
cials with names of teachers
and courses that were entirely
fictional, and as the school’s
financial difficulties escalated
he garnisheed bank accounts
and paid school employees
with money orders. Hipp,
“When
a religion
That became clear this August after an
audit of schools participating in the voucher
program bv the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair
Housing Council, a government agency that
seeks to ensure compliance with civil rights
laws. When the voucher program was written
into law in 1995, the law required that schools
accepting the tunds could not impose addi-
tional tees on students, had to accept stu-
dents randomly, and had to allow students
the opportunity not to attend the
school's religious activities.
Despite these limited and unam-
biguous requirements, the coun-
¢il's audit discovered a number
of mnstances mn which schools
illegally charged excess tees to
voucher students, examples of
improper screening and selee-
tion of applicants, and the vio-
lation of the religious free-
doms of students” families by
discouraging parents from
*
meanwhile, claimed that he 1S good, opting their children out of
knew nothing of the fraudu- ) religious services.
lent documents. Il conceive The more common the
Untortunately Hipp wasn't cases of fraud and legal trans-
~ * * .
the only example of voucher it will pressions become, the greater
fraud in Milwaukee. Frederick the certainty that the govern-
Hampton, the founder of ment will feel it necessary to
ami support ! necessary
Milwaukee Prepatory, a school regulate the religious stitu-
participating in the voucher . ye tions that receive public
itself.
program, was charged with
defrauding the state of thou-
sands of dollars by lying about
the age of 10 students so they
would remain eligible for reim-
bursement from the state. As a
result, authorities issued an arrest warrant tor
Hampton, who himself went ito hiding for a
vear, leaving his school to close in February
1996 and the school’s students left temporar-
ily in the cold.
The state said the school received more
than $317,000 in public funds for 273 swu-
dents, 10 of which were ineligible because
they were too young. One parent told author-
ities she attended a meeting at which
Hampton advised parents of 3-vear-olds to
misrepresent their children’s ages as 4 so the
school could get the voucher aid.
Further complicating the voucher contro-
versy, some of the few regulations that were
imposed on the private schools in Milwaukee
appear to have been ignored.
SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004
BENIMIN FRANKEIN
money. Effective governing
and public accountability
would require nothing less.
The answer 1s not to ask
the state to be less accountable
for our tax dollars and main-
tain a high tolerance for fraud and abuse.
Rather, the answer is for religious institutions
to avoid feeding at the public trough. severing
the ties between the two institutions for the
benenit of both,
Perhaps those who prefer to remove a
brick or two trom the wall that separates
church and state in the United States would
do well to remember the prudent observation
of Benjamin Franklin nearly two centuries
d80,
“When a religion is good, 1 conceive it will
support itself,” Franklin said, “and when it
does not support itself, and God does not take
care to support it so that its professors are
obliged to call tor help of the civil power. “tis a
sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one”