Attorney General Steven Rowe has advised the state’s department of education and public schools that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing parents in Cleveland, Ohio, to use tuition vouchers to send their children to religious schools does not apply in Maine. For now, Mr. Rowe is correct.

The Supreme Court’s decision, by a 5-4 vote, concerned only the Ohio law, which allows such vouchers, whereas Maine law prohibits them. The majority justices made it clear that their ruling had no bearing on laws such as Maine’s. Further, the majority emphasized compelling factors that made the Ohio case special: Cleveland’s school system had been deemed as failing by a federal-state assessment; the voucher program specifically targeted low-income families without the money to pay the entire cost of private-school tuition or the time to wait for Cleveland to provide their children with good public educations.

Comparing Cleveland and Maine, then, is like comparing apples and pears – overall similarities with distinctly different specifics, which means the matter is far from settled here. Maine voucher advocates are encouraged by the Supreme Court ruling – if a law allowing these vouchers is constitutional, the argument that one prohibiting them is not grows stronger, especially now that the Supreme Court says low income should not be a bar to quality education.

Beyond more legal challenges to the Maine law, the court decision ensures that changing Maine’s voucher law will be a hot topic for the next Legislature and, before that, during the coming campaigns for the Legislature and governor. Vouchers have been brought up in campaigns before, but only in the context of discussing in theory something presumed unconstitutional.

This time it will be for real and voters should expect candidates to address real issues.

Such as money. Vouchers are expensive; the major costs of running a school – buildings, staff, transportation – do not decrease merely because 5 or 8 or 10 percent of the students go elsewhere. In the 1998-99 school year, the Cleveland program for 3,700 students added $13.8 million to Ohio’s education budget (not added, actually – the money was taken from elsewhere in the education budget) and next year it is expected to top $16 million. What part of Maine’s education budget will pro-voucher candidates tap, or what tax will they increase, to fund a voucher program here?

And local control. The reason the Ohio legislature passed a law pertaining only to Cleveland is that constituents elsewhere in the state were appalled at the prospect of having their good local schools swamped by students from failing schools. The law makes the voucher option available to Cleveland suburbs; in six years, not one suburb has signed on. Will a Maine voucher program force participation, or will this escape hatch from bad schools be open only to those lucky enough to have welcoming neighbors?

Of course, the burden of specific answers is not just on pro-voucher candidates. The new federal “Leave No Child Behind” law on education standards already has designated several Maine schools as failing. If there is no escape hatch, what do these candidates propose to make escape unnecessary?