Tim Niedfeldt has left a new comment on your post "A School for Gunn with My Tax Dollars: When Privat...":
Your analysis is woefully inaccurate. You clearly know nothing of the voucher program. The bible AND Catechism are taught just as in any WELS LES. I'd suggest you avoid such spurious claims unless you have actually been involved with the schools named.
The only caveat to being a voucher recipient is that a voucher student is allowed to opt out of religious instruction and events (such as singing in church) if desired. With that caveat noted you should then check all the WELS voucher schools in Milwaukee and see how many students actually take advantage of that option. Of the 4 schools I am knowledgeable about representing 800 voucher students of where approximately only 17% of the students are WELS to begin with, there are exactly 0 (ZERO) students who have opted out.
As to the nature of salvation via the blessed state. Again you are wrong. As unfortunate as it is that anyone would vote for the likes of Oblahma. Probably 99.5 percent of voucher families did. This also includes their local democratic representatives in this depressingly uneducated and liberal town of Milwaukee. These very recipients of the vouchers voted AGAINST their bread and butter.
Vouchers are a Republican program. Democrats hate the voucher program. It takes money away from public schools. It has the taste of capitalism and competitiveness that goes against their socialist ways. It undermines one of the largest contributors to the WI Democratic party...WEAC...the teachers union.
I'd suggest you check the broad brush you paint with before you say that my son is not getting as good or better religious instruction and catechism in a voucher school than they did attending the nice suburban school he used to be in. That's why, although vouchers will never come my way, I'm willing to pay to send my kids to the same schools.
Personally, I believe those WELS schools lacking funding just lack the spirit and proverbial Kahonas it takes to dedicate themselves to the mission of Christian education. The money is there ...foundation support or not. You just need to want it (the christian education). The problem is that those in the particular struggling WELS schools, which is an indicator of a struggling church, simply don't recognize the value of a Christian education. If that is not first and foremost then who wants to support it well. You may as well send them to the public school where at least they can do pottery and home ec in 7th grade and the computer lab is spiffy. If they don't have the commitment to the cause then they should close down and invest the savings in a good afterschool/extracurricular christian education program to address the religious education of their kids. These are not times for those who are only half-hearted for a mission.
So stop feeling sorry for those poor poor churches and schools who aren't getting their funding. It would sound that we wouldn't want anymore foundation bastard children out there anyways so why complain as to where it goes. You could say these schools are saving the rest of the synod from being dependent on the money ;-)
Just as a financial crisis for this country should jar people back to prudent committed action so will the ensuing crisis in the WELS churches. A good test of the spirit.
Tim Niedfeldt
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GJ - I agree about the financial meltdown ultimately helping WELS get back to frugal spending habits and honesty in accounting. I find it odd that Jeske pretends to be successful yet needs a $250,000 grant. And Parlow needs a life-coaching grant for $50,000. I guess that proves he needs a life-coach. As far as I know, life-coaches are people who never do anything except tell people how to be successful. Something like Church and Change leaders.
I just presented some information which was new to me. I am sure that anything Gunn does will have the blessing of the ever-watchful Arizona-Californa-Las Vegas District of WELS.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A School for Gunn with My Tax Dollars: When Privat...":
BC, you are ignorant of some facts. My kids attended parochial schools in AZ. We were able to take advantage of vouchers. GJ knows this because he lives in AZ. Funny he left that out. (re: Eagle Prep)
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GJ - What I know about children in Arizona's schools is quite limited, due to my age. What Mouse knows about what I know is even more limited, unless he can read my mind and judge my heart.
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From a former WELS member, who knows about this stuff:
The voucher issue has been lurking around for decades. Vouchers are designed to entice what is left of private and Christian schools into the net of government education agenda, for what government funds it also regulates and rightly so, even though channeled through parents. After all, shouldn't there be accountability from government re: money spent? Eventually vouchers become addictive for the private school accepting them, for it is very easy to become accustomed to the revenue stream provided by them.
WELS has always lusted after the almighty government education dollar. Does anyone remember the controversy in the mid 1970's when several families were excommunicated from WELS congregation in suburban Milwaukee, for publicly protesting government grants to Milwaukee Lutheran High School and the media headlines it generated? The doctrinal statement in effect then said WELS does not seek government funding for her schools. OOOPS! The defense was that they didn't "seek" the grants, they were "offered" to them! There was a civil lawsuit eventually filed in Wisconsin by one of the excommunicated families re: church/ state issue.
