Pro-Voucher Group Delays Ballot Drive : Education: Poll finds voters still oppose spending tax money on private schools, wealthy foundation says. Teachers union hails decision.

Concluding that a majority of California voters remain opposed to spending tax money to support private schools, the main group pressing for a statewide voucher plan has decided to pull the plug on its ballot initiative drive until at least 1998.

The American Education Reform Foundation, a group backed by the billionaire scion of the Wal-Mart store fortune and a wealthy San Francisco Bay Area investment banker, had tried to fashion a voucher initiative that would gain broad support among voters to avoid the massive defeat suffered at the polls by pro-voucher forces in 1993.

On Tuesday, however, the San Diego-based group announced that its polling data showed that voters were not yet ready to back its efforts, in part because they remain soured on vouchers as a result of the bitter campaign mounted by opponents in that election. The group also said that a 1996 ballot measure would have to compete for voters’ attention with the presidential campaign.

Although a San Francisco group is still trying to put a voucher proposal on the 1996 ballot, that organization has minor financial backing and is given little chance of success.

Eugene Ruffin, president of the San Diego-based foundation, said his group will instead mount an aggressive campaign over the next three years to persuade California voters that radical measures are needed to pull public education out of a tailspin.

“We know that, given the time, the facts are on our side,” Ruffin said. “We want to make sure we have a real chance of winning. We don’t think it is good for our movement, in the state or the nation, to lose.”

Although the foundation had yet to file an initiative with the state or begin gathering signatures to get it on the ballot, its wealthy backers made public school educators worry that it would have made a formidable opponent in a voucher fight.

John Walton, a San Diego boat builder and billionaire, and William E. Oberndorf, a Bay Area investor and money manager, had reportedly been willing to spend $20 million or more to back a voucher initiative aimed at giving lower-income children access to private schools. Led by the California Teachers Assn., opponents of such measures had spent $24 million in 1993 to defeat Proposition 174.

The decision by Walton’s group to pull out of the fight for now brought expressions of relief from public school educators.

“We’re elated, we’re excited,” said Barbara Kerr, secretary-treasurer of the teachers union. “It offers us the opportunity to continue working to improve public schools instead of wasting time, money and teachers’ energy on something that doesn’t help children and doesn’t help public schools.”

State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin agreed that the group’s decision to hold off until at least 1998 was good news. But she said it should not deter public schools from seeking to improve.

“We’re going to try and give them genuine change for the better . . . and forestall this thing for many more years,” Eastin said. “I don’t think the pressure is off a bit.”

The teachers union and other education groups oppose vouchers because they fear they would drain crucial financial resources and other types of support from public schools.

The initiative written by the foundation tried to address that concern by guaranteeing that public schools would not be hurt financially. The group also had sought to design a voucher plan that would not subsidize private school tuitions for wealthy parents. And a third element of its plan would have required private schools accepting vouchers to be accredited.

But the attempt to strike a middle ground failed to gain support from many voucher backers, including the Bay Area group.

That group, which is dominated by Libertarians and religious school operators, has filed a voucher initiative with the secretary of state that is similar to Proposition 174 and would make $3,000 stipends available to all students. They have five months to gather the 600,000 valid signatures necessary to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, who heads that group, remains undeterred by the foundation’s decision to delay its fight. But he predicted it will take at least $10 million to win.

“If we raise the money, there is no question we are going to win,” he said. “The question is, is the public going to support this drive financially.”