A Parish Offering

By Mark Walsh

Fourteen years ago, two middle-class suburban mothers began asking if it was right that public school children had to start an hour early so school buses would be available to transport students to private and parochial schools.

"They had door-to-door transportation," Mary "Neva" Helms, recalls of the free bus service provided at the time by the Jefferson Parish, La., school district to private school children in this large suburban area outside New Orleans.

Helms and her friend Marie Schneider, who had met at PTA meetings and other public school functions, began researching the issue and were surprised by the various forms of state and federal aid that benefited private and...