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Sept. 20, 2022 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:35:06
20220920_a-deep-dive-on-school-choice-and-education-freedom
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School Choice and Charter Schools 00:14:53
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
Today, we're bringing you an episode I've been wanting to do for a long time on this show because it impacts every single one of us in one way or another.
Today, we're going to discuss education in America and specifically school choice.
Why do you basically have to go to the public school in which you pay taxes?
Why aren't there more options for most parents?
Who's stopping it and why?
And how can we get around them?
Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on our public education system every year, and yet America's students are falling way behind.
It's pathetic where our country is right now in the international rankings.
Pathetic.
Our issues were certainly made worse by COVID, but it's not actually a new problem.
We were falling behind even before COVID.
A 2018 survey found the United States ranked 22nd, 22nd in the world when it comes to reading, math, and science scores.
Guess where the Chinese are?
Number one, we're not even close.
It's ridiculous.
Some argue the solution is more options for parents.
But critics of school choice say, well, it sounds like a good idea.
It's got a nice, shiny name.
But in reality, it's a scam that benefits rich people and screws over the poor.
So we're going to take a deep dive.
What's true?
What's working?
What's not?
We have some experts here, and we've got some parents here whose kids have lost the school choice lottery here in New York.
It is absolutely cruel what we're putting families through.
This is the worst-run city, one of them at least.
They just don't give a damn about the children here.
And God forbid, your child do well in the K-08 system when they apply to the high school, they're effed.
They will be punished for having done well.
Their good grades are a sign that they need to be transported from a nice school district into one that's struggling so that averages can go up.
I mean, we'll get into all of it.
Parents also will be joining us today who've had to make the difficult decision to pull their kids out of public school, pay the hefty fees for private education, and how some governors in the nation, though not enough, are helping to make that easier now for parents.
The politics at play are also always a factor.
The teachers union, Randy Weingarten, and we'll discuss some solutions and where we go from here, what you should be advocating in your school district.
So we begin the program with Ray DeMonico.
He's Director of Education Policy at the Manhattan Institute, which we love.
Ray, thank you so much for being here.
Happy to be here.
All right, so let's just go school choice 101.
When I grew up, I didn't know there was anything other than my public school that they had to take me because my parents paid taxes.
There were some Catholic schools in my neighborhood.
And there was one independent school, one private school where all the fancy rich kids went.
But if you were not rich, you did not go to that school.
And so you were kind of stuck.
You know, you would just go to the district that you lived in, and that was the end of the matter.
Now, there are a few more options for parents in a school district like mine that include a charter school, potentially, a magnet school.
So let's just start with those two things.
What's a charter school?
So charter schools are publicly funded schools, but they're privately designed and run.
The impetus for the creation of charter schools really was a concern for the kids who were stuck in inner city schools that were incredibly underperforming.
I spent 40 years in my career working in and around New York City schools.
You're right.
New York City has deep problems right now, but it always wasn't this way.
There wasn't time when things were improving and it was because of school choice.
In 2001, 2002, Mayor Bloomberg, newly elected, got control of the school system.
And he got rid of the legislature, got rid of the political board of education.
And Bloomberg and the chancellors that he appointed, that's what we call superintendents here, had a very aggressive program of closing low-performing schools, largely in lower-income neighborhoods of color, and replacing them.
They started new charter schools.
They supported the growth of charter schools.
We have over 12% of the students in New York City are in charter schools, and the parents love them.
The group that's done the best in those schools are African-American kids.
They way outperform their peers by three to one in public schools.
And so, you know, this was information that the problem wasn't the kids, it was the schools, right?
So choice really started as a public policy to help those most in need.
But there have always been other forms of choice.
People with the means to do so would often move to the suburbs, where, quite frankly, the public schools were pretty good back in the day.
And then some obviously would use private or religious schools.
So, you know, what's going on now is that, so for example, in New York State, we had a mayor who came after Bloomberg de Blasio.
He tried to overturn everything due to a state legislative action.
We can no longer open new charter schools in New York City, despite thousands and thousands of people being on waiting lists.
Yep, and that we just saw a lawsuit in New York over that because there were two high-performing K-8 charter schools that all they wanted to do was form a unified high school.
They said, why don't we get together and, you know, why stop at eight?
Let's make a nine through 12 school that combines our two charter schools.
And the teachers union sued and said, no, you can't do that.
No, you'll go over the cap.
And thank God they won.
The charter schools won, because the court said that the expansion into high school of existing charter schools does not violate the cap.
But the reason there's a cap on charter schools is because of the Democratic leadership of de Blasio.
And the reason he instituted that cap is because of the teachers' unions, right?
So what do they care?
Why do the teachers' unions not want charter schools?
Yeah, the union has great sway in Albany.
They're the most powerful block in Albany and have been for a long time.
And the Democrats control all the two houses of the legislature and the governor's office right now.
It comes down to jobs.
Enrollment in New York City is down.
Charter schools have been growing for 20 years.
As I say, there's over 130,000 students in charter schools right now.
Meanwhile, public school enrollment has dipped for a number of reasons.
One is simply fewer kids are being born, but also people are leaving the state.
And so, you know, they don't, they see this as coming after their jobs.
And they've been able to convince the legislature that public education should serve its employees, not its children.
How is it that we can avoid union teachers in charter schools?
Because they are privately run, they don't bring in the existing union contract, at least not in New York State.
That may differ in some other states across the country.
All private sector employees have the right to try to unionize.
We can't block that, but it really hasn't taken off in charter schools.
And that's a good question to ask the unions rather than trying to block the creation of new charter schools.
If you think you have a product that's so good, why aren't you able to organize teachers in charter schools?
The unions can't stand the charter schools, even though, as you say, okay, over 130,000 kids in New York City, but aren't there over just over a million kids in school in New York City, right?
So it's like, it's not that big a percentage.
Why, you know, you'd think the union would say it's something that we have to live with and maybe it alleviates some of the burden that they're always telling us they're under.
Yeah, New York City is a very diverse city in terms of its school population.
As you know, we have a lot of private and religious schools in New York City.
There are over 110,000 kids in Jewish schools in New York City.
That's another issue, but we also have the prep schools and whatnot.
So a good percentage of kids are in the private schools.
And then, you know, the charters are drawing these other kids.
But the enrollment in the traditional public school system is actually down to 800,000 students right now.
A lot of that's happened in the last two years because of COVID.
But they are losing population and the state is losing population.
And so that's a problem for our leaders in Albany and in City Hall to think about why are they driving parents away?
People weren't necessarily leaving just because of the poor performance of these schools.
I mean, over the past two years, what's happened?
COVID, right?
They were closed.
I mean, one of my dearest friends has had her children in the New York City public schools, and they could very well send their kids to private schools.
They chose.
They're Upper West Side liberals.
They were like, we're committed to the public school system.
We're going to send our kids to the public schools.
And then their schools were closed from March of 2020, basically through the entire next school year.
And I've told the story before, but they showed up at it.
They finally, these Joe Biden campaigning Upper West Side liberals finally showed up to a small open the schools rally, just saying like, please open the schools.
And they were called white supremacists.
So it's like, that's the experience of too many New York City parents who have decided, yeah, I'm out of here.
I'm no longer ideologically committed to these schools, which weren't that great to begin with and now aren't even open.
And then if we finally show up, we're going to call our family white supremacists for wanting the doors to be open.
Right.
There's another thing that happened that I wanted to bring up because it speaks to the issue you raised about kids being caught in lotteries right now.
The other thing that Mayor Bloomberg did was to open up all kinds of schools, not just schools in low-income neighborhoods, but they opened and they gave choice to parents who wanted accelerated learning or they wanted their kids in gifted and talented programs.
A lot of parents want to make sure that their children are surrounded by other children who can keep up with the learning that they required.
And so there were many middle schools and a lot of high schools in New York City.
There were entrance requirements.
So when the Blasio came in, and this happened in places like the Upper West Side and also Park Slope, which has the same political culture that you described on the Upper West Side, people started saying, no, there's something wrong about this.
It's racist.
Now, my position is to deny a child of any race, white or Asian, black or Hispanic, access to an accelerated program does nothing to help the kids in other neighborhoods who are trapped in poor schools.
It's simply, it's unconscionable.
But we've had a lot of that.
There's been an attack in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, Park Slope, this neighborhood that is very Democratic, very liberal, against entrance requirements.
And that's also applied to the high schools.
And that's why in the last two years, a lot of parents unfortunately find themselves, their kids being thrown into a lottery.
So random chance decides where they're going to end up.
The problem with that is that there are many good schools in New York City, but there are also some real stinkers.
And nobody wants their kids by chance to be thrown into one of those schools.
And unfortunately, that's been happening.
Is New York City the only place with such a lottery system?
No, there are others.
There's been a generalized attack across the country on selective schools.
In most cities across the country, this refers to high schools.
New York City was kind of unique doing it at the middle school level.
But in San Francisco, for example, they had a selective high school, Lowell High School.
In a county in Virginia, right outside of Washington, Jefferson High School.
And in Chicago and Boston, there were also selective high schools.
And in each of those localities, there has been push in recent years to get rid of the entrance requirements.
These are all schools which were designed for incredibly advanced students, right?
We have four of them very famous in New York City, and then a couple other smaller ones.
And so there was this push to get rid of these and sort of parcel out these seats.
Parents have fought back, and I'm sure you'll get to that later.
But in San Francisco, for example, parents were able to re-elect a new school board and get rid of the attempt to try and shut down.
There's this generalized attack on merit and achievement in our country today, arguing somehow that those concepts are racist in and of themselves.
How does it, so under Mayor de Blasio over the past couple of years, he's been trying to flood these top, top schools that used to be merit-based with more based on your admission is based on race now, right?
He wants it to be more integrated, he said, irrespective of the academic background of the applicant.
So do we know how that's going?
Like at places like Stuyvesant, right?
That's one of the places in New York, I assume you're referring to.
It's a very, very well-respected public school.
It's like impossible to get into.
But like, if you take a bunch of kids who didn't do well in K through eight and put them in Stuyvesant, they're going to get killed academically, no?
Yeah, there's evidence for that.
Actually, there's a couple of things happened in New York City.
So Stuyvesant High School and Bronx Science and a couple of others, actually, he did try to do something like that, but he couldn't because those schools, as things stand now, are protected by a state law that requires that they only admit kids through an exam.
So they haven't been able to do away with that, but they keep trying.
Interestingly enough, de Blasio tried to create, there is a backdoor to those schools.
If you'd score just below the cutoff, there's always been a program.
It's always been a place where you can go at the recommendation of your middle school principal to summer school in, say, Stuyvesant.
And if the principal there thinks you're up to it, you can get admitted.
De Blasio expanded that, but it backfired on him.
The complaint, by the way, about Stuyvesant is not that it's too white.
It's that it's too Asian, which is a terrible thing for people to say.
But every time de Blasio tried to do something like this, more Asian kids got in.
The Voucher Debate Explained 00:09:57
Because you know why?
The kids who scored just below look just like the kids who scored just above.
They're also Asian.
You can't get away from the damn Asians.
That's like, that's his racism, and people let him get away with it, but he's not the only one.
But the other interesting thing, I mentioned Pork Sloke before, that's where Bill de Blasio raised his kids and where other politicians who all of a sudden thought that selective schools were racist raise their kids.
Interestingly enough, they didn't start this campaign until their kids were over with school.
The selective middle schools were good enough for them and their children, but now they want to deny it to other people.
How do vouchers play into this?
I remember during the George W. Bush years, we had a lot of discussions of vouchers, especially Republicans pushing for those.
And then Obama came in, and it seemed like he was like, maybe some charters, but the one thing I'm not going to get behind is vouchers, hardcore no on vouchers.
You don't hear as much about vouchers like that word today.
I don't know whether it's been replaced with new nomenclature because people thought the old one was too toxic.
But can you spend a minute on vouchers?
Yeah, so unlike charter schools, voucher programs take public money and give it to parents in the form of a voucher or a coupon, and they are free to bring that to private or religious schools of their choosing.
The concept is around.
It is growing.
Arizona just passed a new law.
That's the Arizona thing.
Right.
Because he didn't.
Can I just say Doug Ducey didn't call it a voucher exactly?
That's why I wonder.
There are new words.
There are new labels for it.
Education savings accounts you will hear a lot about.
Okay.
But it basically means the money follows the child.
Money follows the child and not tax credits.
There's a bill introduced in Washington by some Republicans right now to provide income tax credits for people who send their kid to primary religious schools.
But the big news on the voucher or private school choice front is that in a series of rulings over the last few years, most recently this past spring, the Supreme Court has made it clear that if states offer choice to parents, they cannot exclude religious schools simply because they are religious or because they do religious things.
That's going to open up opportunities in some states, which had constant in their state constitutions barred public money going to religious schools.
Right, because people don't know the Constitution doesn't allow the state to discriminate in favor of one religion and against another, but it also doesn't allow the state to discriminate against religion.
And by saying to people in Maine, as they were trying to in this case that went up last term, you can take this money and you can go to any private school you want, just as long as it doesn't say St. Mary's on the front.
You can't take it to a Catholic school or a religious school.
And the high court said that is discriminating against religion.
It's unconstitutional in what could be a really important ruling for the rest of the country.
Yes, I'm sure you know the history on this, but it's worth repeating.
Over 30 states had what were called Blaine amendments that barred money going to religious schools.
And what those amendments were based on was essentially anti-immigrant.
When the immigrants were Irish and Catholic and coming to this country, people got upset and they tried to bar them.
But these are the state constitutional users that the Supreme Court has overruled in the last couple of years.
Now, listen, the people who hate school choice, who love the teachers' unions, who want all of us to send our kids to public school, say there's only one reason that the scores are falling to dreadful levels right now.
And there's one reason that America is 22 and China's number one in terms of how well our kids are doing at math and science and reading.
And that is we don't fund our schools properly.
There's not enough money and that money matters in education.
We're not shelling out enough dough to support, in particular, these struggling school districts.
What do you say to that?
Well, first of all, it's insane.
The evidence is that we've been raising spending tremendously.
New York State proudly leads the nation in per-pupil spending.
Every governor's budget address has that language.
We proudly, you know, we're the top of the heap in terms of spending.
But New York State's achievement compared to the rest of the country, it's right in the middle.
It's at the average.
So we spend the most and we get average results.
The other thing is that we see that charter schools get by with less money.
Don't believe the hype that they get more money than public schools.
I've studied this intensively in New York where we have a very large charter sector.
And it's not true.
Public schools get more money.
And some religious schools get great results with less money being spent.
Money can matter, but simply funding schools to do what they've always been doing does not.
That's what we know.
It matters how you use the money.
And state and large school district bureaucracies are not very good at figuring out how to best spend the money.
That's best left to people who we call entrepreneurs.
That's one of the things that drives the charter school movement.
People start these schools, nonprofits, and they have a burning desire to prove that they're getting the results.
They have to show that they're getting results for the money, and they do.
They figure out how to spend the money right.
The vast majority of the money goes to teachers.
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. in 18 to 19, it were 800 billion.
80% goes to salary and benefits.
So, I mean, I do look at these.
Let's take the inner city schools in Chicago.
Let's take this guy who I met over the weekend who was from Ferguson, Missouri, who said very openly, he was black.
He said, I live in a black community.
I don't have a grocery store.
I don't have a gas station.
I don't have a school with air conditioning or proper heating or conditions.
And, you know, he had a lot of resentments.
I think they were appropriate, probably best directed against the Democrats who have been running cities like Ferguson.
But why?
Why is his school like that?
Why are so many schools like that with the paint chipping?
And then you look at inner city Chicago, if we're devoting so much money to the schools and well-funding teachers according to the stats.
Yeah, so look, education is a people-intensive profession.
Teachers are going to always be a big part of the budget because you need a teacher for every 25 kids or so, right?
But part of the problem that's buried in the statistics that you quoted is that benefits, things like defined benefit pensions, a lot of the public employee pension systems across the country are underfunded right now and they're playing catch up.
So that drives up the cost.
You also have in public school systems, particularly in large cities, you have a tremendous overhead of this bureaucracy that's outside the schools and their monitors and they're measuring compliance with this or that, but it's not doing any good for the schools.
So there's a lot of money that's being wasted away.
But back to the issue of teachers, we have another issue here in New York with the teachers union.
As I said, enrollment has been declining.
And now the governor just signed a bill to cap class size in New York City, New York City alone, at certain numbers and reduce class size.
Again, this will keep more teachers on the payroll, but there are a lot of problems with that.
If your child is in a good school and you're happy with the teachers and they're getting this accelerated learning, you probably don't care that much if there's 28 kids in the classroom rather than 25.
The teacher's good.
The kids are working hard.
They can do well.
But this cap will actually impinge some of those schools because if they have to reduce their class size, they can't serve as many kids.
And it's also going to cost you tremendous amount of money at a time when the city has a $10 billion deficit, according to the New York Times, just today, or will have one in the next couple of years.
Fear not, this mayor will do whatever is best for the teachers union, not the children.
He's way more of a de Blasio than he is a Bloomberg, despite previous hopes of change with Eric Adams.
Ray, thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
Okay, pleasure to be here.
Thank you.
Up next, two parents living a nightmare thanks to the bizarre way America's largest city handles education.
And they speak for a lot of parents.
Standby.
Imagine having a child who excels in academics, who does the time, who puts in the elbow grease to raise his or her grades.
They do extracurricular activities.
They do sports.
And this is at a young age.
We're talking about pre-high school.
They're working it because they see a bright future and they know it takes hard work.
But then when it comes time for them to go to high school, public high school, they are sent far from home to and through unsafe neighborhoods en route.
And then once they land there, into a struggling school and perhaps even forced into a career path at a specialized high school that they don't want to do.
That is the stark reality.
Her parents, not just in New York, but in other cities, but particularly in America's biggest school district, and that is New York City.
Here to tell their stories, two parents, Murad Belkis and Chi Lau.
Guys, thank you so much for being here.
We appreciate it.
These stories are horrifying.
They're horrifying.
And they really bring home not just how frustrating it is to try to navigate the public school system, but how inept the people running it are, how unkind, how cruel they are.
Lottery Numbers and Struggling Schools 00:14:11
And in some instances, how racist they are.
So, Murad, let me just start with you, because as I understand it, you have, you're originally from Algeria, been in New York City 42 years.
You've got older sons, two older sons who went through the New York City public schools.
You're a single dad, and you had a pretty good experience.
You thought, okay, I have a third child, a daughter.
I'm going to do the same thing.
I'll put her through the New York City public schools and should work out fine.
Then came the moment when you had to get a lottery number for her venture into the ninth grade.
And I understand your lottery number was very, very high.
Is it expected to be lower if, as your daughter's grades were, the grades are very high and the student's resume is very strong?
The problem is, first of all, I think the Department of Education has not been honest with us.
I don't believe that the random number is really random.
I don't believe it.
There are cases where people, for instance, who don't have their English as their first language, they have a much lower.
And there are a number of cases that fall into that category.
So I don't believe they are random.
I went to the family center.
I asked the question.
I never got an answer.
I believe if it was truly random, they would have said it's random.
I don't think it's random.
Even though it's random, there are two kinds of school, school and screen, which is pure lottery, and there are screen schools.
Screen school is based on the grades.
Sarah has 100.
Sarah is an honor student.
She even got an award for excellence last June.
So I said, even with a lower for screen, at least she will get one of the 12 choices.
My surprise and my shock, both to me, to her, is that when they send her to CTE program to be a pharmacy technician, a pharmacy technician, I went to family center.
First of all, I think.
Hold on, hold on.
Let me just stop you.
Let me stop you because I want to make sure the audience is with us.
So Sarah's your daughter.
Sarah has perfect grades.
And you do not want Sarah to be a pharmacy technician.
There's nothing wrong with that joke, but it's just not what she wants to be.
And through, she got a very high lottery number.
If you get a lower lottery number, you're in better shape.
She got a very high one.
They say it's random, but you doubt that.
You think they're assigning it based on other things.
And because of her very high lottery number, she doesn't get into just a general high school that prepares you for college.
She gets sent to a technical high school that prepares you to become a pharmacy technician, which at no point in the process did you ever tell anybody Sarah wanted to be.
Isn't that a violation of the Constitution?
But certainly the New York State Constitution, which provides a right to, I think it's a broad general education that would prepare your child for college.
Yes, there was a lawsuit against the state of New York.
I don't remember a couple of years ago, which the Supreme Court specifically said that student, New York State students are entitled to sound basic education.
Yes.
Let's prepare them to college.
That's right.
So you...
And also, and also ESSA, which is a federal legislation, forbid any education institution to use income as a factor for admission.
So if you have money, they're not supposed to give your child a terrible lottery number just because she may have more money than somebody who doesn't have as much.
That's not okay under federal law.
Federal legislation forbid that.
And I did request the Department of Education three times to provide me with the criteria used in classifying my daughter in the various admission priorities.
I never got a reply.
I mean, that could be bureaucracy because you never get a reply from anyone when you're dealing with administrative.
I am going to get a reply because even if I had to file a lawsuit, because I need that information, not for me, because for my daughter, it's too late, but at least for future families.
I think it's overall what the Department of Education is doing.
What happened when your daughter found out she was going to the pharmacy tech high school?
She was crying.
She was falling apart.
That's actually a few days after she received the certificate, award of excellence from high middle school.
And what break my heart was when she told me, you see, you insist on getting good grade.
They are worthless.
And in New York State, they are worthless.
And that's sad.
What do you think they're prioritizing?
Do you think they're prioritizing lower income kids or kids of a certain racial background?
The sad thing, I am from Algeria.
I am an immigrant.
If I knew this would happen, I would not have taught my children and made an effort to have them integrate into American way of life.
I should have taught them Arabic.
I should have taught them French.
And English become a secondary language for them.
Then she would have much higher priority.
Oh, wow.
When you put it that way, it really brings it home.
The battles on the ground.
People who don't speak English, people whose parents who don't make an effort to have their children integrate to American way of life get much higher priority, much better priority.
Wow.
So what is she doing now?
Is she at the pharmacy tech school?
No.
Now I put her in school without war.
It's not very good until I sell my apartment to move out of New York State.
So you're going to move.
That's the only option left to you.
Yes.
For at least to provide a better education.
Yeah, so many parents are in the same boat.
Private school in New York is almost $60,000 a year.
It's like, you can't afford that.
I went to the Department of Education.
You know what they tell you?
I think they follow script.
And I think they are very rude.
They are very unhelpful.
And sometimes they insult our intelligence.
And I think it's topless.
Wow.
You're not the only one to feel that way.
There are so many kids looking to get into some of these other charter schools or better schools who cannot.
Yeah.
And the odd thing is that I received the article last week, an email from one of the Department of Education saying that they have to boost the registration because apparently registration in New York City is dropping.
Aren't they aware why?
Good family are moving out of the state of New York because of how unfairly their kids have been treated.
It's amazing because in so many districts, we just take it for granted that if our kids will wind up at a suitable school, it may not be the best school, but a suitable school that will prepare them for life, not a specialized school that prepares them for a career they may or may not want.
Let me stand you by because I want to bring in Chi and get his story, which dovetails a little bit to your own.
So Chi, you have a story about your son, who similar to Sarah, worked hard, got good grades, extracurricular activities.
Tell us a little bit about Zach.
Zachary is a 97 student, three-year National Junior Honor Society.
He just had an art show on East 5th Street in the middle of August.
He has basketball, tennis.
I've always been very, very happy and grateful that I feel best to have a good kid.
And I always assumed that he wouldn't be a problem when we apply for high school and college, but this has turned into a real absolute nightmare.
So can you relate to some of what we just heard in terms of the application process and not trusting the information and what happened with your lottery situation?
Well, again, same story.
We got a very high or quote-unquote bad lottery number that we didn't, you know, we didn't apply for.
We didn't, they don't really tell you what you have to do to get this lottery number, right?
If it's a matter of, hey, you got to get online, you got to fill out an application, you got to do something, I would do it.
You know, I would wake up early and get online or do whatever I have to do.
But they somehow just assigned this lottery number that I don't know how, who, or when, or where it came from.
And yeah, you're going.
And here's the funny thing.
They assigned my son to FDNY, which is in East New York.
It's a good 70.
I took the trip myself.
It's a good 75 minutes away from my house here in Mass Transit.
But initially, they were insisting that it was only 50 minutes away because they would go on the MTA website and track it during times of slow traffic.
But if you're a student and you're waking up at six o'clock to jump on a bus at seven to go from Queensland to Brooklyn, it's counterintuitive.
You're going through some of the worst neighborhoods in New York City.
You're going to a school with 38% reading rate.
You're going to a school with 38% writing rate, no AP, and they're preparing my son to be a fire department, a firefighter, which geez.
Is that right?
So in the same way we saw with Sarah getting prepared to be a pharmacy technician, again, nothing wrong with that job, but if you don't want it, why would you spend four years preparing for it?
So your son was on the F to become a fire department track.
Something you've never expressed in your life.
I have no idea.
But that's what the thing said.
It's FBMY and they say they prepare the children to be EMT technicians and fire department of fire.
That's crazy.
It was never listed in any of his interests to be that.
And respectfully, at the age of 14, a lot of kids don't know what they want.
Right.
Right.
Where's the general education?
So I said in the introduction that there's racism at play.
I mean, we know that at Harvard, there's a case going up this fall where Asian students have been discriminated against repeatedly in favor of other racial groups.
And I understand you suspect that may have been at play in your case as well.
Well, I mean, I grew up in New York and I'm a product of the public school system.
I'm very happy.
You know, PS42, IS-131, Stuyvesant High School, then Fordham University.
So I know how the application process works.
We applied to two really great schools that everybody wants to go to, you know, like the best, some of the best schools in the days.
We applied to three average schools that with his grades, he should be able to get in.
And then two, you know, schools that are not so great, but you know, he can get it.
So I played it like I played college.
And I recently read in an article in the post that the DOE said, well, you know what?
Asian students didn't, 30% of Asian students didn't get their choices because Asian students aim too high.
Well, we didn't aim too high.
Like I said, I aimed at two schools that if I didn't get into my first two choices, I would have been okay.
Three schools that he should have very safely gotten into, middle-of-the-line schools, and then two schools that were five, 10 minutes away from my house.
They won't even do that.
They said, hey, you got to go 75 minutes away.
We say it's 50, but it's really 75 when you take the trip at seven o'clock in the morning.
I did that trip.
So the DOE can't tell me it's really 50.
No, at seven o'clock in the morning, it's 75 minutes.
But how infuriating to basically be told you didn't get into your choices because you're Asian and therefore you aimed too high as your racial group tends to do.
I mean, completely inappropriate and indicative of how they just classify people now by group, you know, just by ethnic background or what have you.
So they want you to go to Brooklyn, even though you live in Queens, which for the people outside of New York City, that's far.
That's not like, okay, I'll just meander over five minutes next door.
These schools, as he points out, could be at 75-minute commute.
Is there a rule that says that they would be breaking?
You know, that says the maximum we can make a kid travel is 60 minutes of travel time or something like that.
I think the maximum is 70 minutes, but then it, or maybe a little lower than 70 minutes.
That's a threshold.
And then there's also three modes of transportation with you have to take like three transfers a day.
They're breaking their own rule.
When I called the DOE Enrollment Center, they said, well, you know, you live in, you know, Queens, but it's really, you know, pretty close to Brooklyn.
I said, yeah, you know what?
Six inches on the map doesn't mean it's close.
And the guy's like, well, you know, it's still 50 minutes.
And I said, I took with all due respect, one o'clock in the morning.
It's 75 minutes.
And that took, you know, and that takes hours to get to this point.
Have this 15-minute conversation where they basically tell you what you've experienced is wrong, like what you know to be real is not real.
That according to our records, it's 50 minutes.
That's too much to ask of a child who's 14 years old anyway, who then has to sit in class all day.
You guys remember when you're in high school?
It's hard to keep your eyelids up.
You know, it's like you're tired.
You're like, oh my gosh, if I could just take a quick little nap.
It's hard.
It's hard for all kids and it's especially hard for 14 kids, 14-year-old kids.
I think that's too much to ask of them.
Commuting Distances for Kids 00:07:42
So I don't blame you just on that grounds for fighting it.
I know you had some thoughts on this influx of migrants.
This is all over the national news right now, whether it was those being sent to Martha's Vineyard or those being sent to New York City, which is a sanctuary city.
And you had some thoughts on why Eric Adams is taking in so many migrants.
At least 2,000 have been sent to New York by Governor Abbott of Texas.
What are those thoughts, Chief?
Well, at the end of the day, it all comes down to funding.
I mean, we're losing, what, 30,000 kids this year, and we're on track to lose more because of exactly what Murad said.
You know, anybody with the rubber together are going to leave.
And you're going to lose a big chunk of federal funding.
So what do you do?
You carry around and you say, hey, I'm going to take migrant children.
These migrant children speak English.
As Murad said, English is a second language.
So we're going to need more services.
We're going to apply to the federal government.
We're going to apply to the state and say, hey, we need more services.
Some of them are going to have learning disabilities.
Some of them are going to require housing.
It's a way to balloon the budget.
It's a way to get more money because I'm still going to pay property tax.
Murad's still going to pay property taxes.
And it's unfair because our property taxes are still going to support the educational system.
But I was forced to send my kid to a Lutheran school.
A Lutheran school.
Yep.
My son's creative, so he really didn't.
Catholic school, Lutheran school's like Catholic school, like with a little, a little more lenient.
Yeah, like Lutheranism.
That's Catholicism.
Yeah, well, you know, Martin Luther.
I'd like to share one more thing.
And if I could play something, I went to the welcome center, fought them for like days and days and days and days, you know, took time off of work, you know, and they turned around and they said, you know what, Mr. Lau, we're going to offer you a school in Queens.
And I said, how about you send me to the school that, you know, even the ones that, like the ones I chose, the lower tier ones, no, we can't offer you that.
We're going to offer you a school in Queens, right?
And that school had safety and security problems.
On the second day that my son went to, you know, Martin Luther, this is the message I get.
Hold on, I want to play this message because this relates to the other school.
It's really, yeah, the other school that they just offered me.
Here's the message.
I saved it.
And high school family came to an external issue in the community earlier today.
However, Cleveland High School was put in a shelter in place.
The building was secured and all students and staff were sheltered in.
All external doors were locked.
The NYCD responded and deemed her situation with safe.
The sheltering was lifted.
And I'll have a future messaging.
This is where they wanted to send your son.
This is where I said, hey, listen, I understand if you can't send my son to the two best ones.
You can't send them to the three middle of the line ones that I chose.
Send them to the two bottom ones I chose.
At least they're safe neighbors, right?
No, Mr. Lau, we got to send you here.
This is the only choice you have.
And it's in Queens, so you can't complain about it.
It's 20 minutes away from your house.
So this is it.
And I looked at the safety record of that school and I said, I can't.
I can't in good conscience send my kid there to go to school.
Oh, my.
And you know what?
It's almost as if the universe was telling me I made the right choice because the second day he attended the Lutheran school, this is what came up.
At the school that they wanted you to be at.
Can I just ask you to go to the next step?
Yeah, imagine getting this voicemail message.
I know.
Can I ask you, I'm going to go back to you in one second, Marad, but I just want to ask you, is the Lutheran school out of pocket?
It's private school.
You've had to find the money.
Like, in New York State, are they helping you with that money at all?
No, absolutely not.
So your tax dollars go to New York.
You get absolutely no benefit education-wise from those tax dollars.
And there's no reimbursement to you in sending the kid your child to parents.
There is no recourse.
I just, I mean, but then you hear the message.
Yes.
That's pretty much a choice where left.
Yes.
Go ahead, Murad.
Yeah, Sarah School also has a metal detector.
Oh, Sarah School has a metal detector?
Yeah, that's the pharmacy technician.
It has a metal detector wow, and they keep changing and they keep changing the name of the school.
Why uh guess, what I put is it had that had like a famous, Oh Bad publicity, or it had like a Thomas Jefferson name on it.
Yeah, yeah for sure.
Why would they change the name of the school?
Oh my gosh, that's disturbing.
Yeah, can I just ask you because Murad, I know you've been dealing with both of you have dealt with the bureaucracy non-stop.
They may.
I've been so impressed in reading your stories about how determined you were, but I mean, who's got time to make this number of phone calls and go to this many schools and like follow up?
And, as you point out Murad, you've been getting stiff armed on the information at every turn.
But just, can you give us a sense of how difficult it's been to get a real life human to give you real results that you can actually work with you?
Can I had?
I went to the family welcome center and I spoke to one of the lady there and I specifically, and what she said, the script everybody telling you that oh, put her on the wait list.
I mean, I put her on the wait list.
You know she's waitlisted 4 000, 3 000.
What chance, where you have 12 seats, maybe four seats available and it's not.
I mean, I put her on school that they are really, really low.
They have like about 50 60 percent graduation rate and she's and she's, uh, you know, ranked so high it's impossible odds.
So I sent a letter, said okay, I want this information.
The assistant director of admission called me and she was so rude, she was the one who called me.
She didn't even give me a chance to speak.
And what she said?
She said, oh, I am sorry, I have another phone call.
And she hung up.
What'd you call me for exactly?
Yeah, I didn't call her, she called me.
I can feel it.
I can feel it.
I mean, having spent 17 years in New York, I can feel it.
Just like, the administrative headaches there are nightmarish, but when you're dealing with your child, it's next level.
And my daughter, you know, I told her don't worry about it because you know she was preparing the show in her middle school.
She was also preparing uh musical because she played.
She played piano, uh violin, because it was at the end of the year and she had they have a show, the uh Loose Food, where they were uh, rehearsing the for the loose food, I said, don't worry about it, just concentrate and do your best, enjoy it, and we deal with it later on.
And then yeah, the bad news came, and I know they don't give you this information until the end of the school year, and then you're nobody's there over the summer to help you.
And then you try to deal with the beginning of the school year and they're like oh, you're too late.
It's incredible.
So Murad, you're thinking about leaving New York Chi, you're now paying out of pocket for a Lutheran school that you should not be having to pay for.
And these are choices too many parents in too many districts have had to make.
I know you'll do the right thing and protect your children.
I thank you both for coming on and telling your stories.
Thank you.
Thank you, Megan.
All the best to you and your children too.
Families Forced to Leave Districts 00:03:58
Much, much more ahead with parents who were able to move their children out of the failing public school system, how they did it.
Okay.
And then we'll have an expert on to talk about real solutions for you as well.
Are you stuck in a school you can't stand?
How do you get out?
How do you fund your next choice?
There are a lot of parents who are in the same boat as our last two guests who have problems with their school.
It may not be because it's dangerous.
It may not be because the standards are terrible and the school's children are failing out or have a 38% proficiency rate in math, science, or reading, et cetera.
It may just be the school does not align with your values, especially in today's day and age, when it comes to COVID policy or CRT or radical trans ideology or inappropriate sexual books they want to offer your kindergartner.
There's all sorts of reasons why you might want to get the heck out of Dodge.
And if you don't have tons of dough for private school, many parents feel totally stuck.
It's easy to say move, but how easy is that to actually do?
It means change of job.
You got to find a new job.
You got to get a new job.
You got to uproot the whole family.
It can be traumatic.
That's what Murad's looking at right now.
He may have to come out of retirement to find a new job to move his family to get out of this school situation.
Well, our next guests have been through it too.
They are parents who were able to get out.
They managed to exit the public school system and they had formerly been big advocates of public school.
John and Kendra Sheare are successful business owners, parents of five young children, all under the age of 10, and they are here to share their story.
John and Kendra, welcome.
Hi.
Thank you for having us.
Hi.
Great to have you.
Absolutely.
So you were, did you start, you were originally from Nebraska, right?
High school sweethearts?
Yes.
Yep.
We're from the Cornhusker State originally.
Okay.
Okay.
So you fall in love, you get married.
You attended the University of Arizona together, which is cute too.
And Kendra, you decided to become a nurse.
John, you silly, silly man, wanted to be an investment banker, which sounds so fun until you actually do it, right?
Brutal.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a soul sucker.
So you guys, you relocate from Nebraska out to Arizona.
And you decided basically at some point to change your career and tell us what your new joint career, what it was that you settled on to do together.
And we settled on something completely different.
And we own a dessert shop, in particular, like cookie dough and all things cookies.
Nice, nice.
Okay.
And I'm sure it's amazing.
I mean, I would, I would prefer to actually try it out myself so I could, you know, officially endorse it, just not a hint at all on behalf of my team.
We can arrange that.
We'll send you guys some.
We don't ship during the summer because it's so hot here, but once it cools off, we can ship you some out.
Awesome.
No, it's called Scoop Wells Dough Bar in Phoenix, Arizona, which sounds amazing.
Dough bar, who wouldn't go?
Cookie dough, freshly baked cookies.
Yeah, we want it.
Okay.
So basically, you become small business owners and you also become large family starters.
So you got to tell us how many kids you have.
We have five kids.
So we have two sets of twins and then our little one.
We have two girls, Slon and Delaney, who are nine, and then boy girl twins, Quinn and Dalton, who are six.
And then our littlest one, Layton, who is two.
Okay, so I got to ask you, who that has two sets of twins already then goes for the fifth child?
Crazy people.
I blame the children because they've been so great.
They're they've easy kids.
And so they made my job easy.
Mask Mandates and Parental Rights 00:05:32
So I just kept going.
Good, good.
I'm glad.
I'm glad you did it.
So, okay, so there you are out in Arizona.
It's beautiful in Arizona.
The weather's perfect, a lot nicer, may I say, than Nebraska.
And you're probably thinking, great, got our new business, we got our kids, all is well.
And then what was the first sign of, well, before we get to this first sign of problems, just explain how into the school community you were and like, because you used to be sort of helpers and well-liked before the shit hit the fan.
So take us to that period.
So we were heavily invested.
I, John and I both came from public school.
I love public school.
We were big advocates for it.
And so I was on the board for the Parent Association.
I started out as director of events and then I was the president at our school.
So we were highly involved.
I was there all the time almost every day.
And I'd say the biggest, the very first sign of problems is really when COVID started.
And that's what really opened my eyes to kind of what was going on within the system.
And I tried to fight back against it for a long time.
And it just finally got to a point where I realized, you know, I have to get, we have to get our children out because this ship can't be saved.
It was the never-ending masking that did it.
Yeah, that was kind of the.
So it kind of started when it first came on, you know, COVID first hit and we were going through it.
And we, you know, everyone did it, right?
Because it's just like what you did, right?
Because everyone was, you know, accepted.
No one knew what was going on.
But we knew if we just continued to make this a new normal, that it was never going to go away.
And so we fought it.
It stayed on throughout the year, the following year.
And we just made a promise to our kids, like, hey, we're never going to make you do this again.
It was giving them eye infections, sores on their faces.
They couldn't, you know, they were struggling to focus.
Our kids were going into kindergarten, our youngest.
So there was no way we were going to, how do you learn to read when you can't see the teacher's mouth?
So it, you know, there's a variety of reasons, but all end up at the same spot, which means you, it's not healthy for them to be wearing masks from an academic or health standpoint for school.
So once we made that promise and we are two weeks into the school year and they're like, oh, community spread, it's high, which, you know, is hilarious because half of our student population was open enrollment.
So how do you determine community spread?
But, you know, a couple kids maybe got it.
I don't know, maybe not, but it went from 15 to 20 percent of the student population wearing masks to like they sent out threats telling people about community spread to like 50, 60 percent.
And then they enforced it after three weeks into school and we just refused to send our kids back and bounced.
And to be quite honest, one of the big problems was, as he mentioned, all the problems that come along with masking for kids health-wise and educationally.
But was also alarming to me is because I was president of the school board, I had a lot of parents coming to me to kind of voice their concerns and hoping that I would then go to the principal or the superintendent on their behalf because people didn't feel comfortable speaking out because they were afraid of kind of retribution against their children.
So what really concerned me in addition to the masking was the lack of the system's willingness to listen to what parents really wanted.
I had so many parents telling me that they didn't want their kids masks, that all the problems it was causing.
And the school board and the school district's just inability to listen to what parents wanted was mind-blowing to me.
And the fact that inability or unwillingness?
Unwillingness.
Yeah.
I mean, it was an ideological view for sure.
I mean, they just, they had chosen their side and it was that we needed to mask until we could not mask anymore.
And for no purpose, right?
There was no statistics.
There's no data behind it.
Everyone knows that kids are generally safe against COVID.
No more susceptible to that than the flu on a child basis on a young, healthy child.
So it made no sense.
And yeah.
And they, of course, they ignored their own study of 90,000 kids in Atlanta, Georgia that said masks do nothing.
That was too inconvenient for them.
So your kids had to have the mask and so did mine.
So I love this moment of the story.
So John, you, you know, the Mr. Mr. and Mrs. PTA family.
And isn't it like, it's sort of like North Dakota nice, like Nebraska nice too, right?
Like that's you're supposed to be the nice people when you're comfortable from Nebraska.
And you did the not nice thing, which I love.
You had your Norma Ray moment, John, with your sign above your head in the parking line as the parents were dropping off the kids.
And what did your sign read?
Yeah.
So we were just, you know, we were, we were trying to advocate for just student, you know, your child's choice to wear masks.
So it's just simply parent choice, you know, no, no administrator determining whether or not you wear a mask.
Not saying that, no, you couldn't wear a mask, just that you had the choice.
So I held up a sign.
I got a couple other people to do it with me.
And we were friendly saying hi to people.
Multiple people told us to F off, which and some one person told me to F off and that we're going to wear F in masks all year long.
Advocating for Student Choices 00:03:06
You should move F in schools.
I'm like, is this really like, is that your goal?
Like, what, what is wrong with you?
It's crazy.
Right, right.
And then, of course, people complained, emailed our principal directly, emailed the superintendent directly, saying that she needed to rein in her husband and that it was against the values of the board and she was breaking the bylaws of the board and that she needed to be removed.
And never at any point did she say, you know, I'm the board president.
This is what I believe.
It was, it was always, I'm speaking as a parent, which you can do.
And you can advocate for your child, which is something that we need more of.
Yeah, I have a feeling if they had been standing out there with BLM signs six months earlier, nobody would have complained in that way.
100%.
That's another part of the problem.
Yeah, but on this issue, which actually directly relates to your children in the school in this moment, not a larger, you know, societal cultural issue, you get shut down.
So you are not happy with how this is going and people are starting to turn on you.
And was it tense?
Was there like a faction at the school that was with you and a faction of the school against you?
Yes.
So I would say majority were with us.
Not, I would say, definitely majority were with us.
But the ones who were opposed to what we were saying were so brutal.
They were so vocal.
You know, I had emails circulating and letters to superintendents.
I was a bad mother.
I was unfit.
I couldn't, if I couldn't raise my own kids, how could I expect it to be leaving the school?
I was, I somehow became a racist.
I mean, terrible things were said about me.
We had parents from our school go onto our business website and attack our business on a completely, you know, saying kids go to school.
Like it was just crazy.
Having nothing to do with our business.
So I think a lot of people also became fearful.
It wasn't fun.
It was, it was actually quite brutal.
And if people didn't want, they were happy to tell me, most people were happy to tell me, you know, privately, we support you, keep going.
Thank you for what you're doing for the kids.
But understandably, so didn't want to speak out because the backlash was intense.
So I don't fault them for that because it's not, it's not easy to endure.
Well, especially then.
Yeah.
You know, like that was in the thick of it.
It was in the thick of it.
It was, it was honestly, it was probably like the worst three weeks of our life ever together.
Um, because it was just so intense.
And they were coming after her.
And I was like, just come after me.
Like, bring it to me.
Cause, you know, she's, you know, soft and kind-hearted.
And I don't have a lot of feelings.
So I was like, come after me, attack me.
I'm the banker.
She's the nurse.
You know, it's like, this is why we bounce.
You know, she, of course, they're just coming after her.
And, you know, she tries, she wakes up in the morning.
She's like, I'm going to be strong today.
And then she gets like this one nasty email forwarded to her from the principal.
And it's like, you're terrible, horrific, racist, fascist, whatever, like any word that they could add on it.
And it's just, you know, it becomes, it wears you down after a while.
Teachers Facing Hostile Emails 00:15:48
Yeah.
Yes.
It's hard if you have a tender heart at all.
This is why it's better to have a heart of ice like I do than they can't hurt you with you.
Right, exactly.
But Ken, wait, so the principal's forwarding you hate mail?
Yes.
So the principal would send along the emails that he got about me and say, how would you like me to respond?
It was a very, very, very odd approach.
I think he was, I think I was a problem for him.
He wanted to look, you know, he was wanting to fall in line with what the superintendent was pushing.
And I was making that we couldn't be controlled, which was the problem.
You know, we wrote an email, pretty direct email to the board.
You know, I think we CC the governor, multiple board members, because they were forcing masks on kids outside in the playground when it was over 100 degrees.
And so we just said, I went through the executive orders and I started carving out these pieces that show clearly that if you're, you know, you're running and you're playing or if you're at some safe distance, then you should be able to take off your mask, which means no kid should be wearing a mask on the playground, not even because they shouldn't, because it's simple health, but because of the executive order clearly stated it.
So within a few days of sending that email, I mean, I'm not claiming to be the one that did it, but whatever happened three days later, they called a board meeting and changed the board, the mask policy for outside.
So at least they got to take them off outside if they were, you know, in space and whatever.
But yeah, it was a total joke.
Yeah.
Well, you have the same thing, I assume, in Arizona that we discovered when we moved to Connecticut versus when we lived in New York, which is why, why would they ever be wearing the mask outside, A, to begin with?
But B, in it, in a town and a state in which they got nothing but land.
You got plenty of room.
This is not like New York where the kids are on top of each other and there's absolutely no grounds.
In Connecticut, in Arizona, you got plenty of room.
These kids can easily be more than six feet apart and do not need to have a face covering.
Not that they ever did.
Okay.
So the reason this is so interesting to me is because it's not done.
You know, the pandemic is over, says Joe Biden, but we know that the overreaction.
We should just stop the show right now.
It's over.
Yes, just to move on.
We'd be willing to.
I'm sure you'd be with me.
But of course, his constituency is beating him over the head for having said that.
It's not over.
It's not over.
And as and now they're already warning of another wave.
We could get another wave in the fall and, you know, everything could return.
And on top of that, these are parental rights issues.
So it expands beyond COVID.
It's like race essentialism and crazy trans ideology and inappropriate sexual, you know, behavior and lessons and oversharing, all that in the classroom, which has got a lot of parents paying attention.
And they're going to need to be squeaky wheels, even if they're not used to it, even if they are more like Nebraska Nice coming into the school year.
Well, and that's that speaks exactly to 100% why we got out.
I mean, the masks were kind of the tipping point, but the bigger thought behind the forcing of the masks is you're willing to do something to these children without any proof, without any evidence, and without the support of parents.
They literally pushed the parents out and said, We don't care what you want for your children, and we're going to do what we want regardless, regardless of if it's fact and based in fact or not.
And that was my scary moment because I assumed that eventually the pandemic would be over, but I did not want my children, our children, in a system where what the parents said doesn't matter.
And that's exactly what was happening.
It didn't matter.
They had their agenda.
And what you want for your children was of no interest to them.
And especially for our olders who are now in fourth grade, they go to middle school in a couple of years.
And Kendra was talking with some moms that are now at that middle school.
And their pre-assignment work was the teacher sending out a questionnaire about what are your preferred pronouns?
Can we tell your parents those are your pronouns?
Like, you're already trying to divide these kids from their parents.
You haven't even met them.
It's insane.
And even raised the issue of gender with like little ones.
I've told my kids, if anybody asks you your pronouns, you tell them, my mom doesn't want me to answer that question.
That's it.
Have them ask me.
You know what?
Have them ask me what your pronouns are.
It's not going to go well for them.
So I'm with you.
But can I just ask you, this is in Scottsdale, Arizona?
Because I thought Scottsdale was a little bit more red.
Am I wrong?
It is a little purple in there.
The school that we went to, we're out of district technically, but it's a fairly, it's in Paradise Valley.
So it's in, it's a fairly affluent area.
So, and it's a brand new school.
They just gotten rebuilt like a year or two ago.
So they have a lot of open enrollment that want to go there for obvious reasons because it does have pretty darn good funding from a private standpoint through the constituents that go there.
I'm sure.
So if people want to go there from a public school basis, it's a pretty good public school.
But ultimately, when you start running into these things, there's no amount of funding that can offset the indoctrination that's happening in your kids.
That's right.
That's the thing.
So let's get to the solution.
So you guys are like, what are we going to do?
You know, you're running now a bakery.
It's a new business.
It's not like you're making money hand over fist at this point.
And so putting your kids in private school is scary.
It costs money.
You don't know how the business is going to go.
And then like a Phoenix, to steal an Arizona term, Doug Ducey, the governor out there, does something that our next guest, Corey DeAngelis, has been praising him for ever since and urging him to do prior.
He empowers parents to do the things we were talking at the beginning of the show about.
The money will follow the child.
And what did that mean for you?
Like, what does that mean practically?
That's huge for us.
I mean, we have four children at this point and eventually five that are in school.
And that's exceedingly expensive.
So that saves us 20, which is game changing, right?
And I think that will be game changing.
Initially, when we switched, it was just related to what was happening with COVID.
And now they're trying to pass it as a wide sweeping rule for everyone.
But it's, I think it'll be game changing for a lot of people because 7,000 per child per child can in some public, in some private schools, will cover the entire tuition or come very, very close to it.
I mean, the way that it works, the new ESA grants are, so it's basically any parent that wants their child to go to a private school has that choice, assuming it passes through and gets ratified.
90% of their state funds, which accounts to roughly $6,500, $7,000, will then follow that child to the school.
Federal funds still are going to go to the public schools, obviously, but at least some of your state funds, the state taxes that you're paying will then follow your child.
So you're not having to kind of double pay for your tuition.
You'll actually have that tax credit, so to speak, going forward to the student, to your student tuition.
So that way you get like roughly $6,500, $7,000 knocked off.
So he's figured out like how much Arizona spends per child in the state and it's about $6,500.
And so unlike our last two guests who pay into the New York City school system, who get nothing if they pull their kids from it, he's basically saying, okay, you get $6,500 a kid.
If you want to go to Lutheran school or Catholic school or some other private school, we'll give you $6,500 per kid.
And if it's, if the school bill is twice that, you got to come up with the rest.
If it's $6,500, you're all set.
Is that basically the way it works?
Yep.
And is it not passed?
What do you mean?
Does it still, I thought it was passed in Arizona.
No?
So he passed it.
But then there's a, if, if there's a certain amount of signatures, like 110,000 signatures or something like that, if they come up with those, you know, the people that are opposing it say that there's no accountability, which is the opposite of what it actually is, of course.
If they can come up with those signatures, I think they have till the end of this month, 90 days from when it was passed, then it can hit the ballot.
So it will hit the ballot in November if they get the signatures.
If they fail to get the signatures, it'll become law.
Otherwise, it would it would go through the November election process to be ratified.
Okay.
Now, here's a question for you.
Is it you got out early in this whole process, I think, because Ducey didn't do this that long ago.
Is there a fear of these private schools that are outlets for families like yours filling up?
Right.
So like they become less of an option.
So that is the problem is, especially the ones that have, you know, kind of been firm and they're like, we want parents to be involved and have a choice and have an option.
The schools that haven't been, the private schools that haven't been masking the children, those are full of the school.
We are so incredibly blessed to get into the school that we got into.
For our grades, we were kind of like the last kids in and now the wait list is so long.
Swana and Delaney, our oldest, actually, when we switched out a public school originally, there were only two spots left in the three classes.
So we took them and we'll say, we'll figure out what we're going to do with our kindergartners.
We know we want to be at that school, but let's see if there's other options.
And we were lucky.
We found another option that we placed our kindergartners at that ended up being an awesome school.
Ultimately, our kindergartners got in this year at the main school that they now all go to.
You know, it's closer to our school or it's closer to our home.
And now all our kids can be together, but it's jammed.
Like there's not open availability.
We have multiple friends at the school that have kids at different schools because they're trying to get in.
There's a lot of existing families with half in, half out.
Yeah, I mean, that's just a reminder that wouldn't it be nice if we could just solve the insanity at ground zero, if we could actually just get through to these school boards and administrators and teachers that they're actually not in charge, that the parents should have choice and input.
I mean, I'll leave it on this.
I'm very happy that you got out and I hope the best for the parents who would like to go behind you.
We left our New York City schools and we were paying.
It was private and we paid at the new place, also private.
So thankfully we weren't in this position, but I will say just to advocate for choice, we were at schools that went hardcore left, hardcore radical on race, on trans.
I didn't see as much of the sexual inappropriateness that we've seen in some places, but anti-America, all that stuff.
We went to our, like, you know, the opening dinner at our boys' school last week and the head of school gets up there.
And I could have written his the mission statement that he was saying this school lives.
I was like, that's awesome.
I almost shed a tear.
It was like in a real tear, not like the Megan Markle one at the Queen's funeral.
He was like, we don't believe in teaching the children what to think.
We believe in teaching them how to think.
We are unabashedly pro-America.
And it fills my heart with joy to walk by the lower school and hear those boys saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
We don't believe in equity of outcome.
We believe in equality of opportunity.
I was like, oh my God.
This is how we felt when we got to our school.
And that's why I think this parent choice issue, this schooling issue is such an important topic, because I remember that feeling of being out of control on what was happening to our children and what they were being taught.
And it is the worst feeling ever.
And to be at a place, now you're going to make me cry, but to be at a place where I know I can send them every day and I don't have to worry about what someone's saying to them and that they will come home with the same morals and standards and values that I send them off with in the morning is an incredible feeling.
And it breaks my heart that every family can't get that because when you don't have it, it's a terrible feeling.
Yeah.
But you know what?
You guys, you fought the good fight.
You fought it for your kids.
And when you realized you couldn't win, you weren't going to let your children continue to be subjected to these terrible conditions.
You pulled them, you protected your kids, and you're still fighting the good fight because you're here.
Here, you're here telling the story, pushing back against the people who want to undo the good you've done and Governor Ducey's done.
Like that's what you got to do, right?
You got to protect your children and continue the fight for those who are still stuck in these terrible places.
It's a lot of people to us to keep fighting for it because we still, I still believe public schools are so important.
They have an important place and they need to be good for our children.
It's great to have private options that are great, but we need public options that are great too.
Well, because ultimately that's the feeder for your society, right?
So your kids, once they're out of high school and college, like you look at all these institutions, advanced institutions, and then in their career paths, they're going to be working with all these other people that went down a different path than them for school.
So you can't just give up on public schools in a sense, because then what are your kids left with in 20 years?
Yeah.
So it's a double-edged sword, obviously, in a way.
But, you know, parents got to stand up.
They got to be courageous.
They got to fight for their kids.
You can't.
I know it's not easy, but you got to do it.
It's uncomfortable.
You got to do it.
And if you want to support John and Kendra in their efforts at Scoop Wells Doe Bar, you can do that as soon as they get delivery back up at the end of the summer.
You guys, it's a pleasure meeting you.
Congrats on navigating such a tricky situation.
Well, all the best to you.
Thanks for having us.
I appreciate it.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
It's just fun.
Oh, it was fun for me too.
Okay.
Up next, two experts join us to talk about solutions.
If you don't live in Arizona, right?
If you don't live in Arizona, what are the options for you and what should we be advocating for?
Now we bring you two school choice advocates who are making a real difference.
Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, and Ian Rowe is resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Agency, the four-point plan for all children to overcome the victimhood narrative and discover their pathway to power.
Ian also just opened a charter school in the Bronx.
It's one of the charter schools I mentioned earlier that wanted to expand into a high school and faced a legal challenge.
So we'll talk about that in one sec, but Corey and Ian are both here to offer real solutions to the broken public school system.
Guys, thanks so much for being here.
Hey, thank you.
Yeah, my God, I feel like I feel empowered after listening to that Arizona story.
It's like, yes, Governor Ducey, Corey, you're the one who first called my attention to that on Twitter.
And I know like, this is exactly what you've been pushing for.
I know you say this, what Ducey's doing out there is the gold standard for school choice.
And as I understand it, it goes beyond just what our guests, Kendra and John, talked about, where the money can follow the student, you know, the $6,500.
There's some other options that he's laid out too.
So can you explain why it is at the gold standard?
Yeah, totally.
It's the biggest school choice victory in U.S. history.
It's what we've all been fighting for for a very long time.
And this comes just after the year of school choice, what school choice advocates have called the year of school choice.
Historic School Choice Victory 00:04:36
That is in 2021, 19 states expanded or enacted programs to fund students as opposed to systems.
And then Arizona just said, you know what, we're going all in.
We're going to one-up you all.
And Ducey just signed into law this massive victory.
And what makes it so important is that every single family, regardless of income, gets to take their children's state-funded education dollars to the education provider of their choosing.
So if you want to take it to the government-run school, you can.
If you like your public school, you can keep your public school, but for real this time, unlike with healthcare.
But then also you can take that funding, which is about $7,000 in Arizona, to a private school to pay for tuition and fees, but you don't only have to take it to a private school.
You can use that education savings account funding to pay for a micro school, what people have called pandemic pods over the past couple of years, when five to 10 children can get together in a household and families can essentially economize on the process of homeschooling, basically a miniature school.
You could also use the funding for any other approved education expenditure.
That could be for special needs, educational therapies.
It could be for a private tutor, homeschooling curriculum, any approved education expenditure.
So this is the gold standard of school choice.
And it's great that Arizona got it done.
And I just want to mention that they got it done with the slimmest of majorities.
This is a Republican Party platform issue.
And Arizona has one seat majorities in their House and in their Senate.
And so all Republicans showed up, voted for their party platform, voted in support of educational freedom and families.
And now Arizona got it done.
Hopefully this sparks friendly competition in other states too.
And I'm already seeing other states talk about this more.
I just assume this is a Democrat problem for the most part because of the teachers union and the Democrats being in bed with them.
But I, in reading up for your appearance here, saw your opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal back in June where you say, I'm reading along and I'm thinking this sentence is going to end very differently.
You write, some Republicans in red states, such as Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah.
And I think all the viewers right now, listeners are thinking the same thing I'm thinking, which is this going to end, is going to end in, are pushing to follow Governor Ducey's lead.
No, the sentence ends, locked arms with Democrats to block similar bills to the Arizona one last year.
So this is a bipartisan part.
Why are the Republicans trying to stop school choice?
Because the teachers unions are smart and they know, well, they're not very smart.
I mean, they've been overplaying their hand over the past couple of years and they've actually helped us inadvertently.
So, Randy Weingarten really deserves an award for sabotaging her own efforts by closing the schools and waking parents up.
But historically, the teachers' unions understand that in deep red states, in order to block school choice, they know they're not going to get a Democrat majority to do so.
So, they play heavily in Republican primaries.
In Texas, for example, the teachers unions have played in the House primaries in the Republican side for a long time now.
So, although Texas has had a trifecta of Republican leadership in the House, Senate, and the governor's office, Texas does not have any private school choice programs at all.
And Texas actually passed an education savings account bill in 2017 through their Senate before it was cool to do so.
And all Republicans basically voted in favor, and all Democrats opposed for the most part, is mostly party line.
But then it quietly died in the House because of all of the teachers' unions-backed candidates in the House.
So, but things are different in Texas now.
I mean, the political wins have shifted.
There's been a huge uptick in support for school choice.
The Republican primary ballot in Texas had school choice on it this past this year in 2022.
And 88% of Texas Republican primary voters support school choice.
A poll just came out of University of Texas at Tyler and the Dallas Morning News finding that 70% of Republicans support school choice and a majority from all parties, Republican, Democrats, and Independents, support school choice in Texas.
And Abby speaking on the issue.
Especially if they can see how it works.
It's not just like, oh, all the rich people are going to leave, you know, or the people who can afford to go to a nicer school are going to go.
It's no, what if you are the rich person thanks to having your own tax dollars to do with as you wish when it comes to your child?
And it may or may not make up the whole difference that you need, but it's certainly a running start, way more than most parents have right now.
Talent Drain from Public Schools 00:06:07
So, Ian, let me ask you: you decided to open up a charter school in the Bronx, and I did not realize just how dire the situation was in the Bronx.
This is just a, these are a couple of stats.
This is, I guess, behind why you created Vertex, your school.
Of the nearly 2,000 public school students beginning high school in the South Bronx in 2015, 2% graduated ready for college four years later.
Oh my God, 98% either dropped out before senior year, or if they managed to graduate, they would still be required to take remedial classes in community college due to low math and reading scores on state exams.
What a terrible, terrible indictment of public education in the Bronx.
Can you imagine living in that neighborhood where you have a child that you have the greatest of aspirations for, and all you have, your only choice, is to send your child to a school that's had that track record for generations.
This isn't a new phenomenon.
And what's worse, these kids that start ninth grade and drop out, or they actually do earn their high school diploma, but still cannot do math nor reading without remediation if they were to go to college.
So they actually do what they're supposed to do and still cannot compete on a college level.
That is criminal.
And so, and but what's worse in New York City, because of the union stranglehold and party affiliation, there's a cap on.
So you couldn't even start a great school if that was your aspiration.
Right, right, exactly.
Right.
That's the situation right now, thanks to de Blasio.
Is you may have all you have money, you have the teachers, you want to go in there and offer these kids another option, and you can't.
Well, that's what we did, though.
So, how'd you do it?
How'd you do it?
So, what's interesting: so, we started Vertex Partnership Academies as what we believe is going to be one of the best world-class high schools in the country.
We're being authorized as an international baccalaureate high school.
That's yet, that's uh, we're renting uh archives, it's beautiful space.
Yes, it's a it's a beautiful school accepting ninth grade students.
And but, what we said was that there are charter schools that currently only go through eighth grade, and every charter school has the right to extend if they're performing well.
So, if you have been able to run a high-quality elementary and middle school, then the state gives you the right to extend to high school.
So, we worked with a group of existing charter schools that have current charters to extend through 12th grade.
And now they're partnering with Vertex Partnership Academies to run this world-class high school as a guaranteed option for their rising ninth grade students.
The union, the teachers' union, decided somehow that they made a false claim that this was getting around the cap on charters.
Thankfully, a New York State Supreme Court judge looked at their case, heard their arguments, and completely dismissed the union's lawsuit.
They found that the union had no standing to bring the case in the first place, and they said that the case had zero merit, that every charter school has the right to extend its grades.
So, A, we should be fighting against the very idea of a cap in the first place.
That is a crime.
But, in addition, every charter school across the country should know that no union can stand in their way of extending existing grades.
And that's a very powerful tool because across the country, great high schools are in very short supply.
Okay, but let me ask you this again because as I understand the teachers' unions rap on charter schools, among others, it's okay.
So, if they're performance-based at all, what you're going to have is the kids who do really well wind up leaving the public school.
And so, the creme de the creme wind up at the charters, and then the rest of the kids wind up back at the publics, and there's no one there to help lift them up.
And there's and quality of instruction, I suppose, could potentially go down when you don't have students who inspire the teacher to teach to the top student.
I don't know what this is basically what they say you can't do.
Blah, blah, blah.
This is all blah, blah, blah.
That's right.
So, speak to that article, that argument that basically you're plucking all the really talented students out of the publics thanks to a charter.
Okay, so those are the blah, blah, blah arguments that you typically hear.
First off, charter schools are public schools.
So, every student in our school is a public school student.
I myself went to public school kindergarten through 12th grade.
I'm a big believer in the public school system as a common pathway to prosperity.
There have been tons of studies, particularly in Harlem, in other areas of the country, where you've actually had a concentration of high-quality charter schools.
The impact has been it's actually improved performance of the traditional district public schools.
So this idea that somehow charter schools that are not public, which they are, or that they'll siphon off funding charter schools in New York City, we only get about 75% per student relative to traditional district schools.
So this narrative has been debunked over and over and over again.
Desperate Families Seeking Options 00:07:01
But the number one thing you need to look at is what are parents saying?
In 2019, there were only about 33,000 open public charter school seats.
We had nearly 81,000 families applying.
Almost all low-income families, primarily kids of color, parents that are just desperate for their kids to have an equal shot at the American dream.
And these false barriers are being created.
And school choice and educational freedom is fundamental if we really want to create a society where all young people, every kid of every race has an equal shot to be successful.
Yeah.
You look at these numbers, Corey.
This is from the nation's report card that comes out and tells us how our kids are doing.
A little more than one third of eighth graders in America are proficient in reading and math.
One third of our eighth graders are proficient in reading and math.
It's horrifying.
And it's why we're number 22 on the list of countries who in terms of like how we're doing with our 15 year olds that surveyed 15 year olds.
By the way, who's in front of us?
Oh, the Czech Republic.
Who else?
Poland's ahead of us, Slovenia.
Okay, that makes sense for them to be ahead of the United States of America.
So no wonder these parents are saying, get me out of these schools.
They're terrible.
So what if you have the misfortune to live in a place like Baltimore, Maryland?
Forgive me, Baltimore.
I lived there and it was a charming little town in many ways, but the school system, not so great.
The crime situation, not so good.
Chicago, you know, like one of these blue cities where we know the school district situation is terrible.
What are they supposed to do?
Yeah, you got to push for school choice.
I mean, Baltimore, Maryland, the state of Maryland actually has the Boost Scholarship Program.
The thing is, the average scholarship is only about 15% of what they spend in the government-run schools.
So they need to more equally fund that program in Maryland.
And look, I think the path towards bipartisan support on school choice is kind of playing out right now in Pennsylvania with Josh Shapiro, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, actually quietly changing his education platform within the past couple of weeks to include education savings accounts, kind of like what they passed in Arizona, not as expansive as the one Arizona passed, but for the first time ever, seeing a Democrat supporting school choice is huge.
And you can say, oh, he's just doing it because, you know, he's reading the polls, but it doesn't really matter what the reason is, right?
I mean, the more that the GOP leans into parental rights and educational freedom, like we saw with Glenn Young in Virginia, the more it's going to be politically disastrous for Democrats to come out against it.
Look at what happened to Terry McAuliffe, who said, I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.
In a state that went 10 points to Biden the year before, Glenn Young, the Republican, won on the issue of education.
Some Democrats aren't learning a dang thing about that story that played out in Virginia.
I mean, look at Charlie Crist in Florida, for example, running against DeSantis.
He basically told Terry McAuliffe, hold my beer, and chose as his running mate, a teachers union president who fought to close schools.
But Shapiro in Pennsylvania is taking a different approach and saying, hey, you know what?
It's political suicide to come out against school choice and parental rights.
I might as well come along too.
And so then I think we can see more support from across the political spectrum.
And I think the more that red states lean into this, we'll start to see some success in blue states as well.
But families need to show up, make their voices heard.
Tell the politicians that you support education freedom.
And if a bill is introduced, rally around the Capitol and let them know that in a peaceful way, that school choice is something you support.
And then also show up at the school board meetings to make your voices heard.
Parents are the ultimate change agent here.
For a long time, the only special interests were the teachers' unions, but now there's a new special interest group in town, parents, and they've woken up and they're never going back to sleep.
And that's why the political winds are shifting.
It's up to the parents to stand up and fight for their kids.
And at the end of the day, it's going to lead to bipartisan support, hopefully, and more educational freedom for everybody.
Ian, as you know, the other side constantly reduces everything these days to race and how this is disadvantage, disadvantageous to black and brown students in particular, and so on and so forth, right?
But the point you seem to be making is actually in your district, for example, in your school, the black and brown students want into the charter school more than anybody and will thrive there in a way they're not being allowed to at a school district that has a 2% graduation rate.
I mean, can you speak to that element of it?
Yeah.
And to Corey's point about parent power, when Bill de Blasio tried to shut down public charter schools in New York City, we were able to mobilize about 17,000 family members to march over the Brooklyn Bridge for educational freedom.
And it was that power that got the state legislature to actually pass laws to say that the mayor did not have the ability to slow the growth of public charters.
So parental power is crucial.
And on this point about race, you talked about the National Assessment for Educational Progress.
You're right.
Only 37% of all kids in our country are reading at grade level.
And in fact, it has never been a situation where even a majority of white are reading at grade level.
I think the highest number is maybe been 44 or 45 percent.
You feel that you say a majority of whites.
Is that what you said?
Yeah, there's never been only about 44 percent of white students have been reading at grade level ever, right?
So when we clamor for equity and closing the racial achievement gap, all we would have done if black kids equal white kids in terms of outcomes is universal mediocrity, right?
It's unlikely that systemic racism is the reason that the majority of white kids are not reading at grade level.
So perhaps we need to look at other factors like the decline and stability of families, the lack of access to school choice, of educational freedom.
Those are the things that have a far greater impact on the academic outcomes for children, far more than the issue of race.
And yet we are distracted by these ongoing debates around critical race theory.
Shifting Political Winds 00:01:54
And, you know, it's a theory and it's been debunked.
It hurts children.
And yet, only 37% of all kids of all races in our country, we need educational freedom, school choice, but we need parents to put the pressure on policymakers to create the kind of environment where education entrepreneurs like me, advocates like Corey, can be out there pushing for what we know works for kids.
So Corey, before we leave, give us a reason to feel optimistic because I feel like that's been your message lately as I follow you and what you're right.
Totally.
Yeah, the political winds have shifted.
Politicians have to listen to parents now because they've woken up and they're never going back to sleep.
I talked about how teachers unions had played heavily in Republican primaries.
Well, look at what happened in Tennessee this past session.
In Tennessee, 10 Republicans in their house were endorsed or funded by the teachers union.
Nine of them lost.
So the teachers union endorsement is becoming a political kiss of death.
And that's a huge shift.
We're winning primary races all across the country right now.
Look at what happened to the National School Boards Association after labeling parents as domestic terrorists.
We might as well call them the Regional School Boards Association at this point because 26 states left the NSBA after that they pulled that stunt.
And we had the year of school choice in 2021.
We just had two Supreme Court victories over the past couple of years in support of parental rights and education.
We're winning.
The wind is at our backs and there's no stopping school choice, even if the teachers union tries to slow it down.
We will free families from their depraved clutches once there's anything they can do about it.
Corey, and thank you.
Thank you both so much.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
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