Opinion
Will Obama save his daughters’ schoolmates?
Examiner Editorial
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March 6, 2009
Domonique, age 14, begins the videotaped letter: “Dear Mr. President Obama.” Paul, 11, and Sakeithia, 12, echo the greetings. “In my old public school,” Paul says after the formalities, “people screamed at the teacher, walked out of the school during classes, hurt me, and made fun of all my friends.” Breanna, 9, chimes in: “I love going to school there where I can learn and be safe.” These are the faces and voices of low-income children (via www.VoicesofSchoolChoice.org) who receive congressionally funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarships to attend various private schools of their parents’ choice in the nation’s capital. They are asking President Barack Obama to make sure their scholarships aren’t snatched away by congressional Democrats in hock to the public school teachers and administrators unions. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a congressional committee yesterday that he favors continuation of the program. Where is Obama on the issue?
As has by now been well publicized, the ranks of the 1,900 scholarship recipients include Sarah and James Parker, who attend Sidwell Friends School with Obama’s daughters Malia and Natasha. Their mother, Deborah, has said the thought of her children returning to their old school “frightens” her. But unless Congress strips certain provisions from the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, the scholarships will disappear. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic congressional leaders contrived a legislative sleight-of-hand in the omnibus bill to kill the program without having to go on record individually. Some would call that political cowardice.
Data-driven studies of the five year old program by the Manhattan Institute, the U.S. Department of Education and Georgetown University have found high levels of parent satisfaction with the program and a greater degree of voluntary racial integration for scholarship recipients than for public school students. The $7,500 scholarships cost a pittance by today’s standards, just $14 million annually. By comparison, Obama proposes to spend $46.7 billion on the Education Department in 2010. And between them, the two major education unions contributed more than $4 million in 2008, with more than 95 percent of the total going to Obama and other Democrats.
In the video letter to the president, Sakeithia says: “My old public school was not a very safe place. I saw a lot of things a child should not see.” And 17-year-old Jordan says that “being the recipient of the opportunity scholarship has meant far more to me than can be quantified with words.” These children should not be abandoned merely to keep the NEA and AFT signing campaign checks for Democrats in Congress. This issue alone is so important that Obama ought to veto the bill if the anti-scholarship provision is not removed. If it were Malia and Natasha whose futures were at risk, he surely would issue the veto in a heartbeat.
