There are 1,700 Washington, D.C. students, 99 percent of them minorities, who attend safe, quality private schools in the District thanks to a voucher program passed narrowly by the Congress four years ago. Two of those children are classmates of Sasha and Malia Obama at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. If Democrats get their way on the language of the omnibus spending bill, Sarah and James Parker will lose their $7,500 scholarships at the end of next school year. Unlike the Obama children, they don’t have the money to attend at full price tuition, so they’ll be back to their public school:
Dick Durbin is the culprit behind the language, which would sunset the program unless both the Congress and the D.C. City Council agree to reauthorize it. Durbin himself attended a Catholic school in St. Louis, but is willing to nix the federal government’s attempt to level the educational playing field with $14 million in scholarships for inner-city kids. School-choice advocates are hoping the new president, as per his rhetoric on the campaign trail, will stand up for educational innovation, and the futures of his daughters’ classmates. The national school-choice movement has slowly been picking up Democratic support, state-by-state, despite fierce opposition by powerful teachers’ unions, and Obama’s support for the D.C. program would likely enable a national political shift on the issue. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) will offer an amendment to strip Durbin’s language from the bill, he said at a press conference today. But it’s unlikely to succeed unless Obama, who attended his elite Hawaiian secondary school on a scholarship, were to take an uncharacteristically risky and leader-like stand on the school choice program. Just to put it in perspective, for the cost of the following worthy projects in the omnibus bill, Congressional Democrats could send 1,700 economically disadvantaged kids to good schools, but they will likely refuse to do so:
I give you the priorities of our liberal betters.
