The Megyn Kelly Show - A Deep Dive on School Choice and Education Freedom, with Parents, Experts, and Advocates ｜ Ep. 394

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.480 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we're bringing you an

00:00:15.800 episode I've been wanting to do for a long time on this show because it impacts every single one of

00:00:21.160 us in one way or another. Today we're going to discuss education in America and specifically

00:00:26.360 school choice. Why do you basically have to go to the public school in which you pay taxes?

00:00:34.220 Why aren't there more options for most parents? Who's stopping it and why and how can we get around

00:00:40.320 them? Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on our public education system every year

00:00:45.800 and yet America's students are falling way behind. It's pathetic where our country is right now in

00:00:51.220 the international rankings. Pathetic. Our issues were certainly made worse by COVID, but it's not 1.00

00:00:57.320 actually a new problem. We were falling behind even before COVID. A 2018 survey found the United States

00:01:03.000 ranked 22nd, 22nd in the world when it comes to reading, math, and science scores. Guess where the

00:01:11.640 Chinese are? Number one. We're not even close. It's ridiculous. Some argue the solution is more

00:01:19.120 options for parents. But critics of school choice say, well, it sounds like a good idea. It's got a

00:01:24.460 nice shiny name. But in reality, it's a scam that benefits rich people and screws over the poor. 0.92

00:01:31.040 So we're going to take a deep dive. What's true? What's working? What's not? We have some experts

00:01:36.700 here and we've got some parents here whose kids have lost the school choice lottery. Here in New York,

00:01:43.240 it is absolutely cruel what we're putting families through. This is the worst run city,

00:01:49.400 one of them at least. They just don't give a damn about the children here. And God forbid your child 0.95

00:01:54.500 do well in the K through eight system when they apply to the high school, they're effed. They will

00:02:00.800 be punished for having done well. Their good grades are a sign that they need to be transported from an

00:02:06.300 high school district into one that's struggling so that averages can go up. I mean, we'll get into all

00:02:10.520 of it. Parents also will be joining us today who've had to make the difficult decision to pull their

00:02:14.880 kids out of public school, pay the hefty fees for private education and how some governors in the

00:02:20.020 nation, though not not enough, are helping to make that easier now for parents. The politics at play are

00:02:27.680 also always a factor. The teachers union, Randy Weingarten, and we'll discuss some solutions and where

00:02:35.460 we go from here, what you should be advocating in your school district. So we begin the program

00:02:40.500 with Ray DeMonaco. He's director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute, which we love.

00:02:50.280 Ray, thank you so much for being here.

00:02:52.280 Happy to be here.

00:02:53.680 All right. So let's just let's let's go school choice 101. When I grew up, I didn't know there

00:02:59.320 was anything other than my public school that I had. They had to take me because my parents paid taxes.

00:03:04.060 There were some Catholic schools in my in my neighborhood and there was one independent school,

00:03:11.120 one private school where all the fancy rich kids went. But if you were not rich, you did not go to

00:03:16.200 that school. And so you were kind of stuck. You know, you would you just go to the district that

00:03:22.560 you're that you lived in. And that was the end of the matter. Now there are a few more options for for

00:03:27.980 parents in a school district like mine that include a charter school, potentially a magnet school.

00:03:37.560 So let's just start with those two things. What's a charter school?

00:03:41.640 So charter schools are publicly funded schools, but they're privately designed and run. The impetus for

00:03:50.400 the creation of charter schools really was a concern for the kids who were stuck in inner city schools

00:03:58.000 that were incredibly underperforming. I spent 40 years in my career working in and around New York

00:04:05.080 City schools. You're right. New York City has deep problems right now, but it always wasn't this way.

00:04:10.740 There was a time when things were improving and it was because of school choice.

00:04:14.000 In 2001, 2002, Mayor Bloomberg, newly elected, got control of the school system and he got rid of

00:04:22.760 the legislature, got rid of the political board of education and Bloomberg and the chancellors that he

00:04:28.640 he appointed. That's what we call superintendents here, had a very aggressive program of closing

00:04:35.940 low performing schools, largely in lower income neighborhoods of color and replacing them.

00:04:43.360 They started new charter schools. They supported the growth of charter schools. We have over 12%

00:04:49.220 of the students in New York City are in charter schools and the parents love them. The group that's

00:04:55.120 done the best in those schools are African-American kids. They way outperformed their peers by three to

00:05:00.480 one in public schools. And so, you know, this, this was a, you know, this was a information that

00:05:07.700 the problem wasn't the kids, it was the schools, right? So choice really started as a public policy

00:05:13.220 to help those most in need. But there have always been other forms of choice. People with,

00:05:19.080 with the means to do so would often move to the suburbs where quite frankly, the public schools were

00:05:23.780 pretty good back in the day. And then some obviously would use private or religious schools.

00:05:30.380 So, you know, what's, what's going on now is that, so for example, in New York State, we had a, we had a

00:05:38.380 mayor who came after Bloomberg de Blasio. He tried to overturn everything. Due to a state legislative

00:05:44.520 action, we can, we can no longer open new charter schools in New York City, despite thousands and

00:05:49.620 thousands of people being on waiting lists. Yep. And then we just saw a lawsuit in New York over that, because

00:05:53.960 there were two high performing K through eight charter schools, that all they wanted to do was form a unified

00:06:00.400 high school. They said, well, why don't we get together and, you know, why stop at eight? Let's make a nine

00:06:05.000 through 12 school that combines our two charter schools and the teachers union sued and said, no, you can't do

00:06:10.600 that. No, you already, you'll go over the cap. And thank God they won. The charter schools won, because the

00:06:15.800 court said that the expansion into high school of existing charter schools does not violate the cap. But the

00:06:23.360 reason there's a cap on charter schools is because of the democratic leadership of de Blasio. And the

00:06:28.640 reason he instituted that cap is because of the teachers unions, right? So what do they care? Why

00:06:33.460 do the teachers unions not want charter schools? Yeah, the union has great sway in Albany. They're

00:06:39.480 the most powerful block in Albany and have been for a long time. And the Democrats control all the two

00:06:45.880 houses of the legislature and the governor's office right now. It comes down to jobs. Enrollment in New

00:06:52.100 York City is down. Charter schools have been growing for 20 years. As I say, there's over

00:06:57.060 130,000 students in charter schools right now. Meanwhile, public school enrollment has dipped

00:07:03.000 for a number of reasons. One is simply fewer kids are being born, but also people are leaving

00:07:07.540 the state. And so, you know, they don't, they see this as coming after their jobs. And they've

00:07:13.980 been able to convince the legislature that public education should serve its employees, not its

00:07:20.220 children. How is it that we can avoid union teachers in charter schools? 0.94

00:07:26.660 Because they are privately run, they don't bring in the existing union contract, at least

00:07:32.160 not in New York State. That may differ in some other states across the country. All private sector

00:07:37.540 employees have the right to try to unionize. We can't block that. But it really hasn't taken off

00:07:43.760 in charter schools. And that's a good question to ask the unions, rather than trying to block,

00:07:50.820 you know, the creation of new charter schools. If you think you have a product that's so good,

00:07:56.240 why aren't you able to organize teachers in charter schools?

00:08:00.000 Mm-hmm. The unions can't stand the charter schools, even though, as you say, okay, over 130,000

00:08:05.420 kids in New York City, but aren't there over, just over a million kids in school in New York City,

00:08:12.780 right? So it's like, it's not that big a percentage. Why, you know, you'd think the union would say it's

00:08:17.320 something that we have to live with, and maybe it alleviates some of the burden that they're always

00:08:21.340 telling us they're under. Yeah. New York City is a very diverse city in terms of its school

00:08:27.720 population. As you know, we have a lot of private and religious schools in New York City. There are

00:08:32.840 over 110,000 kids in Jewish schools in New York City. That's another issue. But we also have the

00:08:38.700 prep schools and whatnot. So a good percentage of kids are in the private schools. And then,

00:08:43.840 you know, the charters are drawing these other kids. But the enrollment in the traditional public

00:08:49.320 school system is actually down to 800,000 students right now. A lot of that's happened in the last two

00:08:53.800 years because of COVID. But they are losing population, and the state is losing population.

00:08:59.220 And so that's a problem for our leaders in Albany and in City Hall to think about why are they driving

00:09:05.160 parents away? People weren't necessarily leaving just because of the poor performance of these

00:09:11.520 schools. I mean, over the past two years, what's happened? COVID, right? They were closed. I mean,

00:09:16.760 one of my dearest friends has had her children in the New York City public schools.

00:09:19.980 And they could very well send their kids to private schools. They chose. They're Upper West

00:09:25.140 Side liberals. They were like, we're committed to the public school system. We're going to send

00:09:28.300 our kids to the public schools. And then their schools were closed from March of 2020, basically

00:09:34.120 through the entire next school year. And I've told the story before, but they showed up at it. They

00:09:37.880 finally, these Joe Biden campaigning Upper West Side liberals, finally showed up to a small

00:09:45.340 open-the-schools rally, just saying like, please open the schools. And they were called white

00:09:49.540 supremacists. So it's like, that's the experience of too many New York City parents who have decided,

00:09:56.640 yeah, I'm out of here. I'm no longer ideologically committed to these schools, which weren't that

00:10:02.480 great to begin with, and now aren't even open. And then if we finally show up, we're going to call

00:10:07.180 our family white supremacists for wanting the doors to be open.

00:10:09.980 Right. There's another thing that happened that I wanted to bring up, because it speaks

00:10:14.040 to the issue you raised about kids being caught in lotteries right now. The other thing that

00:10:18.200 Mayor Bloomberg did was to open up all kinds of schools, not just schools in low-income

00:10:22.540 neighborhoods, but they opened and they gave choice to parents who wanted accelerated learning,

00:10:28.860 or they wanted their kids in gifted and talented programs. A lot of parents want to make sure

00:10:33.740 that their children are surrounded by other children who can keep up with the

00:10:39.960 learning that they required. And so there were many middle schools and a lot of high schools in

00:10:45.460 New York City, there were entrance requirements. So when de Blasio came in, and this happened in

00:10:51.920 places like the Upper West Side and also Pork Slope, which has the same political culture that you

00:10:56.860 described on the Upper West Side, people started saying, no, there's something wrong about this.

00:11:01.720 It's racist. And my position is to deny a child of any race, white or Asian, black or Hispanic, access to

00:11:11.720 an accelerated program does nothing to help the kids in other neighborhoods who are trapped in poor

00:11:18.440 schools. It's simply, you know, it's uncomfortable. But we've had a lot of that. There's been an attack

00:11:24.060 in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, Pork Slope, this neighborhood, you know, that is very democratic,

00:11:31.580 very liberal, against entrance requirements. And that's also applied to the high schools. And that's

00:11:38.060 why in the last two years, a lot of parents unfortunately find themselves their kids being

00:11:42.960 thrown into a lottery. So random chance decides where they're going to end up. The problem with that

00:11:48.860 is that there are many good schools in New York City, but there are also some real stinkers.

00:11:54.460 And nobody wants their kids by chance to be thrown into one of those schools. And unfortunately,

00:11:58.800 that's been happening. Is New York City the only place with such a lottery system?

00:12:04.420 No, there are others. There's been a generalized attack across the country on selective schools. In most

00:12:13.000 cities across the country, this refers to high schools. New York City was kind of unique doing it,

00:12:18.100 at the middle school level. But in San Francisco, for example, they had a selective high school,

00:12:23.640 Lowell High School. In a county in Virginia, right? That's in a Washington, Jefferson High School. And

00:12:30.420 in Chicago and Boston, there were also selective high schools. And in each of those localities,

00:12:36.360 there has been push in recent years to get rid of the entrance requirements. These are all schools

00:12:42.900 which were designed for incredibly advanced students, right? We have four of them very famous

00:12:49.560 in New York City, and then a couple other smaller ones. And so there was this push to get rid of these

00:12:54.300 and sort of parcel out these seats. Parents have fought back, and I'm sure you'll get to that later.

00:13:00.440 But in San Francisco, for example, parents were able to reelect a new school board and get rid of the

00:13:06.720 attempt to try and shut down. There's this generalized attack on merit and achievement in our country

00:13:13.420 today, arguing somehow that those concepts are racist in and of themselves.

00:13:19.080 How does it, so under Mayor de Blasio over the past couple of years, he's been trying to flood these

00:13:23.460 top, top schools that used to be merit-based with more, based on, your admission is based on race now,

00:13:28.980 right? He wants it to be more integrated, he said, irrespective of the academic background of the

00:13:34.640 applicant. So do we know how that's going? Like, at places like Stuyvesant, right? That's one of the

00:13:40.320 places in New York, I assume you're referring to, is a very, very well-respected public school. It's

00:13:45.660 like impossible to get into. But like, if you take a bunch of kids who didn't do well in K-8 and put

00:13:49.700 them in Stuyvesant, they're going to get killed academically, no? Yeah, there's evidence for that.

00:13:54.720 Actually, there's a couple of things happened in New York City. So Stuyvesant High School and Bronx

00:13:58.620 Science and a couple of others. Actually, he did try to do something like that, but he couldn't because

00:14:04.260 those schools, as things stand now, are protected by a state law that requires that they only admit

00:14:11.940 kids through an exam. So they haven't been able to do away with that, but they keep trying.

00:14:16.420 Interestingly enough, de Blasio tried to create, there is a backdoor to those schools. If you score

00:14:24.560 just below the cutoff, there's always been a program, it's always been a place where you can go

00:14:30.080 at the recommendation of your middle school principal to summer school and say Stuyvesant.

00:14:34.480 And if the principal there thinks you're up to it, you can get admitted. De Blasio expanded that,

00:14:40.780 but it backfired on him. The complaint, by the way, about Stuyvesant is not that it's too white,

00:14:45.360 it's that it's too Asian, which is a terrible thing for people to say. But every time de Blasio tried

00:14:51.140 to do something like this, more Asian kids got in. Because you know why? The kids who scored just below 0.99

00:14:56.720 look just like the kids who scored just above. They're also Asian. He can't get away from the 1.00

00:15:02.120 damn Asians. That's like, that's his racism and people let him get away with it, but he's not 1.00

00:15:06.300 the only one. Right. But, but the other interesting thing I mentioned pork slope before, that's where

00:15:11.320 Bill de Blasio raised his kids and where other politicians who all of a sudden thought that

00:15:15.700 selective schools were racist raised their kids. Interestingly enough, they didn't start to

00:15:19.800 this campaign until their kids were over with school, right? And the selective middle schools

00:15:25.120 were good enough for them and their children, but then how they want to deny it to other people.

00:15:29.320 How do vouchers play into this? I remember during the George W. Bush years, we had a lot of discussions

00:15:34.540 of vouchers, especially Republicans pushing for those. And then Obama came in and it seemed like

00:15:39.000 he was like, maybe some charters, but the one thing I'm not going to get behind is vouchers,

00:15:43.320 hardcore no on vouchers. You don't hear as much about vouchers like that word today. I don't know

00:15:48.340 whether it's been replaced with new nomenclature because people thought the old one was too toxic,

00:15:52.960 but can you spend a minute on vouchers? Yeah. So unlike charter schools, voucher programs take

00:15:59.280 public money and give it to parents in the form of a voucher or a coupon, and they are free to bring

00:16:05.080 that to private or religious schools of their choosing. The concept is around, it is growing.

00:16:13.580 Arizona just passed a new law. That's the Arizona thing. Right.

00:16:18.400 Yeah. Can I just say Doug Ducey didn't call it a voucher exactly. That's why I wonder,

00:16:24.220 is this a conscious choice? There are new labels for it. Education savings accounts,

00:16:29.720 you will hear a lot about. Okay. But it basically means the money follows the child. Money follows

00:16:34.300 the child and not the school district. Or tax credits. There's a bill introduced in Washington

00:16:38.980 by some Republicans right now to provide income tax credits for people who send their kid

00:16:43.080 to private or religious schools. But the big news on the voucher or private school choice front is

00:16:49.280 that in a series of rulings over the last few years, most recently this past spring, the Supreme

00:16:56.600 Court has made it clear that if states offer choice to parents, they cannot exclude religious schools

00:17:05.400 simply because they are religious or because they do religious things. That's going to open up

00:17:09.860 opportunities in some states which had constant in their state constitutions bar public money going

00:17:15.720 to religious schools. Right. Because people don't know the constitution doesn't allow the state

00:17:19.720 to discriminate in favor of one religion and against another, but it also doesn't allow the state to

00:17:24.840 discriminate against religion. And by saying to people in Maine, as they were trying to, in this

00:17:31.340 case that went up last term, you can take this money and you can go to any private school you want,

00:17:35.900 just as long as it doesn't say St. Mary's on the front. You can't take it to a Catholic school or

00:17:40.840 a religious school. And the high court said that is discriminating against religion. It's

00:17:45.660 unconstitutional in what could be a really important ruling for the rest of the country.

00:17:50.500 Yes. I'm sure you know the history on this, but it's worth repeating.

00:17:53.980 Over 30 states had what were called Blaine Amendments that barred money going to religious

00:17:59.640 schools. And what those amendments were based on was essentially anti-immigrant. When the immigrants

00:18:06.560 were Irish and Catholic and coming to this country, people got upset and they tried to

00:18:11.520 bar them. But these are the state constitutional issues that the Supreme Court has overruled in the

00:18:18.280 last couple of years.

00:18:19.000 Now, listen, the people who hate school choice, who love the teachers unions, who want all of us

00:18:26.880 to send our kids to public school, say there's only one reason that the scores are falling to dreadful

00:18:33.180 levels right now. And if there's one reason that America is 22 and China is number one in terms of

00:18:38.480 how well our kids are doing at math and science and reading, and that is we don't fund our schools

00:18:44.400 properly. There's not enough money and that money matters in education. We're not shelling out

00:18:50.060 enough dough to support in particular, these struggling school districts. What do you say to

00:18:55.040 that?

00:18:55.200 Yeah. Well, first of all, it's insane. The evidence is that we've been raising spending tremendously.

00:19:02.780 New York state proudly leads the nation in per pupil spending. Every governor's budget address has that

00:19:10.480 line, which we proudly, you know, we're the top of the heap in terms of spending. But New York state's

00:19:16.040 achievement compared to the rest of the country, it's right in the middle. It's at the average. So

00:19:19.740 we spend the most and we get average results. The other thing is that, you know, we see that

00:19:26.360 charter schools get by with less money. Don't believe the hype that they get more money than

00:19:30.400 public schools. I've studied this intensively in New York, where we have a very large charter sector.

00:19:36.180 And it's not true. Public schools get more money and some religious schools can get great results

00:19:42.040 with less money being spent. Money can matter. But simply funding schools to do what they've always

00:19:49.020 been doing does not. That's what we know. It matters how you use the money. And state and large school

00:19:57.480 district bureaucracies are not very good at figuring out how to best spend the money. That's best left to

00:20:05.220 people who we call entrepreneurs. That's one of the things that drives the charter school movement.

00:20:09.440 People start these schools, nonprofits, and they have a burning desire to prove that they're getting

00:20:14.960 the results, but they have to show that they're getting results for the money. And they do. They

00:20:18.880 figure out how to spend the money right. The vast majority of the money goes to teachers. Total

00:20:23.680 expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. in 18 to 19, it were 800 billion.

00:20:30.580 80% goes to salary and benefits. So, I mean, I do look at these. Let's take the inner city schools

00:20:36.820 in Chicago. Let's take this guy who I met over the weekend, who was from Ferguson, Missouri,

00:20:41.180 who said very openly, he was black. He said, I live in a black community. I don't have a grocery 0.62

00:20:47.280 store. I don't have a gas station. I don't have a school with air conditioning or proper heating or

00:20:54.880 conditions. And he had a lot of resentments. I think they were appropriate, probably best directed

00:21:01.840 against the Democrats who have been running cities like Ferguson. But why? Why is his school like

00:21:07.780 that? Why are so many schools like that with the paint chipping? And then you look at inner city

00:21:11.760 Chicago, if we're devoting so much money to the schools and well-funding teachers, according to the

00:21:18.940 stats. Yeah. So, look, education is a people-intensive profession. Teachers are going to

00:21:27.740 always, you know, be a big part of the budget because you need a teacher for every 25 kids or

00:21:33.080 so, right? But part of the problem, and that's buried in the statistics that you quoted, is that

00:21:39.120 benefits, things like defined benefit pensions, a lot of the public employee pension systems across

00:21:47.380 the country are underfunded right now and they're playing catch-up. So, that drives up the cost.

00:21:52.880 You also have in public school systems, particularly in large cities, you have a tremendous overhead of

00:22:00.180 this bureaucracy that's outside the schools and their monitors and their measuring compliance with

00:22:06.720 this or that. But it's not doing any good for the schools. So, there's a lot of money that's being

00:22:11.580 wasted away. But, you know, back to the issue with teachers, we have another issue here in New York

00:22:16.240 with the teachers union. As I said, enrollment has been declining. And now, the governor just

00:22:23.280 signed a bill to cap class size in New York City, New York City alone at certain numbers and reduce

00:22:30.760 class size. Again, this will keep more teachers on the payroll, but there are a lot of problems with

00:22:35.200 that. If your child is in a good school and you're happy with the teachers and they're getting this

00:22:41.600 accelerated learning, you probably don't care that much if there's 28 kids in the classroom rather

00:22:47.400 than 25. The teacher's good. The kids are working hard. You know, they can do well. But this cap will

00:22:55.040 actually impinge some of those schools because if they have to reduce their class size, they can't serve

00:23:00.720 as many kids. And it's also going to cost a tremendous amount of money at a time when the city

00:23:07.220 has a $10 billion deficit, according to the New York Times yesterday. I will have one in the next

00:23:12.880 couple of years. Fear not. This mayor will do whatever is best for the teachers union, not the

00:23:16.920 children. He's way more of a de Blasio than he is a Bloomberg, despite previous hopes of change with

00:23:22.680 Eric Adams. Ray, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Okay. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. Up next,

00:23:28.880 two parents living a nightmare thanks to the bizarre way America's largest city handles education and

00:23:34.760 they speak for a lot of parents. Stand by. Imagine having a child who excels in academics, who does the

00:23:47.220 time, who puts in the elbow grease to raise his or her grades. They do extracurricular activities.

00:23:52.380 They do sports. And this is at a young age. We're talking about pre-high school. They're working it

00:23:56.620 because they see a bright future and they know it takes hard work. But then when it comes time for

00:24:01.040 them to go to high school, public high school, they are sent far from home to and through unsafe

00:24:07.460 neighborhoods en route. And then once they land there into a struggling school and perhaps even

00:24:13.000 forced into a career path at a specialized high school that they don't want to do. That is the stark

00:24:19.480 reality for parents, not just in New York, but in other cities, but particularly in America's biggest

00:24:25.480 school district. And that is New York city here to tell their stories. Two parents, Murad Belkus and

00:24:31.080 Sheila guys. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. These stories are horrifying.

00:24:36.260 They're horrifying. And they really bring home, not just how frustrating it is to try to navigate the

00:24:42.780 public school system, but how inept the people running it are, how unkind, how cruel they are.

00:24:51.940 And in some instances, how racist they are. So Murad, let me just start with you because as I understand 0.52

00:24:57.780 it, you have, you're originally from Algeria, been in New York city, 42 years. You've got older sons,

00:25:03.960 two older sons who went through the New York city public schools. You're a single dad and you had

00:25:08.240 a pretty good experience. You thought, okay, I have a third child, a daughter. I'm going to do the same

00:25:13.100 thing. I'll put her through the New York city public schools and should work out fine. Then came the

00:25:17.520 moment when you had to get a lottery number for her venture into the ninth grade. And I understand

00:25:24.820 your lottery number was very, very high. Is it expected to be lower? If as your daughter's grades

00:25:32.040 were, the grades are very high and the student's resume is very strong.

00:25:37.320 The problem is, first of all, I think the department of education has not been honest with us. I don't

00:25:48.440 believe that the random number is really random. I don't believe it. There are cases where

00:25:55.220 people, for instance, who don't have their English as their first language, they have a much lower.

00:26:05.360 And there are a number of cases that fall into that category. So I don't believe they are random.

00:26:12.980 I went to the family center, I asked the question, I never got an answer. I believe if it was truly

00:26:20.220 random, they would have said it's random. I don't think it's random. Even though it's random,

00:26:27.580 there are two kinds of schools, school and screened, which is pure lottery. And there are screened

00:26:34.380 schools. Screened school is based on the grades. Sarah has 100. Sarah is a honor student. She even

00:26:44.860 got an award for excellency last June. So I said, even with a lower for screen, at least she will get

00:26:53.020 one of the 12 choices. My surprise and my shock, both to me and to her, is that when they send her to

00:27:04.540 CTE program to be a pharmacy technician, a pharmacy technician, I went to family center. First of all,

00:27:14.060 I think. Hold on, hold on. Let me just stop you. Let me stop you because I want to make sure the

00:27:17.320 audience is with us. So Sarah is your daughter. Sarah has perfect grades and you do not want Sarah 0.95

00:27:22.420 to be a pharmacy technician. There's nothing wrong with that job, but it's just not what she wants

00:27:25.880 to be. And through, she got a very high lottery number. If you get a lower lottery number, you're

00:27:30.880 in better shape. She got a very high one. They say it's random, but you doubt that you think they're

00:27:35.580 assigning it based on other things. And because of her very high lottery number, she doesn't get into

00:27:40.300 just a general high school that prepares you for college. She gets sent to a technical high school

00:27:46.320 that prepares you to become a pharmacy technician, which at no point in the process did you ever tell

00:27:51.060 anybody Sarah wanted to be. Isn't that a violation of the Constitution? 0.99

00:27:56.060 Certainly the New York State Constitution, which provides a right to, I think it's a broad general

00:28:00.620 education that would prepare your child for college.

00:28:03.280 Yes. There was a lawsuit against the state of New York. I don't remember a couple of years

00:28:11.400 ago, which the Supreme Court specifically said that students, New York State students are entitled

00:28:22.100 to sound basic education. Let's prepare them to college. 0.97

00:28:26.420 That's right. And also, ESSA, which is a federal legislation, forbid any education institution

00:28:39.240 to use income as a factor for admission.

00:28:43.360 So if you have money, they're not supposed to give your child a terrible lottery number

00:28:47.560 just because she may have more money than somebody who doesn't have as much. That's not

00:28:51.900 okay under federal law.

00:28:53.840 Federal legislation forbid that.

00:28:56.420 Mm-hmm.

00:28:57.880 So-

00:28:58.420 And I did request, I did request the Department of Education three times to provide me with

00:29:03.820 the criteria used in classifying my daughter in the various admission priorities. I never

00:29:11.800 got a reply.

00:29:13.760 Mm-hmm. I mean, that could be bureaucracy because you never get a reply from anyone when you're

00:29:18.700 dealing with administrative services in New York.

00:29:20.600 But I am going to get a reply because even if I have to file a lawsuit, because I need

00:29:26.440 that information. Not for me because for my daughter it's too late, but at least for future

00:29:32.280 families. I think it's a lot of what the Department of Education is doing.

00:29:36.200 What happened when your daughter found out she was going to the pharmacy tech high school? 0.86

00:29:41.060 She was crying. She was falling apart. That's actually a few days after she received the

00:29:49.460 award of excellence from high middle school. And what broke my heart was when she told me, you see,

00:30:00.460 the UN system getting good grades, they are worthless. And in New York State, they are worthless. And that's sad.

00:30:10.300 What do you think they're prioritizing? Do you think they're prioritizing lower income kids or kids of a certain racial background?

00:30:16.340 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.

00:30:42.480 Oh, wow. When you put it that way, it really brings it home.

00:30:46.340 Yeah, because people who don't speak English, parents who don't make an effort to have their children integrate to American way of life, get much higher priority, much better priority.

00:31:03.060 Wow. So what is she doing now? Is she at the pharmacy tech school? 0.85

00:31:06.960 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. 0.87

00:31:17.600 So you're going to move. That's the only option left to you.

00:31:21.000 Yes. For at least to provide a better education.

00:31:26.020 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.

00:31:33.640 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.

00:31:53.020 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.

00:32:02.800 Yeah. And the odd thing is that I received an article last week, an email from one of the Department of Education saying that they have to boost the registration because apparently the registration in New York City is dropping. Aren't they where? Why?

00:32:22.520 Good family are moving out of the state of New York because of how unfairly their kids have been treated.

00:32:33.300 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.

00:32:48.840 But let me stand you by because I want to bring in Chi and get his story, which dovetails a little bit to your own.

00:32:55.260 So Chi, you have a story about your son who, similar to Sarah, worked hard, got good grades, extracurricular activities.

00:33:04.640 Tell us a little bit about Zach.

00:33:07.820 Zachary is a 97 student, three-year National Junior Honor Society.

00:33:12.100 He just had an art show on East 5th Street in the middle of August.

00:33:19.520 He has basketball, tennis.

00:33:24.460 I've always been very, very happy and grateful that I feel blessed to have a good kid.

00:33:30.120 And I always assumed that he wouldn't be a problem when we applied for high school and college.

00:33:36.120 But this has turned into a real absolute nightmare.

00:33:38.840 So can you relate to some of what we just heard in terms of the application process and not trusting the information?

00:33:46.380 And what happened with your lottery situation?

00:33:49.220 Well, again, same story.

00:33:50.380 We got a very high or, quote unquote, bad lottery number that we didn't, you know, we didn't apply for.

00:33:56.060 We didn't, they don't really tell you what you have to do to get this lottery number, right?

00:33:59.480 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.

00:34:05.440 You know, I would wake up early and, you know, get online or do whatever I have to do.

00:34:09.920 But they somehow just assigned this lottery number that I don't know how, who, or when, or where it came from.

00:34:16.420 And yeah, you're going, and here's the funny thing.

00:34:18.740 So they assigned my son to FDNY, which is in New York.

00:34:24.940 It's a good 70, I took, I took the trip myself.

00:34:28.200 It's a good 75 minutes away from my house to your mass transit.

00:34:31.460 But initially they were insisting that it was only 50 minutes away because they would go on the MTA website and, you know, track it during times of slow traffic.

00:34:39.800 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 Queens to Brooklyn, it's counterintuitive.

00:34:47.260 You're going through some of the worst neighborhoods in New York City.

00:34:50.200 You're going to a school with 38% reading rate.

00:34:53.240 You're going to a school with 38% writing rate, no AP.

00:34:57.300 And they're preparing my son to be a fire department, a firefighter, which she-

00:35:02.780 Is that right?

00:35:03.920 So in the same way we saw with Sarah getting prepared to be a pharmacy technician, again, nothing wrong with that job.

00:35:08.920 But if you don't want it, why would you spend four years preparing for it?

00:35:12.780 So your son was on the F to become a fire department track?

00:35:16.240 Something you've ever expressed interesting.

00:35:17.560 I have no idea.

00:35:18.360 But that's what the thing said.

00:35:19.820 It's FDNY and they say they prepare the children to be EMT technicians and fire department.

00:35:26.300 This is so crazy.

00:35:28.260 It was never listed in any of his interests to be that.

00:35:31.420 And respectfully, at the age of 14, a lot of kids don't know what they want.

00:35:36.660 Right.

00:35:37.560 Right.

00:35:37.960 Where's the general education?

00:35:39.300 So, you know, I said in the introduction that there's racism at play.

00:35:44.320 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.

00:35:53.280 And I understand you suspect that may have been at play in your case as well.

00:35:57.500 Well, I mean, I grew up in New York and I'm a product of the public school system.

00:36:04.700 I'm very happy.

00:36:05.420 You know, PS42, IS-131, Stuyvesant High School, then Fordham University.

00:36:09.740 So I know how the application process works.

00:36:12.160 And we applied to two really great schools that everybody wants to go to, you know, like the best, some of the best schools.

00:36:19.120 We applied to three average schools that with his grades, he should be able to get in.

00:36:24.220 And then two, you know, schools are not so great, but, you know, he can get in.

00:36:28.620 So I played it like I played college.

00:36:33.080 And I recently read in an article in the Post that 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.

00:36:43.800 Well, we didn't aim too high.

00:36:44.940 Like I said, I aimed at two schools that if I didn't get into my first two choices, I would be okay.

00:36:50.560 Three schools that he should have very safely gotten into, middle of the line schools, and then two schools that were five, ten minutes away from my house.

00:36:57.700 They won't even do that.

00:36:59.360 They said, hey, you got to go 75 minutes away.

00:37:02.320 We say it's 50, but it's really 75.

00:37:04.560 When you take the trip at 7 o'clock in the morning.

00:37:06.880 I did that trip.

00:37:08.140 So the DOE can't tell me it's really 50.

00:37:11.040 No, at 7 o'clock in the morning, it's 75 minutes.

00:37:14.060 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.

00:37:22.740 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.

00:37:33.120 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.

00:37:39.280 That's not like, okay, I'll just meander over five minutes next door.

00:37:41.840 These schools, as he points out, could be a 75-minute commute.

00:37:44.860 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?

00:37:53.260 Yeah, I think the maximum is 70 minutes or maybe a little lower than 70 minutes.

00:38:00.940 That's a threshold.

00:38:02.100 And then there's also three modes of transportation, which you have to take free transportation.

00:38:07.280 They're breaking their own rule.

00:38:08.500 So when I called the DOE Enrollment Center, they said, well, you know, you live in, you know, Queens, but it's really pretty close to Brooklyn.

00:38:15.260 I said, yeah, you know what?

00:38:16.500 Six inches on the map doesn't mean it's close.

00:38:19.300 And the guy's like, well, you know, it's still 50 minutes.

00:38:22.200 And I said, I took, with all due respect, I took a ton of up in the morning.

00:38:26.720 It's 75 minutes.

00:38:27.640 And that took, you know, and that takes hours to get to the, have this 15-minute conversation where they basically tell you what you've experienced is wrong.

00:38:36.440 Like, what you know to be real is not real.

00:38:39.160 That, according to our records, it's 50 minutes.

00:38:42.400 That's too much to ask of a child who's 14 years old anyway, who then has to sit in class all day.

00:38:49.060 You guys remember when you were in high school, it's hard to keep your eyelids up.

00:38:51.980 You know, it's like, you're tired.

00:38:53.760 You're like, oh my God, if I could just take a quick little nap.

00:38:56.400 It's hard.

00:38:57.000 It's hard for all kids, and it's especially hard for 14 kids, 14-year-old kids.

00:39:01.480 I think that's too much to ask of them, so I don't blame you just on the backgrounds for fighting it.

00:39:06.360 I know you had some thoughts on this influx of migrants.

00:39:10.660 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.

00:39:18.220 And you had some thoughts on why Eric Adams is taking in so many migrants. 0.95

00:39:23.000 At least 2,000 have been sent to New York by Governor Abbott of Texas.

00:39:27.600 What are those thoughts, Chi?

00:39:29.580 Well, at the end of the day, it all comes down to funding.

00:39:32.420 I mean, we're losing, what, 30,000 kids this year, and we're on track to lose more because of exactly what Marad said.

00:39:39.880 You know, anybody who's going to rub together are going to leave.

00:39:44.380 And you're going to lose a big chunk of federal funding.

00:39:47.340 So what do you do?

00:39:48.140 You turn around and you say, hey, I'm going to take migrant children. 1.00

00:39:50.620 These migrant children speak English.

00:39:52.540 As Marad said, you know, English is a second language, so we're going to need more services.

00:39:56.440 We're going to apply to the federal government.

00:39:57.980 We're going to apply to the state and say, hey, we need more services.

00:40:00.780 Some of them are going to have learning disabilities.

00:40:02.760 Some of them are going to require housing.

00:40:04.580 It's a way to balloon the budget.

00:40:06.180 It's a way to get more money because I'm still going to pay property tax.

00:40:10.080 Marad's still going to pay property taxes.

00:40:12.080 And it's unfair because our property taxes are still going to support the educational system.

00:40:15.980 But I was fortunate to send my kid to a Lutheran school.

00:40:19.160 A Lutheran school.

00:40:20.820 Yep.

00:40:22.080 My son's creative, so he really did.

00:40:23.920 A Catholic school.

00:40:24.700 Lutheran school is like a Catholic school.

00:40:26.320 I was a little more lenient.

00:40:30.200 Yeah, like Lutheranism.

00:40:31.680 That's Catholicism.

00:40:32.480 Yeah, well, you know, I'm Lutheran.

00:40:34.220 And I'd like to share one more thing.

00:40:36.880 And if I could play something.

00:40:38.900 I went to the Welcome Center, fought them for like days and days and days and days. 1.00

00:40:43.020 You know, took time off of work.

00:40:44.320 What's the Welcome Center?

00:40:45.320 And they turned around and they said, you know what, Mr. Lau?

00:40:48.320 We're going to offer you a school in Queens.

00:40:51.040 And I said, how about you send me to the school that, you know, even the ones that I chose, the lower tier ones. 0.59

00:40:58.640 No, we can't offer you that.

00:41:00.040 We're going to offer you a school in Queens, right?

00:41:01.720 And that school had safety and security problems.

00:41:04.840 On the second day that my son went to Martin Luther, this is the message I get.

00:41:11.680 Hold on.

00:41:11.960 I want to play this message.

00:41:13.140 And this relates to the other school.

00:41:15.920 It's really, yeah, the other school that they just offered me.

00:41:19.940 Here's the message.

00:41:20.820 I saved it.

00:41:21.480 The building was secured and all students and staff were sheltered in.

00:41:35.040 All external doors were locked.

00:41:37.760 The NYPD responded and deemed the situation was safe.

00:41:42.220 The shelter-in was lifted.

00:41:43.440 This is where they wanted to send your son.

00:41:49.360 This is where I said, hey, listen, I understand.

00:41:52.500 You can't send my son to the two best ones.

00:41:54.760 You can't send them to the three middle of the line ones that I chose.

00:41:57.860 Send them to the two bottom ones that I chose.

00:41:59.580 At least they're safe neighbors, right?

00:42:01.220 No, Mr. Lau.

00:42:02.040 We got to send you.

00:42:03.240 Here.

00:42:03.620 This is the only choice you have.

00:42:04.740 And it's in Queens.

00:42:05.420 So you can't complain about it.

00:42:06.900 It's 20 minutes away from your house.

00:42:09.140 So this is it.

00:42:11.200 And I looked at the safety record of that school.

00:42:14.120 And I said, I can't.

00:42:15.620 I can't in good conscience send my kid there to go to school.

00:42:19.080 Oh, my.

00:42:19.640 And you know what?

00:42:20.380 It's almost as if the universe was telling me I made the right choice.

00:42:23.380 Because the second day he attended the Lutheran school, this is what came up.

00:42:27.240 At the school that they wanted you to be at.

00:42:29.440 Can I just ask you?

00:42:30.340 Imagine being in Paris and getting this voicemail message.

00:42:33.240 I know.

00:42:33.980 Can I ask you?

00:42:34.700 I'm going to go back to you in one second, Mariah.

00:42:36.980 But I just want to ask you.

00:42:38.680 Is the Lutheran school out of pocket?

00:42:41.220 It's private school.

00:42:41.860 You've had to find the money.

00:42:43.060 Like in New York State, are they helping you with that money at all?

00:42:45.880 No, absolutely.

00:42:47.860 So your tax dollars go to New York.

00:42:49.780 You get absolutely no benefit education-wise from those tax dollars.

00:42:53.420 And there's no reimbursement to you in sending the kid your child to private school.

00:42:56.720 There is no recourse.

00:42:58.540 I just, I mean, but then you hear the message.

00:43:02.420 Yes.

00:43:02.920 That's pretty much a choice we're left with.

00:43:04.700 Yes.

00:43:05.240 Go ahead, Murad.

00:43:06.900 Yeah.

00:43:07.540 Sarah's school also has a metal detector.

00:43:11.320 Sarah's school has a metal detector?

00:43:13.560 Yeah.

00:43:14.080 That's the pharmacy technician.

00:43:17.120 It has a metal detector.

00:43:19.120 Wow.

00:43:19.600 And they keep changing the name of the school.

00:43:25.140 Why?

00:43:27.460 Guess what?

00:43:29.720 Bad publicity.

00:43:30.300 What?

00:43:30.520 Has it had like a famous, oh, bad publicity?

00:43:33.200 Or it had like a Thomas Jefferson name on it?

00:43:35.100 Yeah.

00:43:35.660 Yeah, for sure.

00:43:36.860 Why would they change the name of the school?

00:43:40.100 Oh my gosh.

00:43:40.900 That's disturbing.

00:43:42.380 Yeah.

00:43:42.560 Can I just ask you, because Murad, I know you've been dealing with, both of you have

00:43:45.480 dealt with the bureaucracy nonstop.

00:43:48.900 They may, I've been so impressed in reading your stories about how determined you were,

00:43:52.660 but I mean, who's got time to make this number of phone calls and go to this many schools

00:43:57.500 and like follow up.

00:43:58.400 And as you point out, Murad, you've been getting stiff armed on the information at every turn,

00:44:02.840 but just can you give us a sense of how difficult it's been to get a real life human,

00:44:08.360 to give you real results that you can actually work with?

00:44:12.560 You can.

00:44:13.300 I had, I went to the family welcome center and I spoke to one of the ladies there and

00:44:21.860 I specifically, and what she said, the script, everybody telling you that, oh, put her on

00:44:27.260 the wait list.

00:44:28.380 I mean, I put her on the wait list. 0.90

00:44:30.140 You know, she's wait listed at 4,000, 3,000.

00:44:32.920 What chance will you have 12 seats, maybe four seats available?

00:44:37.500 And it's not, I mean, I put her on school that they are really, really low.

00:44:44.500 They have like about 50, 60% graduation rate.

00:44:48.700 And she's, you know, ranked so high, some possible odds.

00:44:54.580 So, I sent a letter and said, okay, I want this information.

00:45:01.480 The assistant director of admission called me and she was so rude. 1.00

00:45:09.540 She was the one who called me.

00:45:12.060 She didn't even give me a chance to speak.

00:45:15.620 And what she said, she said, oh, I am sorry.

00:45:18.240 I have another phone call.

00:45:20.220 And she hung up.

00:45:21.860 What'd you call me for?

00:45:24.340 Exactly.

00:45:25.300 Yeah.

00:45:25.960 I didn't call her.

00:45:26.940 She called me.

00:45:27.940 I can feel it.

00:45:28.820 I can feel it.

00:45:29.440 I mean, having spent 17 years in New York, I can feel it just like the administrative

00:45:32.700 headaches there are nightmarish.

00:45:34.760 But when you're dealing with your child, it's next level.

00:45:37.760 And my daughter, you know, I told her, don't worry about it because, you know, she was

00:45:42.400 preparing the show in her middle school.

00:45:44.800 She was also preparing a musical because she played piano, violin, because it was at the

00:45:53.900 end of the year.

00:45:54.720 They have a show, the Loose Food.

00:45:57.400 They were rehearsing for the Loose Food.

00:46:00.340 I said, don't worry about it.

00:46:01.680 Just concentrate and do your best.

00:46:04.700 Enjoy it.

00:46:05.620 We deal with it later on.

00:46:07.320 And then, yeah, the bad news came.

00:46:11.460 And I know they don't give you this information until the end of the school year.

00:46:16.400 And then you're nobody's there over the summer to help you.

00:46:19.540 And then you try to deal with the beginning of the school year.

00:46:21.400 And they're like, oh, you're too late.

00:46:23.000 It's incredible.

00:46:24.460 So, Murad, you're thinking about leaving New York.

00:46:26.960 Chi, you're now paying out of pocket for a Lutheran school that you should not be having 0.98

00:46:30.420 to pay for.

00:46:31.780 And these are choices too many parents in too many districts have had to make.

00:46:36.640 I know you'll do the right thing and protect your children.

00:46:39.500 I thank you both for coming on and telling your stories.

00:46:42.120 Thank you.

00:46:42.660 Thank you, Megan.

00:46:43.620 All the best to you and your children too.

00:46:45.780 Much, much more ahead with parents who were able to move their children out of the failing

00:46:50.720 public school system, how they did it.

00:46:53.320 Okay.

00:46:53.580 And then we'll have an expert on to talk about real solutions for you as well.

00:47:01.020 Are you stuck in a school you can't stand?

00:47:03.560 How do you get out?

00:47:04.680 How do you fund your next choice?

00:47:06.640 There are a lot of parents who are in the same boat as our last two guests who have

00:47:11.120 problems with their school.

00:47:12.220 It may not be because it's dangerous.

00:47:14.400 It may not be because the standards are terrible and the school's children are failing out or

00:47:20.340 have a 38% proficiency rate in math, science, or reading, et cetera.

00:47:23.900 It may just be the school does not align with your values, especially in today's day and age when it

00:47:30.200 comes to COVID policy or CRT or radical trans ideology or inappropriate sexual books they want

00:47:37.280 to offer your kindergartner.

00:47:38.800 There's all sorts of reasons why you might want to get the heck out of Dodge.

00:47:42.720 And if you don't have tons of dough for private school, many parents feel totally stuck.

00:47:49.720 It's easy to say move, but how easy is that to actually do?

00:47:53.120 It means change of job.

00:47:54.480 You got to find a new job.

00:47:55.660 You got to get a new job.

00:47:56.480 You got to uproot the whole family.

00:47:57.700 It can be traumatic.

00:47:59.160 That's what Murad's looking at right now.

00:48:00.700 He may have to come out of retirement to find a new job, to move his family, to get out of

00:48:03.660 this school situation.

00:48:05.440 Well, our next guests have been through it too.

00:48:07.360 They are parents who were able to get out.

00:48:09.780 They managed to exit the public school system, and they had formerly been big advocates of public

00:48:15.680 school.

00:48:15.960 So John and Kendra Shear are successful business owners, parents of five young children, all

00:48:23.660 under the age of 10, and they are here to share their story.

00:48:27.900 John and Kendra, welcome.

00:48:29.200 Hi.

00:48:29.780 Thanks for having us.

00:48:31.000 Hi.

00:48:31.620 Great to have you.

00:48:33.900 Absolutely.

00:48:34.560 So you were, did you start, you were originally from Nebraska, right?

00:48:39.820 High school sweethearts? 0.88

00:48:41.900 Yes.

00:48:42.460 Yep.

00:48:42.740 We're from the Cornhusker States originally.

00:48:45.520 Okay.

00:48:46.400 Okay.

00:48:46.880 So you fall in love, you get married, you attended the University of Arizona together,

00:48:52.760 which is cute too.

00:48:54.580 And Kendra, you decided to become a nurse. 0.98

00:48:57.140 John, you silly, silly man wanted to be an investment banker, which sounds so fun until 0.99

00:49:02.180 you actually do it, right? 1.00

00:49:04.480 Brutal.

00:49:05.500 Yeah.

00:49:05.680 Absolutely brutal.

00:49:06.700 It's a soul sucker.

00:49:08.320 It is. 0.96

00:49:08.580 So you guys, you relocate from Nebraska out to Arizona.

00:49:12.600 And you decided basically at some point to change your career and tell us what your new joint

00:49:19.640 career, what it was that you settled on to do together.

00:49:23.160 And we settled on something completely different.

00:49:25.720 Um, and we own a dessert shop, um, in particular, like cookie dough and all things cookies.

00:49:32.280 Nice.

00:49:32.860 Nice.

00:49:33.280 Okay.

00:49:33.580 And I'm sure it's amazing.

00:49:35.280 I mean, I would, I would prefer to actually try it out myself so I could, you know, officially

00:49:41.000 endorse it.

00:49:41.820 Just not a hint at all on behalf of my team.

00:49:43.920 We can arrange that.

00:49:45.440 We'll send you guys some.

00:49:46.620 We don't ship during the summer because it's so hot here, but once it cools off, we can ship

00:49:50.680 some out.

00:49:51.580 Awesome.

00:49:51.980 Um, no, it's called scoop wells dough bar in Phoenix, Arizona, which sounds amazing.

00:49:57.400 Dough bar.

00:49:58.180 Who wouldn't go cookie dough, freshly baked cookies.

00:50:00.340 Yeah.

00:50:00.660 Okay.

00:50:01.680 So basically you become small business owners and you also become large family starters.

00:50:08.380 So you guys tell us how many kids you have.

00:50:11.200 We have five kids.

00:50:12.480 So we have two sets of twins and then our little one, we have two girls, Sloan and Delaney

00:50:17.380 who are nine and then boy, girl, twins, Quinn and Dalton who are six.

00:50:22.100 And then our littlest one, Layton, who is two.

00:50:25.780 Okay.

00:50:26.240 So I got to ask you who that has two sets of twins already then goes for the, for the fifth 0.99

00:50:32.000 child. 0.86

00:50:33.060 Crazy people. 0.99

00:50:36.300 See, I blame the children because they've been so great. 0.99

00:50:40.320 They're easy kids.

00:50:42.200 And so they made my job easy.

00:50:43.700 So I just kept going.

00:50:46.080 Good.

00:50:46.580 Good.

00:50:46.880 I'm glad.

00:50:47.500 I'm glad you did it.

00:50:48.480 So, okay.

00:50:49.140 So there you are out in Arizona.

00:50:50.460 It's beautiful in Arizona.

00:50:51.840 The weather's perfect.

00:50:53.040 A lot nicer, may I say, than Nebraska.

00:50:55.320 And, um, you're probably thinking, great, got our new business.

00:50:57.900 We got our kids as all as well.

00:51:00.060 And then what was the first sign of, well, before we get to this first sign of problems,

00:51:05.060 just explain how into the school community you were and like, cause you used to be sort 0.99

00:51:09.440 of helpers and well-liked before the shit hit the fan. 0.97

00:51:13.520 So take us to that period. 0.98

00:51:14.900 So we were, um, heavily invested.

00:51:18.460 I, um, John and I both came from public school.

00:51:21.560 I love public school.

00:51:23.340 Um, we were big advocates for it.

00:51:25.420 And so I was, um, on the board for the parent association.

00:51:29.820 I started out, um, as director of events and then I was the president, um, at our school.

00:51:35.580 So we were highly involved.

00:51:37.180 I was there all the time, almost every day.

00:51:40.340 And I'd say the biggest, the very first sign of problems is really when COVID started.

00:51:45.840 And that's what really opened my eyes to, to kind of what was going on within the system.

00:51:51.380 Um, and I tried to fight back against it for a long time.

00:51:54.940 And it just finally got to a point where I realized, you know, I have to get, we have

00:51:59.520 to get our children out because this ship can't be saved.

00:52:03.460 Mm-hmm.

00:52:04.580 It was the never ending masking that did it.

00:52:07.820 Yeah.

00:52:08.140 That was kind of the, yeah, we, so it kind of started when, when they first came on, you

00:52:12.780 know, the COVID first hit and we are going through it and we, you know, everyone did

00:52:18.540 it.

00:52:18.680 Right.

00:52:18.820 Cause it's just like what she did.

00:52:20.520 Right.

00:52:20.740 Cause everyone was, you know, accepted.

00:52:23.080 No one knew what was going on, but we knew if we just continue to make this a new normal,

00:52:26.720 that it was never going to go away.

00:52:28.440 And so we fought it, it stayed on throughout the year, um, the following year.

00:52:33.180 And we just made a promise to our kids, like, Hey, we're never going to make you do this again.

00:52:36.640 It was giving them eye infections, sores on their faces.

00:52:39.360 You know, they were struggling to focus.

00:52:42.020 Our kids were going into kindergarten, our youngest.

00:52:45.580 So there was no way we're going to, how do you learn to read when you can't see the teacher's

00:52:48.740 mouth?

00:52:49.360 Um, so it, you know, it was a variety of reasons, but I'll, I'll end up at the same spot, which means

00:52:56.060 it's not healthy for them to be wearing masks from an academic or health standpoint, um,

00:53:02.020 for school.

00:53:02.740 So once we made that promise and we are two weeks into the school year and they're like,

00:53:06.980 Ooh, community spread it's, it's high, which, you know, it's hilarious because half of our

00:53:12.120 student population was open enrollment.

00:53:13.600 So how do you determine community spread?

00:53:16.000 But, you know, a couple of kids maybe got it.

00:53:18.660 I don't, maybe not, but they went from 15 to 20% of the student population wearing masks

00:53:24.880 to like, they sent out threats telling people about community spread to, you know, 50, 60%.

00:53:29.420 And then they enforced it, uh, after three weeks into school.

00:53:32.800 And we just refused to send our kids about back and, and bounced.

00:53:36.600 And to be quite honest, one of the big problems was, as he mentioned, all the problems that

00:53:43.400 come along with masking for kids health wise and educationally.

00:53:47.600 Um, but what was also alarming to me is because I was president of the school board, I had a lot

00:53:53.660 of parents coming to me, um, to kind of voice their concerns and hoping that I would then go

00:53:59.580 to the principal or the superintendent on their behalf because, um, people didn't feel comfortable

00:54:05.540 speaking out because they were afraid of kind of retribution against their children.

00:54:10.280 So what really concerned me in addition to the masking was the lack of the system's willingness

00:54:18.700 to listen to what parents really wanted.

00:54:20.480 I had so many parents telling me that they, they didn't want their kid's mask, that all

00:54:26.180 the problems it was causing and the school board and the school districts, just inability

00:54:32.800 to listen to what parents wanted was mind blowing to me.

00:54:36.780 And the fact that inability or unwillingness.

00:54:40.280 Yeah.

00:54:41.280 I mean, it was, it was an ideological view for sure.

00:54:43.720 I mean, they just, they had chosen their side and it was that we needed a mask until we could

00:54:48.780 not mask anymore.

00:54:49.780 And for no, no purpose, right?

00:54:51.780 There was no statistics.

00:54:53.000 There's no data behind it.

00:54:54.680 Everyone knows that kids are generally safe against COVID no more, no more, um, susceptible

00:55:00.660 to that than the flu on a, on a child basis on a young, healthy child.

00:55:04.700 So it made no sense.

00:55:05.700 And, and yeah, and they, of course they ignored their own study.

00:55:08.280 I have 90,000 kids in Atlanta, Georgia that said masks do nothing that that was too inconvenient

00:55:12.720 for them.

00:55:13.720 Um, so your kids had to have the mask and so did mine.

00:55:16.380 So I love this moment of the story.

00:55:17.780 So John, you, you know, the Mr. Mr. and Mrs. PTA family.

00:55:20.780 And isn't it like, it's sort of like North Dakota, nice, like Nebraska, nice too, right?

00:55:25.040 Like that's the, you're supposed to be the nice people when you come from Nebraska and

00:55:28.940 you did the not nice thing, which I love.

00:55:31.880 You had your Norma Ray moment, John, with your sign above your head in the parking line

00:55:39.060 as the parents were dropping off the kids.

00:55:40.840 And what did your sign read?

00:55:42.100 Yeah.

00:55:43.100 So we were just, you know, we were, we were trying to advocate for just student, you know,

00:55:47.000 your child's choice to wear masks.

00:55:48.860 So it was just simply parent choice, you know, no, no, uh, administrator determining whether

00:55:56.000 or not you wear a mask, not saying that, no, you couldn't wear a mask, just that, um, you

00:55:59.760 had the choice.

00:56:00.400 So I held up a sign.

00:56:03.040 I got a couple other people to do it with me.

00:56:04.940 And, you know, we were friendly saying hi to people, multiple people told us to F off,

00:56:09.220 um, which, and some, one person told me to F off and that we're going to wear F in masks

00:56:15.440 all year long.

00:56:16.560 You should move F in schools.

00:56:17.920 And like, is this really like, is that your bowl?

00:56:20.400 Like what, what is wrong with you?

00:56:22.100 It's crazy.

00:56:23.300 Right.

00:56:23.800 Right.

00:56:23.960 And then of course, and then of course people complained, emailed our principal directly,

00:56:28.280 emailed our superintendent directly saying that she needed to rein in her husband and

00:56:32.260 that it was against the values of the board.

00:56:34.280 And she was breaking the bylaws of the board and that she needed to be removed. 0.99

00:56:37.820 And never at any point did she say, you know, I am the board president.

00:56:41.740 And this is what I believe it was.

00:56:43.140 It was always, I'm as speaking as a parent, which you can do, um, and you can advocate

00:56:47.060 your child, which is something that we need more of.

00:56:49.680 Mm-hmm.

00:56:50.400 Yeah.

00:56:50.720 I, I have a feeling if they had been standing out there with BLM signs six months earlier,

00:56:55.140 nobody would have complained.

00:56:56.520 In that way, 100%, that's another part of the problem.

00:57:00.280 Yeah.

00:57:00.460 But, but on this issue, which actually directly relates to your children in the school in

00:57:03.980 this moment, um, not a larger, you know, societal, cultural issue, you get shut down.

00:57:09.360 So you are not happy with how this is going and people are starting to turn on you.

00:57:14.780 And was it tense?

00:57:15.700 Was there like a faction at the school that was with you and a faction of the school against

00:57:19.400 you?

00:57:19.660 So, yes.

00:57:21.440 So I would say majority were with us.

00:57:25.880 Um, not, I would say definitely majority were with us, but the ones who were opposed to what

00:57:31.180 we were saying were so brutal.

00:57:32.840 There's, they were so vocal.

00:57:34.760 You know, I, I had emails circulating and letters to the superintendents.

00:57:40.240 I was a bad mother.

00:57:41.740 I was unfit.

00:57:42.420 I couldn't, if I couldn't raise my own kids, how could I expected to be leaving the school?

00:57:46.600 I was somehow became a racist.

00:57:48.940 I mean, terrible things were said about me.

00:57:51.640 We had parents from our school go onto our business website and attack our business on

00:57:56.860 a completely, you know, kids go to school.

00:58:00.620 Like it was just crazy having nothing to do with our business.

00:58:03.400 So, um, I think a lot of people also became fearful.

00:58:07.880 It, it wasn't fun.

00:58:08.900 It was, it was actually quite brutal.

00:58:10.960 Um, and if people didn't want, they were happy to, to tell me, most people were happy to

00:58:16.100 tell me, you know, privately, we support you.

00:58:18.060 Keep going.

00:58:18.780 Thank you for what you're doing for the kids.

00:58:20.860 But, um, understandably, so didn't want to speak out because the backlash was intense.

00:58:26.480 Um, so I don't fault them for that because it's not, it's not easy to endure.

00:58:32.100 Well, especially then.

00:58:34.260 Yeah.

00:58:35.060 You know, like that was in the thick of it.

00:58:37.660 It was, it was, it was honestly, it was probably like the worst three weeks of our life

00:58:42.480 ever together.

00:58:44.080 Um, cause it was just so intense and they were coming after her and I was like, just

00:58:47.540 come after me, like bring it to me.

00:58:50.120 Cause she, she's, you know, soft and kind hearted and I don't have a lot of feelings.

00:58:54.760 So I was like, come after me, attack me.

00:58:57.020 I'm the banker.

00:58:57.880 She's the nurse. 1.00

00:58:58.820 No, it's like, you know, she, of course they're just coming up to her and it, you know, she

00:59:03.500 tries, she wakes up in the morning.

00:59:04.480 She's like, I'm going to be strong today.

00:59:06.060 I'm going to do it.

00:59:06.820 And then she gets like this one nasty email forwarded to her from the principal and it's 0.99

00:59:10.640 like, you're a terrible, horrific, racist, fascist, whatever, like any word is that they 0.99

00:59:16.780 could add on it. 1.00

00:59:17.760 And it's just, you know, it becomes, it, it wears you down after a while.

00:59:22.920 Yeah.

00:59:23.280 Yes.

00:59:23.560 It's hard if you have a tender heart at all.

00:59:25.660 This is why it's better to have a heart of ice like I do.

00:59:28.560 Then they can't hurt you.

00:59:30.960 Right.

00:59:31.460 Exactly.

00:59:32.260 But can we, so the principles forwarding you hate mail?

00:59:35.220 Um, yes.

00:59:38.060 So the principal would send along the emails that he got about me and say, what was, how

00:59:44.340 would you like me to respond?

00:59:45.660 It was a very, I would like you to grow up.

00:59:48.500 It was an odd, um, approach.

00:59:50.840 I think he was, um, I think I was a problem for him.

00:59:56.000 He wanted to look, you know, it, he was wanting to fall in line with what the superintendent

01:00:02.760 was pushing and I was making that more difficult.

01:00:06.200 We couldn't be controlled, which was the problem.

01:00:07.960 You know, we wrote an email, pretty direct email to the board.

01:00:11.760 Uh, you know, I think we CC the governor, multiple board members, cause they were, they

01:00:15.580 were forcing masks on kids outside in the playground when it was over a hundred degrees.

01:00:18.820 And so we just said, I went through the executive orders and I started carving out these pieces

01:00:22.740 that show clearly that if you're, you know, you're running and you're playing, or if you

01:00:28.120 got some safe distance and you should be able to take off your mask, which means no kids

01:00:32.340 should be wearing a mask on, on the playground, not even because they shouldn't because it's

01:00:36.980 simple health, but because of the executive order clearly stated it.

01:00:40.500 So within a few days of saying that email, I mean, I'm not claiming to be the one that

01:00:45.100 did it, but, um, whatever happened three days later, they called the board meeting and changed,

01:00:50.240 uh, the board, Paul, the mask policy for outside.

01:00:54.200 Um, so at least they got to take them off outside, um, if they were, you know, in space

01:00:58.980 and whatever, but, uh, yeah, it was a, it was a total joke.

01:01:02.520 Yeah.

01:01:02.680 Well, you have the same thing I assume in Arizona that we discovered when we moved to Connecticut

01:01:05.900 versus when we lived in New York, which is why, why would they ever be wearing the

01:01:10.240 mask outside a to begin with, but B in a, in a town and a state in which they got nothing

01:01:15.680 but land.

01:01:16.240 You got plenty of room.

01:01:18.000 This is not like New York where the kids are on top of each other and there's absolutely

01:01:21.400 no grounds in Connecticut and Arizona.

01:01:24.080 You got plenty of room.

01:01:25.060 These kids can easily be more than six feet apart and do not need to have a face covering.

01:01:29.100 Not that they ever did.

01:01:30.300 Okay.

01:01:30.560 So the reason this is so interesting to me is because it's not done, you know, the pandemic

01:01:35.500 is over says Joe Biden, but we know that the immediate reaction, we should just stop

01:01:40.000 the show right now.

01:01:40.960 It's over to move on.

01:01:42.520 We'd be willing to, I'm sure you'd be with me, but of course his constituency is beating

01:01:47.520 him over the head for having said that it's not over.

01:01:50.020 It's not over.

01:01:50.980 And as another already warning of another wave, we could get another wave in the fall and

01:01:55.900 you know, like everything could return.

01:01:57.720 And on top of that, these are parental rights issues.

01:02:00.960 So it expands beyond COVID. 0.78

01:02:03.040 It, it's like race essentialism and crazy trans ideology and inappropriate sexual, you 1.00

01:02:09.000 know, behavior and lessons and oversharing all of that in the classroom, which has got

01:02:13.480 a lot of parents paying attention and they're going to need to be squeaky wheels, even if

01:02:16.520 they're not used to it, even if they are more like Nebraska nice coming into the school

01:02:20.840 year.

01:02:21.100 Well, and that's, that speaks exactly to 100% why we got out.

01:02:25.960 I mean, the, the masks were kind of the tipping point, but it wasn't a way bigger, the bigger

01:02:31.780 thought behind the forcing of the mask is you're willing to do something to these children without

01:02:38.620 any proof, without any evidence and without the support of parents, they literally pushed

01:02:44.540 the parents out and said, we don't care what you want for your children. 1.00

01:02:48.420 And we're going to do what we want, regardless, regardless of if it's fact and based in fact

01:02:54.700 or not.

01:02:55.200 And that was my scary moment because I assumed that eventually the pandemic would be over,

01:03:02.280 but I did not want my children, our children in a system where what the parents said doesn't

01:03:09.360 matter.

01:03:09.800 And that's exactly what was happening.

01:03:11.320 It didn't matter.

01:03:12.240 They had their agenda and what you wanted for your children was of no interest to them.

01:03:17.940 And this, and especially for our olders who are now in fourth grade, they'd go to middle

01:03:22.500 school in a couple of years.

01:03:24.220 And Kendra was talking with some moms that are now at that middle school and the, their

01:03:29.340 pre-assignment work was the teacher sending out a questionnaire about what are your preferred

01:03:34.220 pronouns?

01:03:34.940 Can we tell your parents, those are your pronouns?

01:03:36.940 Like you're already trying to buy these kids from their parents and you haven't even met

01:03:40.800 them.

01:03:41.340 It's insane.

01:03:41.960 And even raise the issue of gender with like little ones. 0.97

01:03:45.220 I've told, I've told my kids, if anybody asks you your pronouns, you tell them my mom

01:03:48.140 doesn't want me to answer that question.

01:03:49.600 That's it.

01:03:50.140 Have them ask me, you know what, have them ask me what your pronouns are.

01:03:53.400 It's not going to go well for them.

01:03:54.680 Um, so I'm with you, but can I just ask you, this is in Scottsdale, Arizona?

01:03:59.140 Cause I, I thought Scottsdale was a little bit more red.

01:04:01.340 Am I wrong?

01:04:03.160 It is purple.

01:04:05.800 It's a little purple.

01:04:06.680 Yeah.

01:04:06.900 In the school that we went to, we're, we're out of district technically.

01:04:12.180 Um, but it's, it's a fairly, it's in paradise Valley.

01:04:14.600 So it's in, it's a fairly affluent area.

01:04:17.420 So, and it was a brand new school.

01:04:19.500 They'd just gotten rebuilt, uh, like a year or two ago.

01:04:22.560 So they have a lot of open enrollment that want to go there for obvious reasons.

01:04:27.280 Cause it, it does have pretty darn good funding from a private standpoint through the constituents

01:04:32.200 that go there.

01:04:33.500 Um, so, so people want to go there from a public.

01:04:36.900 School basis.

01:04:37.420 It's a pretty good public school.

01:04:39.340 Um, but ultimately when you start running into these things, it's, there's, there's no amount

01:04:43.480 of funding that can offset the indoctrination that's happening in your kids.

01:04:47.960 That's right.

01:04:48.580 That's the word.

01:04:49.320 So, so, um, so let's get to the solution.

01:04:52.660 So you guys are like, what are we going to do?

01:04:55.060 You, you know, you're running now a bakery.

01:04:57.840 It's a new business.

01:04:58.820 It's not like you're making money hand over fist at this point.

01:05:02.200 And so putting your kids in private school is scary.

01:05:05.880 It's cost money.

01:05:06.900 You don't know how the business is going to go.

01:05:08.780 And then like a, like a Phoenix to steal an Arizona term, Doug Ducey, the governor out

01:05:17.240 there does something that our next guest, Corey DeAngelis has been praising him for ever

01:05:24.620 since and urging him to do prior.

01:05:27.140 He empowers parents to do the things we were talking at the beginning of the show about

01:05:32.600 the money will follow the child.

01:05:36.360 And what did that mean for you?

01:05:38.180 Like, what does that mean?

01:05:39.760 Practically?

01:05:40.200 That's huge for us.

01:05:42.280 I mean, we have four children at this point and eventually five that are in school and

01:05:47.080 that's extremely expensive.

01:05:49.580 So that saves us 20, which is game changing.

01:05:53.200 Right.

01:05:53.400 And I think that will be game changing.

01:05:55.460 Initially, when we switched, it was just related to what was happening with COVID.

01:05:59.680 And now they're trying to pass it as a wide sweeping rule for everyone.

01:06:04.280 Um, but it's, I think it'll be game changing for a lot of people because 7,000 per child can

01:06:12.600 in some public, in some private schools will cover the entire tuition or come very, very

01:06:17.020 close to it.

01:06:17.780 The way that it works in the new ESA grants are, so it's basically any, any parent that

01:06:23.200 wants their child to go to a private school has that choice, assuming it passes through

01:06:28.200 and gets ratified, um, 90% of their state funds, which accounts to roughly $6,500, $7,000

01:06:34.200 will then follow that child to the school.

01:06:37.500 Federal funds still are going to go to the public schools, obviously, but at least some

01:06:40.580 of your state funds, the state taxes that you're paying will then follow your child.

01:06:44.760 So you're not having to kind of double pay for your, your tuition.

01:06:48.540 You'll actually have that, um, tax credit, so to speak, going forward to the student,

01:06:54.220 to your student tuition.

01:06:55.260 So that way you get like roughly $6,500, $7,000 knocked off.

01:06:59.600 Um, so he's figured out like how much Arizona spends per child in the state and it's about

01:07:04.640 6,500 bucks.

01:07:06.080 And so unlike our last two guests who pay into the New York city school system who get

01:07:10.540 nothing if they pull their kids from it, he's basically saying, okay, you get $6,500 a

01:07:15.640 kid.

01:07:16.000 If you want to go to Lutheran school or Catholic school or some other private school, we'll give 0.89

01:07:20.680 you $6,500 per kid.

01:07:22.340 And if it's, if the school bill is twice that, you got to come up with the rest.

01:07:26.140 If it's, if it's 6,500, you're all set.

01:07:29.080 Is that basically the way it works?

01:07:31.160 Yep.

01:07:31.440 And is it not passed?

01:07:32.620 What do you mean?

01:07:33.040 Does it still, I thought it was passed in Arizona.

01:07:34.840 No.

01:07:34.960 So he passed it.

01:07:36.660 Um, but then there's a, if, if there's a certain amount of signatures, like 110,000 signatures

01:07:41.480 or something like that.

01:07:42.420 Uh, if they come up with those, you know, the people that are opposing it saying that

01:07:46.560 there's no accountability, which is the opposite of what it actually is.

01:07:48.900 Of course.

01:07:49.820 Um, if they can come up with those signatures, I think they have till the end of this month,

01:07:53.600 you get 90 days from when it was passed, then it can hit the ballot.

01:07:56.900 So it will hit the ballot in November.

01:07:58.240 If they get the signatures, if they fail to get the signatures, it will become law.

01:08:01.880 Otherwise it would, it would go through the November election process to be ratified.

01:08:06.220 Hmm.

01:08:06.780 Okay.

01:08:07.400 Now here's a question for you.

01:08:09.060 Is it, you got out early in this whole process, I think, uh, cause Ducey didn't do this that

01:08:14.160 long ago.

01:08:15.180 Is there a fear of these private schools that are outlets for families like yours filling

01:08:21.340 up?

01:08:21.920 Right.

01:08:22.420 So like they become less of an option.

01:08:24.500 So there, that is the problem is especially the ones that have, um, you know, kind of

01:08:31.220 been firm and they're like, we want parents to be involved and have a choice and have an

01:08:35.900 option.

01:08:36.800 Um, the schools that haven't been, the private schools that haven't been masking the children,

01:08:40.660 those are full of the school.

01:08:42.260 We, um, are so incredibly blessed to get in the school that we got into, um, for our grades,

01:08:48.660 we were kind of like the last kids in and now the wait list is so long.

01:08:52.860 Um, the Sloan and Delaney, our oldest, actually, when we switched out a public school originally,

01:08:57.020 there were only two spots left in the three classes.

01:08:59.900 So we took them and we'll say, we'll figure out what we're going to do with our kindergartners.

01:09:03.400 We know we want to be at that school, but, um, let's see if there's other options.

01:09:06.720 And we were lucky.

01:09:07.800 We found another option that we placed our kindergartners at that ended up being an awesome

01:09:11.680 school.

01:09:12.760 Ultimately, our kindergartners got in this year at the main school that they now all go

01:09:16.580 to.

01:09:16.860 Um, you know, it's closer to our school or it's closer to our home.

01:09:20.680 And now all our kids, all our kids can be together, but it's, it's jammed.

01:09:23.920 Like there's not open availability.

01:09:25.340 We have multiple friends at the school that have kids at different schools because they're

01:09:29.580 trying to get in.

01:09:30.540 There's a lot of existing families with half in half out.

01:09:33.300 Yeah.

01:09:33.420 I mean, that's just a reminder that wouldn't it be nice if we could just solve the insanity

01:09:38.240 at ground zero.

01:09:39.240 If we could actually just get through to these school boards and administrators and teachers

01:09:43.760 that they're actually not in charge, that the parents should have choice and input.

01:09:49.340 I mean, I'll tell, I'll leave it on this.

01:09:50.820 I'm very happy that you got out and I hope the best for the parents would like to go behind

01:09:55.100 you.

01:09:55.620 We left our New York city schools and we, we, we were paying, it was private and we paid

01:10:01.500 at the new place and also private.

01:10:03.440 So thankfully we weren't in this position, but I will say just to advocate for choice.

01:10:07.840 Because we were at schools that went hardcore left, hardcore radical on race, on trans.

01:10:15.900 I didn't see as much of the sexual inappropriateness that we've seen in some places, but anti-America,

01:10:20.480 all that stuff.

01:10:21.500 We went to our, like, you know, the opening dinner at our boys' school last week and the

01:10:27.540 head of school gets up there and it, I could have written his, the mission statement that

01:10:34.140 he was saying this school lives.

01:10:35.460 But I was like, I almost shed a tear.

01:10:38.440 It was in a real tear, not like the Meghan Markle one at the Queen's funeral.

01:10:42.680 He was like, we don't believe in teaching the children what to think.

01:10:48.140 We believe in teaching them how to think.

01:10:50.240 We are unabashedly pro-America.

01:10:53.020 And it fills my heart with joy to walk by the lower school and hear those boys saying

01:10:57.480 the Pledge of Allegiance.

01:10:58.460 We don't believe in equity of outcome.

01:11:02.400 We believe in equality of opportunity.

01:11:04.540 I was like, oh my gosh, I'm home.

01:11:08.240 This is how we felt when we got to our school.

01:11:11.660 And that's why I think this parent choice issue, this schooling issue is such an important topic

01:11:16.820 because I remember that feeling of being out of control on what was happening to our children

01:11:23.120 and what they were being taught.

01:11:24.460 And it is the worst feeling ever.

01:11:26.880 And to be at a place, now you're going to make me cry, but to be at a place where I know

01:11:31.900 I can send them every day and I don't have to worry about what someone's saying to them

01:11:36.500 and that they will come home with the same morals and standards and values that I send them

01:11:41.700 off with in the morning is an incredible feeling.

01:11:44.960 And it breaks my heart that every family can't get that because when you don't have it, it's

01:11:50.780 a terrible feeling.

01:11:52.420 But you know what?

01:11:53.060 You guys fought the good fight.

01:11:54.820 You fought it for your kids.

01:11:56.460 And when you realized you couldn't win, you weren't going to let your children continue

01:12:00.940 to be subjected to these terrible conditions.

01:12:03.240 You pulled them.

01:12:03.900 You protected your kids.

01:12:05.020 And you're still fighting the good fight because you're here telling the story, pushing back

01:12:09.980 against the people who want to undo the good you've done and Governor Ducey's done.

01:12:13.820 Like that's what you got to do, right?

01:12:15.060 You got to protect your children and continue the fight for those who are still stuck in

01:12:18.960 these terrible places.

01:12:20.100 It's so important to us to keep fighting for it because we still, I still believe public

01:12:24.960 schools are so important.

01:12:26.120 They have an important place and they need to be good for our children.

01:12:30.360 It's great to have private options that are great, but we need public options that are

01:12:34.900 great too.

01:12:35.560 Well, because ultimately that's the feeder for your society, right?

01:12:37.660 So your kids, once they're out of high school and college, like you look at all these

01:12:41.780 institutions, advanced institutions, and then in their career paths, they're going

01:12:45.400 to be working with all these other people that went down a different path than them for

01:12:51.380 school.

01:12:51.760 So you can't just give up on public schools in a sense because then what are your kids

01:12:58.240 left with in 20 years?

01:12:59.560 Yeah.

01:12:59.820 So it's a double-edged sword, obviously, in a way.

01:13:03.660 But, you know, parents got to stand up.

01:13:06.080 They got to be courageous.

01:13:06.880 They got to fight for their kids.

01:13:08.180 You can't.

01:13:08.740 I know it's not easy, but you got to do it.

01:13:11.000 It's uncomfortable.

01:13:11.620 You got to do it.

01:13:12.740 And if you want to support John and Kendra in their efforts at Scoop Wells Dough Bar,

01:13:17.340 you can do that as soon as they get delivery back up at the end of the summer.

01:13:20.400 You guys, it's a pleasure meeting you.

01:13:22.440 Congrats on navigating such a tricky situation.

01:13:25.300 Well, all the best to you.

01:13:27.240 Thanks for having us.

01:13:28.000 I appreciate it.

01:13:28.740 Yes.

01:13:29.000 Thank you so much.

01:13:30.040 It was fun.

01:13:31.280 Oh, it was fun for me, too.

01:13:33.040 Okay.

01:13:33.260 Up next, two experts join us to talk about solutions.

01:13:37.680 If you don't live in Arizona, right?

01:13:39.620 If you don't live in Arizona, what are the options for you and what should we be advocating for?

01:13:48.700 Now we bring you two school choice advocates who are making a real difference.

01:13:52.020 Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, and Ian Rowe is resident

01:13:57.600 fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Agency, the four-point plan for all

01:14:03.320 children to overcome the victimhood narrative and discover their pathway to power.

01:14:08.080 Ian also just opened a charter school in the Bronx.

01:14:12.260 It's one of the charter schools I mentioned earlier that wanted to expand into a high school

01:14:16.640 and faced a legal challenge.

01:14:19.140 So we'll talk about that in one sec.

01:14:20.520 But Corey and Ian are both here to offer real solutions to the broken public school system.

01:14:25.480 Guys, thanks so much for being here.

01:14:27.460 Hey, thank you.

01:14:28.560 Yeah.

01:14:29.060 Yeah.

01:14:29.400 My God, I feel like I feel empowered after listening to that Arizona story.

01:14:32.840 It's like, yes, Governor Ducey.

01:14:35.160 Corey, you're the one who first called my attention to that on Twitter.

01:14:37.720 And I know like this is exactly what you've been pushing for.

01:14:40.720 I know you say this, what Ducey's doing out there is the gold standard for school choice.

01:14:45.580 And as I understand it, it goes beyond just what our guests, Kendra and John,

01:14:50.660 talked about where the money can follow the student, you know, the $6,500.

01:14:54.140 There's some other options that he's laid out, too.

01:14:56.960 So can you explain why is it the gold standard?

01:14:59.620 Yeah, totally.

01:15:00.120 It's the biggest school choice victory in U.S. history.

01:15:03.180 It's what we've all been fighting for for a very long time.

01:15:05.840 And this comes just after the year of school choice, what school choice advocates have

01:15:10.160 called the year of school choice.

01:15:11.360 That is in 2021, 19 states expanded or enacted programs to fund students as opposed to systems.

01:15:18.740 And then Arizona just said, you know what?

01:15:20.160 We're going all in.

01:15:20.900 We're going to one up you all and Ducey just signed into law this this massive victory.

01:15:25.280 And what makes it so important is that every single family, regardless of income, gets to

01:15:30.700 take their children's state funded education dollars to the education provider of their

01:15:34.960 choosing.

01:15:35.460 So if you want to take it to the government run school, you can.

01:15:38.040 If you like your public school, you can keep your public school.

01:15:40.520 But for real this time, unlike with health care.

01:15:43.000 But then also you can take that funding, which is about $7,000 in Arizona, to a private school

01:15:48.180 to pay for tuition and fees.

01:15:49.640 But you don't only have to take it to a private school.

01:15:52.100 You can use that education savings account funding to pay for a micro school, what people

01:15:57.040 have called pandemic pods over the past couple of years, when five to 10 children can get together

01:16:02.280 in a household and families can essentially economize on the process of homeschooling, basically

01:16:07.680 a miniature school.

01:16:08.760 You could also use the funding for any other approved education expenditure that could be

01:16:13.000 for special needs, educational therapies.

01:16:15.260 It could be for a private tutor, homeschooling curriculum, any approved education expenditure.

01:16:20.720 So this is the gold standard of school choice.

01:16:22.980 And it's great that Arizona got it done.

01:16:25.780 And I just want to mention that they got it done with the slimmest of majorities.

01:16:29.760 This is a Republican Party platform issue.

01:16:32.300 And Arizona has one seat majorities in their house and in their Senate.

01:16:36.680 And so all Republicans showed up, voted for their party platform, voted in support of

01:16:41.580 educational freedom and families.

01:16:43.300 And now Arizona got it done.

01:16:46.200 Hopefully the sparks friendly competition in other states, too.

01:16:48.820 And I'm already seeing other states talk about this more.

01:16:51.840 I just assume this is a Democrat problem for the most part because of the teachers union

01:16:55.180 and the Democrats being in bed with them.

01:16:56.800 But I, in reading up for your appearance here, saw your opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal

01:17:03.640 back in June, where you say, I'm reading along and I'm thinking this sentence is going to

01:17:08.760 end very differently.

01:17:09.660 You write, some Republicans in red states, such as Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah,

01:17:16.600 and I think all the viewers right now, listeners are thinking the same thing I'm thinking, which

01:17:20.060 is this is going to end in, are pushing to follow Governor Ducey's lead.

01:17:24.200 No, the sentence ends, locked arms with Democrats to block similar bills to the Arizona one last

01:17:31.440 year.

01:17:31.760 So this is a bipartisan.

01:17:33.820 But why are the Republicans trying to stop school choice?

01:17:37.200 Because the teachers unions are smart and they know, well, they're not very smart.

01:17:41.060 I mean, they've been overplaying their hand over the past couple of years and they've actually

01:17:43.940 helped us inadvertently.

01:17:45.520 So Randy Weingarten really deserves an award for for sabotaging her own efforts by closing

01:17:50.380 the schools and waking parents up.

01:17:51.980 But historically, the teachers unions understand that in deep red states, in order to block

01:17:57.820 school choice, they can't they know they're not going to get a Democrat majority to do

01:18:02.420 so.

01:18:03.080 So they play heavily in Republican primaries.

01:18:05.540 In Texas, for example, the teachers unions have played in the House primaries in the Republican

01:18:11.200 side for a long time now.

01:18:13.540 So although Texas has had a trifecta of Republican leadership in the in the House, Senate and

01:18:19.720 the governor's office, Texas does not have any private school choice programs at all.

01:18:26.720 And and Texas actually passed an education savings account bill in 2017 through their Senate

01:18:34.780 before it was cool to do so.

01:18:36.460 So and all Republicans basically voted in favor and all Democrats opposed for the most part

01:18:42.640 is mostly party line.

01:18:43.540 But then it quietly died in the House because of all of the teachers unions backed candidates

01:18:49.980 in the House.

01:18:50.840 So but things are different in Texas now.

01:18:53.800 I mean, the political winds have shifted.

01:18:55.660 There's been a huge uptick in support for school choice.

01:18:58.340 The Republican primary ballot in Texas had school choice on it this past this year in 2022.

01:19:02.580 And 88 percent of Texas Republican primary voters support school choice.

01:19:07.660 A poll just came out of University of Texas at Tyler and the Dallas Morning News finding

01:19:12.860 that 70 percent of Republicans support school choice and a majority from all parties, Republican

01:19:19.820 Democrats and independents support school choice in Texas.

01:19:22.520 And Abbott is actually leading on the issue.

01:19:24.980 Especially if they can see how it works.

01:19:26.320 It's not just like, oh, all the rich people are going to leave, you know, or the people

01:19:29.220 who can afford to go to a nicer school are going to go.

01:19:31.500 It's no, what if you were the rich person thanks to having your own tax dollars to do

01:19:38.040 with as you wish when it comes to your child?

01:19:41.320 And it may or may not make up the whole difference that you need, but it's certainly a running

01:19:44.960 start way more than most parents have right now.

01:19:48.280 So, Ian, let me ask you, you decided to open up a charter school in the Bronx, and I did

01:19:56.160 not realize just how dire the situation was in the Bronx.

01:20:01.440 This is just a, these are a couple of stats.

01:20:04.460 This is, I guess, behind why you created Vertex, your school.

01:20:07.840 Of the nearly 2,000 public school students beginning high school in the South Bronx in

01:20:13.260 2015, 2% graduated ready for college four years later.

01:20:19.800 Oh my God.

01:20:21.520 98% either dropped out before senior year, or if they managed to graduate, they would still

01:20:28.300 be required to take remedial classes in community college due to low math and reading scores on

01:20:33.600 state exams.

01:20:34.280 What a terrible, terrible indictment of public education in the Bronx.

01:20:41.700 Can you imagine living in that neighborhood where you have a child that you have the greatest

01:20:50.140 of aspirations for, and all you have, your only choice is to send your child to a school

01:20:56.880 that that's had that track record for generations.

01:21:00.300 This isn't a new phenomenon.

01:21:02.420 And what's worse, these kids that start ninth grade and drop out, or they actually do earn

01:21:10.720 their high school diploma, but still cannot do math nor reading without remediation if they

01:21:16.220 were to go to college.

01:21:17.160 So they actually do what they're supposed to do and still cannot compete on a college level.

01:21:23.320 That is criminal.

01:21:26.280 And so, and, but what's worse in the New York City, because of the union stranglehold and

01:21:31.740 party affiliation, there's a cap on, so you couldn't even start a great school if that

01:21:39.240 was your aspiration.

01:21:41.040 Right, right.

01:21:41.600 Exactly right.

01:21:42.200 That's the situation right now.

01:21:43.340 Thanks to de Blasio is you may have all, you have money, you have the teachers, you want

01:21:48.800 to go in there and offer these kids another option and you can't.

01:21:53.040 Well, that's what we did though.

01:21:55.880 So how'd you do it?

01:21:57.360 How'd you do it?

01:21:58.120 So, so what's interesting.

01:21:59.780 So we started Vertex Partnership Academies is what we believe is going to be one of the

01:22:03.960 best world-class high schools in the country.

01:22:07.640 We're being authorized as an international baccalaureate high school.

01:22:12.300 That's yet, that's, uh, we're renting, uh, archdiocese.

01:22:15.340 It's beautiful.

01:22:16.060 Yes, it's a, it's a beautiful school accepting ninth grade students.

01:22:21.440 And, but what we said was that there are charter schools that currently only go through eighth

01:22:28.200 grade and every charter school has the right to extend if they're performing well.

01:22:33.580 So if you have been able to run a high quality elementary and middle school, then the state

01:22:38.980 gives you the right to extend to high school.

01:22:42.080 So we worked with a group of existing charter schools that have current charters to extend

01:22:50.100 through 12th grade.

01:22:51.780 And now they're partnering with Vertex Partnership Academies to run this world-class high school

01:22:58.480 as a guaranteed option for their rising ninth grade students.

01:23:03.580 The union, the teachers union decided somehow that they made a false claim that this was getting

01:23:10.120 around the cap on charters.

01:23:13.420 Thankfully, a New York state Supreme court judge looked at their case, heard their arguments

01:23:19.240 and completely dismissed the union's lawsuit.

01:23:24.940 They found that the union had no standing to bring the case in the first place.

01:23:30.220 And they said that the case had zero merit, that every charter school has the right to extend

01:23:37.660 its grades.

01:23:38.920 So, A, we should be fighting against the very idea of a cap in the first place.

01:23:45.240 That is a crime.

01:23:46.660 But in addition, every charter school across the country should know that no union can stand

01:23:53.620 in their way of extending existing grades.

01:23:59.720 And that's a very powerful tool because across the country, great high schools are in very short

01:24:06.920 supply.

01:24:08.040 Okay.

01:24:08.100 But let me ask you this again, because as I understand the teachers unions wrap on charter

01:24:13.000 schools, among others, it's okay.

01:24:15.760 So if they're performance-based at all, what you're going to have is the kids who do really

01:24:19.560 well wind up leaving the public school.

01:24:21.960 And so the creme de creme wind up at the charters and then the rest of the kids wind up back

01:24:28.300 at the publics and there's no one there to help lift them up.

01:24:31.920 And there's, and quality of instruction, I suppose, could potentially go down when you

01:24:35.460 don't have students who inspire the teacher to teach to the top student.

01:24:40.000 I don't know what that, this is basically what they say.

01:24:41.880 You can't take all the blah, blah, blah. 0.91

01:24:43.460 This is all the blah, blah, blah.

01:24:44.720 That's right.

01:24:46.120 So speak to that article, that, that argument that basically you're plucking all the really 0.97

01:24:49.980 talented students out of the publics if with thanks to a charter.

01:24:54.100 Okay.

01:24:54.580 So those are the blah, blah, blah arguments that you typically hear.

01:24:57.860 First off, charter schools are public schools.

01:25:02.220 So every student in our school is a public school student.

01:25:05.760 I myself went to public school kindergarten through 12th grade.

01:25:08.720 I'm a big believer in the public school system as a common pathway to prosperity.

01:25:15.580 There have been tons of studies, particularly in Harlem, in other areas of the country where

01:25:19.960 you've actually had a concentration of high quality charter schools.

01:25:23.740 The impact has been, it's actually improved performance of the traditional district public

01:25:31.720 schools.

01:25:32.540 So this idea that somehow charter schools that are not public, which they are, or that they'll

01:25:38.140 siphon off funding charter schools in New York city.

01:25:42.080 We only get about 75% per student relative to traditional district schools.

01:25:48.840 So this, this narrative has been debunked over and over and over again.

01:25:55.500 But the number one thing you need to look at is what are parents saying in 2019, there were

01:26:02.120 only about 33,000 open public charter school seats.

01:26:05.740 We had nearly 81,000 families applying, almost all low income families, primarily kids of

01:26:16.360 color, parents that are just desperate for their kids to have an equal shot at the American

01:26:22.160 dream.

01:26:23.200 And these false barriers are being created and school choice and educational freedom is fundamental

01:26:30.980 if we really want to create a society where all young people, every kid of every race has an equal shot to be

01:26:39.740 successful.

01:26:40.880 Yeah.

01:26:41.140 You look at these numbers, Corey, it's, this is from, um, you know, the, the nation's report card that comes

01:26:47.200 out and tells us how our kids are doing, uh, a little more than one third of eighth graders in America are

01:26:54.880 proficient in reading and math.

01:26:56.820 One third of our eighth graders are proficient in, in reading and math.

01:27:03.000 It's horrifying.

01:27:04.480 And it's why we're number 22 on the list of countries, um, who, in terms of like how we're

01:27:10.320 doing with our 15 year olds, that surveyed 15 year olds, by the way, who's in front of us?

01:27:14.340 Oh, the Czech Republic.

01:27:16.340 Um, who else?

01:27:17.380 Poland's ahead of us, Slovenia. 0.77

01:27:19.220 Okay.

01:27:19.380 That makes sense for them to be ahead of the United States of America.

01:27:22.760 So no wonder these parents are saying, get me out of these schools.

01:27:25.600 They're terrible.

01:27:26.580 So what if you have the misfortune to live in a place like Baltimore, Maryland?

01:27:31.460 I forgive me, Baltimore, I live there and it was a charming little town in many ways,

01:27:35.160 but the school system, not so great.

01:27:37.160 The crime situation, not so good.

01:27:39.600 Um, Chicago, you know, like one of these blue cities where that we know the school district

01:27:45.280 situation is terrible.

01:27:47.620 What are they supposed to do?

01:27:49.720 Yeah.

01:27:49.880 You got to push for school choice.

01:27:51.860 I mean, Baltimore, Maryland, the state of Maryland actually has the boost scholarship program.

01:27:57.700 The thing is, it's the average scholarship is only about 15% of what they spend in the government

01:28:02.920 run schools.

01:28:03.640 So they need to, uh, more equally fund that program in Maryland.

01:28:07.440 And look, I think the path towards bipartisan support on school choice is kind of playing

01:28:13.020 out right now in Pennsylvania with Josh Shapiro, the democratic gubernatorial candidate actually

01:28:18.960 quietly changing his education platform, uh, within the past couple of weeks, uh, to include

01:28:25.140 education savings accounts, kind of like what they passed in Arizona, not as expansive as

01:28:29.940 the one Arizona passed.

01:28:31.580 But for the first time ever, seeing a Democrat supporting school choice is huge.

01:28:36.960 And you can say, oh, he's just doing it because, you know, he's reading the polls, but it doesn't

01:28:41.240 really matter what the reason is, right?

01:28:42.680 I mean, the more that the GOP leans into parental rights and educational freedom, like we saw with

01:28:48.440 Glenn Youngkin in, uh, Virginia, the more it's going to be politically disastrous for

01:28:53.640 Democrats to come out against it.

01:28:55.140 Look at what happened to Terry McAuliffe, who said, I don't think parents should be telling

01:28:58.680 schools what they should teach in a state that went 10 points to Biden the year before Glenn

01:29:03.380 Youngkin, the Republican one on the issue of education.

01:29:07.160 Some Democrats aren't learning the dang thing about that story that played out in Virginia.

01:29:11.240 I mean, look at Charlie Crist in Florida, for example, running against DeSantis.

01:29:14.740 He basically told Terry McAuliffe, hold my beer and chose as his running mate, a teacher's

01:29:20.920 union president who fought to close schools.

01:29:23.260 But Shapiro in Pennsylvania is taking a different approach and saying, hey, you know what?

01:29:28.560 It's political suicide to come out against school choice and parental rights.

01:29:31.920 I might as well come along, too.

01:29:34.080 And so then I think we can see more support from across the political spectrum.

01:29:39.760 And I think the more that red states lean into this, we'll start to see some success in

01:29:43.420 blue states as well.

01:29:44.600 But families need to show up, make make their voices heard, tell the politicians that you

01:29:50.440 support education freedom.

01:29:51.660 And if a bill is introduced, rally around the Capitol and let them know that in a peaceful

01:29:57.860 way that school choice is something you support.

01:30:00.400 And then also show up at the school board meetings to make your voices heard.

01:30:04.200 Parents are the ultimate change agent here.

01:30:07.540 For a long time, the only special interest were the teachers unions.

01:30:10.140 But now there's a new special interest group in town, parents, and they've woken up and

01:30:15.200 they're never going back to sleep.

01:30:16.640 And that's why the political winds are shifting.

01:30:18.660 It's up to the parents to stand up and fight for their kids.

01:30:22.240 And at the end of the day, it's going to lead to bipartisan support, hopefully, and more

01:30:26.880 educational freedom for everybody.

01:30:28.920 And as you know, the other side constantly reduces everything these days to race and how

01:30:33.740 this is disadvantage, disadvantageous to black and brown students in particular, and so

01:30:40.420 on and so forth, right?

01:30:41.360 But you're the point you seem to be making is actually in your district, for example,

01:30:46.300 in your school, the black and brown students want into the charter school more than anybody

01:30:51.620 and will thrive there in a way they're not being allowed to at a school district that

01:30:56.620 has a 2% graduation rate.

01:30:59.660 I mean, can you speak to that element of it?

01:31:01.840 Yeah, and to Corey's point about parent power, when Bill de Blasio tried to shut down public

01:31:08.340 charter schools in New York City, we were able to mobilize about 17,000 family members

01:31:14.900 to march over the Brooklyn Bridge for educational freedom.

01:31:19.920 And it was that power that got the state legislature to actually pass laws to say that the mayor

01:31:26.780 did not have the ability to slow the growth of public charters.

01:31:30.980 So parental power is crucial.

01:31:35.600 And on this point about race, you talked about the National Assessment for Educational Progress.

01:31:40.880 You're right.

01:31:41.400 Only 37% of all kids in our country are reading at grade level.

01:31:46.780 And in fact, it has never been a situation where even a majority of whites are reading

01:31:53.680 at grade level.

01:31:54.320 I think the highest number has maybe been 44 or 45%.

01:31:58.400 You faded out there.

01:31:59.400 Did you say a majority of whites?

01:32:00.820 Is that what you said?

01:32:02.060 Yeah, there's never been.

01:32:03.320 Only about 44% of white students have been reading at grade level ever.

01:32:09.100 Right?

01:32:09.420 So when we clamor for equity and closing the racial achievement gap, all we would have done

01:32:15.780 if black kids equal white kids in terms of outcomes is universal mediocrity, right? 0.98

01:32:22.200 It's unlikely that systemic racism is the reason that the majority of white kids are not reading

01:32:30.260 at grade level.

01:32:31.340 So perhaps we need to look at other factors like the decline in stability of families, the

01:32:37.500 lack of access to school choice, of educational freedom.

01:32:40.960 Those are the things that have a far greater impact on the academic outcomes for children,

01:32:47.600 far more than the issue of race.

01:32:50.920 And yet we are distracted by these ongoing debates around critical race theory.

01:32:57.320 And, you know, it's a theory and it's been debunked.

01:33:00.000 It hurts children.

01:33:01.540 And yet only 37% of all kids of all races in our country, we need educational freedom, school

01:33:09.440 choice, but we need parents to put the pressure on policymakers to create the kind of environment

01:33:15.800 where education entrepreneurs like me, advocates like Corey can be out there pushing for what

01:33:23.180 we know works for kids.

01:33:26.400 So Corey, before we leave, give us a reason to feel optimistic because I feel like that's

01:33:30.800 been your message lately as I follow you and read what you write.

01:33:33.760 Totally.

01:33:34.600 Yeah.

01:33:34.840 The political winds have shifted.

01:33:36.420 Politicians have to listen to parents now because they've woken up and they're never

01:33:40.380 going back to sleep.

01:33:41.440 I talked about how teachers unions had played heavily in Republican primaries.

01:33:45.780 Well, look at what happened in Tennessee this past session.

01:33:49.460 In Tennessee, 10 Republicans in their house were endorsed or funded by the teachers union.

01:33:55.640 Nine of them lost.

01:33:57.460 So the teachers union endorsement is becoming a political kiss of death.

01:34:01.580 And that's a huge shift.

01:34:05.300 We're winning primary races all across the country right now.

01:34:08.980 Look at what happened to the National School Boards Association after labeling parents as

01:34:12.200 domestic terrorists.

01:34:13.380 We might as well call them the Regional School Boards Association at this point because 26

01:34:17.040 states left the NSBA after they pulled that stunt.

01:34:21.780 And we had the year of school choice in 2021.

01:34:24.180 We just had two Supreme Court victories over the past couple of years in support of parental

01:34:28.340 rights and education.

01:34:29.260 We're winning the wind is at our backs and there's no stopping school choice, even if

01:34:35.260 the teachers union tries to slow it down.

01:34:37.120 We will free families from their depraved clutches once and for all.

01:34:40.560 You've certainly been doing all you can.

01:34:41.480 There's not a dang thing they can do about it.

01:34:43.100 Corey, and thank you.

01:34:44.400 Thank you both so much.

01:34:46.900 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:34:49.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:34:51.600 No BS.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 20, 2022

A Deep Dive on School Choice and Education Freedom, with Parents, Experts, and Advocates ｜ Ep. 394

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