I remember how it was -- JR
Progressives Hate School Choice Until It’s Time to Send Their Kids to School
Another week, another batch of teachers union officials lobbying against school choice while sending their own children to private schools.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and Illinois Education Association official Sean Denney send their kids to private schools while devoting their time to fighting against poorer parents’ rights to send their children to similar schools.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. Gates and Denney join a long line of hypocrites who live the “school choice for me, but not for thee” lifestyle.
“School choice” is the principle that families, not the government, should decide where their children go to school. It encompasses a wide range of options, from providing parents vouchers for private and charter school tuition to accessing “education savings accounts” for tuition, education materials, and special needs testing.
In practice, school choice allows parents to direct the education tax dollars already spent on their children instead of requiring the money to be spent at an assigned public school based on the parents’ ZIP code.
Advocates for school choice suggest that the primary benefits of “funding students [directly], not systems” include fostering competition among schools, improving academic performance, and providing access to quality education for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Progressives often lambast the practice—suggesting that allowing parents to choose which schools their children and money go to will drain and destroy public schools.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency in May after the state Legislature passed additional measures to expand school choice in North Carolina.
Cooper claimed the Legislature was trying to “tear our public schools down” by allowing parents to choose where education tax dollars allocated for their children went.
Ironically, Cooper sent his children to a private school because the governor preferred that option over a public school. Unlike many North Carolina residents who are poorer than he, Cooper could afford to send his children where he wished—and so he did.
President Joe Biden, while still a candidate for that office, also warned that voucher programs and school choice measures would defund public schools.
Writing on Twitter in January 2020, Biden claimed: “When we divert public funds to private schools, we undermine the entire public education system. We’ve got to prioritize investing in our public schools, so every kid in America gets a fair shot. That’s why I oppose vouchers.”
Biden didn’t practice this “investment” in his private life, however, sending both of his sons to the private Archmere Academy, a Roman Catholic college preparatory school in Claymont, Delaware.
Other elected Democrats who sent their children to private schools while speaking out against school choice include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. A host of state legislators also do so.
There are so many hypocritical elected officials, business executives, and union officials in this category that the Education Freedom Institute created an interactive map to catalog the rapidly growing list of those taking advantage of privileges their constituents cannot.
Why go to the trouble of fighting so desperately against school choice if you’re sending your children to school choice options anyway?
Recent polls indicate overwhelming support of additional school choice options among all major political parties and demographics.
A poll from RealClear Opinion Research found a 9% increase in support for school choice among Democrats, to 59%, since April 2020. Republicans’ support for school choice rose by 7% for a total of 75% in the same poll, and independents by 7% for a total of 67%.
The poll also found that 72% of white voters, 70% of black voters, 66% of Asian voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters said they support school choice.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, claims that the union’s fight against school choice keeps public schools from closing and prevents America from returning to racial segregation.
In Chicago, Gates went so far as to call private schools “fascist,” though the teachers union president has no problem sending her kids to one.
Broader union positions over the past few decades claimed simultaneously that school choice options would result in the abandonment and closing of public schools while asking state and federal legislators to drastically increase funding for declining public schools.
An analysis on the fourth-grade level would note that if public schools were such a great option, parents wouldn’t pull their children from those schools if given a choice. Additionally, public schools that have received drastic funding increases over the past decade have seen only greater academic decline and more parents pulling out their kids anyway (often at great personal cost).
Although Gates argues that private schools are racist and fascist, her own Chicago Public Schools is a school district that boasts a 17% literacy rate for Hispanic students and an 11% literacy rate for black students in 2021.
Anti-choice activists openly argue that if parents want to send their children to private, charter, or microschools, they should pay the additional cost—therefore funding both the local public school and the school parents want to send their children to.
I don’t have an issue with teachers union officials and Democrat politicians sending their children to private schools. Parents should have the right to send their children to a school that best suits the values and needs of that family.
The problem rests in the hypocrisy of the situation. Few things come across worse than the Marie Antoinette look.
Forcing families to funnel their money into failing public schools while your children go to better schools of your choice fosters resentment. If you really believe public schools are the best option to the point of advocating against other options, your children better be attending those public schools.
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Stanford University will return $5.5M in donations from Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX
Stanford University reportedly plans to return the millions of dollars it received in charitable contributions from Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto firm FTX before its spectacular collapse.
The alleged fraudster’s parents — Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, longtime professors at Stanford Law School — allegedly pushed the crypto exchange and its related entities to donate “more than $5.5 million” to the elite school “to boost Bankman and Fried’s professional and social status at the expense of the FTX Group,” according to a lawsuit brought by the bankrupt firm’s advisors in Delaware bankruptcy court.
“Bankman also conceived of various creative means by which to remit payments to Stanford University through different FTX Group entities,” according to the complaint filed Monday.
Stanford received the donations from November 2021 to May 2022, the lawsuit said. FTX, once valued at $32 billion, imploded in November 2022 with $8 billion in liabilities to as many as 1 million creditors.
“We have been in discussions with attorneys for the FTX debtors to recover these gifts and we will be returning the funds in their entirety,” a Stanford spokesperson told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Representatives for the university didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The decision to return the fund comes after FTX’s advisors claimed Bankman and Fried, “misappropriated funds” they received from FTX and its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, including when they allegedly “pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions, including to Stanford University,” the court documents said.
The parents have come under intense scrutiny as their son’s fraud trial approaches on Oct. 2. Neither has been charged with any wrongdoing. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty.
Bankman took a leave of absence from Stanford Law School in December 2021 to focus on the FTX Group, according to the filing.
The charitable gifts to Stanford allegedly began the month before when “Bankman directed a donation of $500,000 from FTX Trading to pass through Paper Bird,” a Delaware-based company owned by Bankman-Fried, according to the court filing.
In February 2022, he allegedly proposed a $4 million gift to the Stanford School of Medicine to support its Fund For Pandemic Preparedness.
According to the court documents, Bankman called the donation “pretty much a no-brainer,” but he wanted to run it by FTX’s project officer.
“A few months later, the gift was funded by a Bitcoin transfer from an Alameda Ltd. FTX.com exchange account that, because of the fluctuating price of Bitcoin at the time it was sold, was worth $4,010,579,” the filing said.
In March 2022, Bankman allegedly asked that the FTX Foundation dish out $1.5 million to Stanford, which FTX debtors claimed was handed over via two wire transfers.
An FTX bank account also contributed $10,000 to sponsor the Stanford Blockchain Conference in July 2022, according to the filing.
The lawsuit went on to claim that weeks before FTX’s house of cards came crumbling down, “Bankman directed another $500,000 donation to Stanford Law School.”
Bankman, a Stanford professor for more than three decades, also allegedly ordered FTX to pay for one of his students to go to a Formula 1 Grand Prix in the south of France, including plane tickets, $1,200-per-night hotels, and tickets to the event, the filing said.
Lawyers for Bankman and Fried told Bloomberg that FTX’s allegations of fraudulent transfers are “completely false.” A representative for the parents declined to comment on Stanford’s decision to return the donations, the outlet reported.
Bankman-Fried is currently awaiting his fraud case -- set to go to trial on Oct. 2 -- at a Brooklyn jail.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/stanford-university-to-return-millions-in-donations-from-ftx/
************************************************Maryland county battle heats up over 'sexually explicit' books in schools as mom vows to appeal decision
FOX News Digital spoke to Moms for Liberty chapter president Kit Hart on the battle she is leading in her county over "sexually explicit" books in public libraries.
Hart won a minor victory in Carroll County, Maryland, after a local reconsideration committee made up of teachers, parents and even students voted to remove two books from school libraries. As of Wednesday, the committee has decided to remove two books and keep seven other books on school library shelves. The deciding body still has 49 books to review, Hart said.
The two books that were chosen to be removed from schools were "A Court of Thorns and Roses" and "Water for Elephants."
The first book was found "not appropriate for recommended age and grade levels" by the reconsideration committee, Hart said. "It's basically for a mature audience and much of the book is based around sexual content."
The second book also had so much "graphic and explicit material" that made it "inappropriate for children," she explained, adding that "we really need to start understanding that the distinction between what a child can be exposed to and what an adult can deem appropriate or entertaining."
It's a difference, she added, that "should be very different and respected."
Hart said that, as a rule, the books she recommends for removal from school libraries "contain very, very graphic and explicit sex" that makes them clearly "not appropriate for schools" or for the eyes of children.
But Hart said that she wasn't done fighting the battle to keep children safe in her district from "sexually explicit" materials. The next stage in her battle with her county was appealing the committee's decision to the local superintendent.
When asked roughly what percentage of parents were for or against removing sexually explicit books from schools, Hart said that the group supporting "taking a look at these books and considering removing them" was likely the majority. The opposing side has largely taken an attitude that removing sexually explicit or controversial books from schools is a form of censorship.
"There is a faction of the population that consists of parents and some librarians who I think have taken the narrative of book banning and censorship and really fought against that idea rather than look at the individual content of the books," she said, which forced them to "defend the concept of book banning" as a political tool.
That's also because, Hart added, the defenders of these allegedly graphic books have trouble actually defending "the content of the books."
She also weighed in on the popularity of the term "book bans."
"People throw out terms like book banning and censorship" because, Hart said, "Americans don't like those concepts."
"Of course, we firmly believe in the First Amendment," Hart said. "We will fight for that."
But the issue of keeping sexually explicit books in schools was an entirely different one, she said, calling the phenomenon a "manufactured crisis."
Hart argued that the movers and shakers in school libraries across the country, like American Library Association (ALA) President Emily Drabinski, have "totally captured" school libraries. Drabinski is a self-identified "Marxist lesbian."
"We're responding, we're calling out what we deem to be inappropriate," Hart said.
Hart also said that parents have every right to want to protect their children and reduce their exposure to sexually graphic materials in school.
"We are entrusting our children, our most prized possession [to schools]," she said.
"And so when they go into these libraries, and they're finding these books, that's not a safe environment for them," she added. "And it really breaks the trust that parents have" with their "librarians and their schools."
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