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October 06, 2006
The Scarlet H
Today we have the opportunity to unveil a brand new feature on Edspresso.
That's "H" for hypocrisy--as in the politicians and bureaucrats who want to keep kids in public schools but take advantage of school choice for themselves. Such as assorted powerbrokers in and around Los Angeles Unified School District, including school board president Marlene Carter, former mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg, and Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund leader Antonia Hernández, among others:
As he introduced the governor, Villaraigosa certainly didn’t need to look far for people to lure back to the district. Standing next to him was Schwarzenegger, whose children are enrolled at Brentwood School, where tuition costs $24,800 annually for grades 7 to 12. Next to the governor was Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, whose two school-age children bypassed L.A. Unified years ago, attending public schools in the high-achieving college town of Claremont until last year, when they transferred to the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Even with two school-age children attending public schools, Núñez — whose district encompasses working-class neighborhoods near downtown Los Angeles — sounded downright testy when asked about the public/private equation. “How does that matter?” shot back Núñez. “How does that matter?” He stalked off without answering questions.
In fact, Villaraigosa’s bill-signing ceremony provided a veritable tableau of figures who one way or another have opted out of L.A. Unified. Standing behind Núñez was City Council President Eric Garcetti, who graduated in 1988 from Harvard-Westlake, where tuition for the current school year is $23,850 (parents are advised by the school to budget another $3,000 for fees). Standing next to Garcetti was Mary Najera, the lone parent invited to speak at the event, who spent the past six months tearfully describing her triumphant decision to pull her son out of L.A. Unified and put him in a charter school operated by Green Dot, a group enthusiastically supportive of Villaraigosa’s education bill. [emphasis added]
If public schools are good enough for others' kids, they should be good enough for these leaders More to the point, if they want parents to send their kids back to the district, they should be the first in line. May they wear the Scarlet H with pride!
UPDATE: Joe Williams says I've got it wrong. See what you think.
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Comments
This may be the first and last time, but I agree with you absolutely.
I work with a right-wing history teacher, with whom I'm very friendly, and he's the one who first introduced me to this notion. If you're going to administer a school system, it really behooves you to patronize it. If it isn't good enough for your own kids, how can you have the audacity to say it's good enough for mine?
And for whatever it's worth, my kid attends a public school.
Posted by: NYC Educator | October 7, 2006 09:54 AM
