(Watch Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program by clicking on the image to the right.)

The views, opinions and data of a varied group of six were shared on and off with six US Senators today about why the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program should continue.

When he began, the Committee Chair, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) took time to communicate his dismay that invited opponents of the OSP did not participate. While their views were papered all over the hearing room in lengthy memos and letters with officious sounding names like The National Coalition for Public Education (and filled with dozens of real and shell groups purporting to support all matters ranging from Judaism to feminism, to parentism, to agnosticism!), “not a single one of the six groups opposed to this program accepted our invitation,” offered Lieberman. “I say that with regret, because we wanted to hear both sides.”

Latasha Bennett, a single mother of two, teed off her testimony with a compelling argument about the tragedies faced by her own family, and the violence still present in the public school her kids would attend were it not for the scholarship. Her young daughter will not enter Kindergarten until next year, but has been able to attend the Naylor Road Annex for pre-school thanks to a Department of Housing Services voucher she receives.

Wait, did she say her Pre-K-er gets a voucher?  That’s right, we often forget that most cities indeed offer vouchers for childcare and Pre-K, subsidized by the government.  In fact, DC also offers housing vouchers, and job training vouchers. Oh, and our citizens can have babies - with federal funding - at religious hospitals.  But I digress…

Natasha was followed by Tiffany, a former Valedictorian from Archbishop Carroll and now a budding scientist who attends Syracuse University. She was followed by Ronald Holassi, who serves as Deputy Youth Mayor for Legislative Affairs for the District of Columbia, and who, perhaps, delivered the best impromptu remark all day.

When Senator Roland Burris (D- IL) chimed in, he began (and ended) with a critique of the testimony: “I have a real problem with the implication that public schools aren’t working…  and no one graduates from public schools…” (I’m sorry, sir, but that’s not what they said, we were all thinking). Burris went on an on about how much public schools work, and maybe a lot of other schools work, but they work too and why aren’t we talking about that?

As Chairman Lieberman began to move to the next set of questions, student and Youth Mayor Ronald interrupted to ask if he could make a comment. He turned to Burris in defense of the program and having lived the poor quality of too many DC publics and said, ” Sir, public schools did not get bad overnight and they are not going to get good overnight.” (SWISH!, as the kids would say.)

The passionate words spoken by Sidwell Friends Head of School Bruce Stewart - who talked of his own formative commitment to justice growing up and the benefit the five opportunity scholars bring to the diversity at Sidwell, - was also compelling on so many levels. “I strongly implore you to make certain that the positive steps already taken with OSP do not slip quietly away by virtue of inaction. Ensuring the opening of our educational system so that all are served and served well cannot be left to a matter of chance; rather, it must be brought to a condition of certainty.”

After that testimony, Senator George Voinovich from Ohio pounded his table and also lamented the opposition’s absence. “The NEA and AFT… haven’t got the guts to look you in the eye and say ‘we’re going to cut off your program.’”

OSP parent Ingrid Campbell sat off to the side during the hearing and slashed through the opposition’s arguments and materials. With dozens of papers in hand as she left the hearing room, she was angered at what she had read and could not believe that groups wrote things like this. “Look at this - it says these (private schools) don’t take our children. That’s a lie.”  She continued pointing to the lies, the misstatements, the bad arguments, and asked how she could put it in the record. It was great - a real person seeing what it is we “paid” advocates have encountered all these years and shocked to learn that people actually say such things for private gain. She will be writing to the Senators with her comments, and I suspect that will not be the last they hear from her, nor hundreds of others who have now experienced first hand the power of the status quo purse and pen.

As for me, the opposition did me a favor today. I left my notebook at home and was able to use the back of their tired and worn materials to take notes. So, thankfully, I could report what happened at today’s hearing.