No, Council Member Mink didn’t say these Moslem children are “just like bigots.” Nevertheless, would you want to send your children to a school where one of the top administrators says they are on the same side as bigots? I’m not part of the thought police crowd, and to me it’s a reasonable proposition to think that opting out of LGBT studies is bigotry. But to publicly shame children with vitriol crosses a line, particularly from someone decked out in the latest fashion statements of love and inclusion.
We now need to wonder if Council Member Mink’s accusations will be used as justification by teachers and students to harass Moslem students. The schools’ Jewish students are already feeling that pressure, and nobody’s doing much about that.
How do we resolve the matter of disparate aspirations for children’s education? More importantly, how do we allow students to escape persecution at the hands of a school district’s administration?
School vouchers.
MCPS spends over $18,000 to educate a student each year. That’s obviously a foggy average: elementary schools cost less per pupil to operate compared to high schools. Regardless of the actual amount, in a school voucher program, a parent receives approximately $18,000 applicable toward tuition at a school of choice. There are parents who will seek a school that places LGBT studies above everything else, while there are parents who will prefer schools that focus only on core studies. Some parents will continue to send their children to public schools, others will apply the voucher to more pricey private schools.
School vouchers are good for teachers as well. They free the teachers from working in an environment where there is effectively only one employer and one union. If a teacher can get a better deal at one of the other schools without necessarily being an MCPS employee or without being a member of a union, that’s also positive gain.
School vouchers have been on the pro-choice agenda for quite some time, and for good reason. The public schools have had dubious results, no accountability, and partner with teachers’ unions to dictate local policy well beyond education. Furthermore, with school vouchers, the failing schools close immediately as their customer base abandons them, and successful schools (and their teachers) are richly rewarded. Until now, those have been the talking points in favor of school vouchers; they revolve around educational outcomes, parental choice, and financial accountability.
Council Member Mink has added two more talking points in favor of school choice: student dignity and student safety. By publicly defaming her own students and possibly placing them in danger, she has eliminated any justification for forcing children to go to a school assigned to them by an intolerant school system.
Given that this is her first term on the County Council, Mink is expected to be re-elected for two more terms for a total of 12 years. She’ll be spending quite a bit of that time insulting all of us. She’s not going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean our children can’t go somewhere else. The time for school vouchers has come.
