Last Thursday was a wonderful day for students in Florida, especially students living in undervalued neighborhoods and desperate for educational options. Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled the state promoting the belief that those children, not just those from families of means, should be in great schools.

As executive director of Florida Parent Network, I manage a team of professional organizers who planned and arranged these events, and at the last one, in Miami, DeSantis signed a bill that officially created the Family Empowerment Scholarship.

This scholarship will help 18,000 students get off scholarship waiting lists and into schools they couldn’t otherwise afford.

It was a long, rewarding day.

At every stop, our champions in the Legislature joined the governor to talk about this year’s legislative session. They thanked each other, and supporters, for getting this bill past the finish line.

Most of our champions are Republicans, and despite the fact I’m more to the left than anyone in any room I’m in, I stood and applauded them for doing the right thing by our kids. Even when some gave speeches with the usual “government doesn’t know best” theme, I understand that’s their thing.

They gotta do them.

The few Democrats brave enough to stand up to school districts and teachers’ unions have a special place in my heart. Six of them in the Florida House of Representatives did just that this legislative session.

We must acknowledge and appreciate that it is never easy to withstand tribal pressures, and these days it’s more difficult and rarer than ever before.

That’s why Rep. Wengay Newton’s speech at the St. Petersburg event made my day.

I don’t want to hear from folks who’ve never needed assistance that government programs don’t work. They do work. They work quite well.

Government programs work best when constituents of all income levels have choice, options and power.

Newton talked about specific programs that helped his family while he was growing up. Government programs made it possible for him to learn, thrive and ultimately serve his neighbors in the state legislature.

He has a certain “authenticity” to which almost no one else that day could lay similar claim.

“The school to prison pipeline is real,” he said. “It’s not a charter school to prison pipeline. It’s not a private school to prison pipeline. It’s a public school to prison pipeline.”

Can we take a moment and think about the wisdom and experience behind this viewpoint? Democrats who gather around a table to bash school choice hardly ever acknowledge that they themselves have never for one moment entertained the thought of allowing their children to attend substandard schools.

Those who are against educational options always seem to have them.

They deserve to be shamed for denying others that from which they benefit.

Newton said he never – never – sees many black males when he goes to successful high schools during the Great American Teach-In.

“But when I go to county jails and juvenile facilities,” he continued, “I see a lot of black males. You’re well-represented.”

Democrats opposed to educational options support a system that benefits white upper-class children at the expense of everyone else. They back a system that is good at one thing and one thing only: securing the jobs of the people who work there.

Newton encouraged the students in attendance to work hard.

“Cause if you don’t do it, they’ve got plans for you on the other side.”

I’ve heard supporters apologize for educational options, pretending that empowering parents isn’t the end all, be all. I disagree. Choice might not be the only great idea, but it’s the best one.

“You’re provided an opportunity,” Newton said. “Not a guarantee, but an opportunity.”

That is what we can give our kids.

He reminded the audience that the area in which they were sitting was home to “failure factories,” a powerful reminder to those who believe in only one educational delivery system. That one delivery system has been failing minority children for decades.

“If you know all the secret codes to Play Station 4, that tells me your brain is working just fine,” Newton said.

In other words, don’t believe that you can’t succeed. That you can’t learn.

Those who can’t teach will blame everything -- parents, poverty, salaries, etc. But the truth is that children of lesser means can learn. They just can’t learn from a single system or the teachers who flock to it.

Newton also reminded the students that he and they come from the same place.

That’s the most powerful message of all. Every single child from impoverished neighborhoods has potential. And shame on any system that allows an ideology to shine, instead of a child.

Editor’s note: This opinion piece, written by the executive director of the Florida Parent Network, appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat March 27.

Imagine grocery shopping with your friend. She lives near a safe and convenient store with a wide variety of options that meet the nutritional needs of your family.

Now imagine that you can only shop in your neighborhood.

The store near you doesn’t have what you need, but that’s too bad. The only way you can shop with your friend is to move into her neighborhood.

This, in a nutshell, is the system championed by Sally Butzin. In her recent op-ed, she called it free, universal public education (created in the late 1830s!), even though it has never been free or universal. It’s a system that works quite well for those who can pay for it, which is precisely why they mourn its passing.

Welcome to 2019.

Florida Parent Network champions students over systems. Thousands of our parents have seen their children’s lives transformed thanks to scholarships, charters, magnets and vouchers. Others have found success in virtual or homeschools.

These options have not been around since the 1830s, but they’re helping more of today’s children, and growing in popularity each year. We help parents defend and fight for these options.

Butzin doesn’t really get it. The world she is describing, where taxes “fund a free public system for all,” is a fantasy world.

For eight years, I taught in district schools and my sons attended their neighborhood high school. Public education isn’t free. We paid a premium in rent and mortgage payments. And those who couldn’t were out of luck.

That doesn’t sound universal to me.

The op-ed is full of offensive tropes, like blaming choice (read: low-income, mostly minority parents who choose something other than their district school) for segregation. Has she been to Leon County schools lately?

Let’s not blame minority moms for that one.

When she compares low-income parents choosing private schools with low-income parents abandoning their children or selling them for drugs — suggesting the state has a right to protect all their babies from “bad parent choices” — she disparages an entire population. Many of whom I doubt she even knows.

Moms who sit up with their children every night, children crying and scared because they don’t feel safe in school. Parents who often work multiple jobs to afford tutors after being told their children can’t learn like other kids. Parents researching schools that offer glimmers of hope. Parents who sacrifice and cut back to supplement scholarships and vouchers, putting their children’s needs ahead of their own.

Butzin is wrong. Money should not be spent on schools; it must be spent on children. Children who have parents. Parents who love them. Parents who have every right to make the same decisions Butzin was allowed to make for her own children.

What else has been around since the 1830s? Educational choice, for those who can afford it.

These days, we’re aiming to open that up for everyone.

Tuesday night, city council members in the beautiful Central Florida town of Clermont had to decide whether to put children’s needs ahead of adults’ needs. We were told beforehand it wasn’t looking good.

For a few months, dozens of parents had attended information nights, sponsored by Florida Parent Network and run by Keith Jacobs, our manager of charter school initiatives. During these sessions, parents discussed their need for more educational options in fast-growing Lake County.

They talked about overcrowded classrooms, portables that smelled of mold and mildew, lunches scheduled at 10 a.m. because the sheer number of students required staggered, and far too early, breaks.

Parents told us about the lack of one-on-one attention their children were receiving and the low grades and behavior problems that were reported as a result.

Something had to be done. (more…)