Posted on 02/13/2006 7:27:07 AM PST by Jacvin
BOCA RATON · It is one of Florida's most polarizing policies, and anyone in the Renaissance Hotel's Coral Ballroom Sunday afternoon could see why.
In a sometimes jolting ride over political fault lines, the generally liberal American Civil Liberties Union and a local Republican leader faced off over Florida's school vouchers for students in failing public schools.
A signature initiative of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, the "Opportunity Scholarships" are offered to students whose public schools fail the state's grading system at least twice in four years. The students can use the money toward tuition at private schools, including religious ones.
"School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century," Palm Beach County Republican Party Chairman Sid Dinerstein said Sunday.
Excerpt
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
How pathetic.
The folks on the democrat plantation need to rise up and take control of their own lives, their children, AND their children's education.
Full text of Sid Dinerstein's opening remarks to the ACLU South Florida Chapter. Sid Dinerstein is the chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party.
I am Dred Scott.
In 1847 I tried to buy my freedom for $300. In 1858 Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Democrat, ruled that I must remain a slave. I died the following year.
In 2006, I asked the taxpayers of Florida to buy my Educational Freedom. Chief Justice Barbara J. Pariente, a Democrat, ruled that I must remain an educational hostage. I died another death.
The five Liberal Justices on the Florida State Supreme Court took away the Opportunity Scholarships for all Dred Scott’s because the receiving schools – the private schools – weren’t “uniform” with the failing public schools. That’s true. They were better. Children learned there. Safely. Ritalin free.
ACLU’ers pick their children’s, or their grandchildren’s, schools on this “uniform” concept. An ACLU’er can only go to a public school that is “uniformly” excellent, like Dreyfoos or Suncoast or Bok Middle School, or most schools in Boca Raton, Palm Beach Gardens or Wellington. But try to find an ACLU’er in a “uniformly” challenged school like Glades Central or Roosevelt Middle School, and you will come up empty. ACLU’ers only go to schools that “uniformly” resemble the private schools that they won’t let poor children go to. The Liberals on the Court say that “uniformity” is defined by the curriculum. Rest assured. The public schools of the ACLU children have curricula much closer to (private) St. Andrews or The (private) Benjamin School than they do to Glades Central.
All ACLU’ers love vouchers. They love the GI Bill vouchers that sent their uncles to St. John’s University. They love the Pell Grant and “Bright Futures” vouchers that send their grandchildren to Florida State or Palm Beach Atlantic. They use their own Medicare vouchers at JFK Medical Good Samaritan Hospital. And the only reason we haven’t mentioned Food Stamps or Section 8 Rental Housing Vouchers is because ACLU’ers are too rich to need them. And yet, when the Dred Scott’s of today ask for their vouchers, the ACLU just says: “No!”
So what is really going on?
The answer is: “Money.”
Dred Scott was sold in 1847 and Dred Scott is being sold every day in 2006. The NEA, the National Education Association, what we often call the Teachers’ Union, takes in $350 million each year. And what does it buy? The better question is: “Who does it buy?”
Here are a few:
-Protect Our Public Schools is an organization dedicated to wiping out Charter Schools. The NEA gave them $500,000.
-The Congressional Black Caucus was bought for $40,000.
-The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute was bought for $35,000.
-The National Organization for Women was bought.
-So was the NAACP.
-And Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
-People for the American Way held out for $654,000.
-And, of course, last, but not least, your own ACLU took NEA money in exchange for selling the potential of our at risk youth.
In other words, this organization, and all of its sister Left-wing organizations, take money from the fabulously rich NEA. And all you have to do is sell Dred Scott, again and again and again. The ACLU takes the money. Dred Scott loses his potential. It’s all very Black and White.
The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution has one common theme: Ten times over it says people come before government; by picking their own religion, owning their own guns, keeping their own counsel. And when the Bill of Rights runs out of specific areas to protect the citizens from the government, it adds the blanket statement reminding us that the ambiguous always goes to the people.
The people of the Great State of Florida, through their Constitution, are no less generous or just. When we ask for Quality Public Schools we seek optimism and opportunity, not pessimism and imprisonment. And when parents have determined that Uniform Quality Public Schools require a School Voucher to an outsourced institution, the Bill of Rights remind us that “we the people” come before the narrow interests of the government schools. Quality Education is the uniformity that our State Constitution guarantees, not special interest payoffs from one educational possibility, the local government school district. Dred Scott will return to the Government Schools when they have earned his participation, no longer at the wrong end of the bullwhip.
If there are lawyers here who think I have it wrong, I have two suggestions: First, go back to Law School and get a refund. Then go visit the Joseph Littles/Nguzo Saba Charter School and ask them to take your law school money and sell you a heart. School Choice is the Civil Rights issue of the 21st Century – and the ACLU is the hired gun for the “separate but unequal” crowd.
You and I were once the same. We grew up together in New York City. We went to Brooklyn College together. Indeed, the only reason I am here today, in front of what I expect is a hostile audience, is because I think more of you than you think of yourselves.
I believe, before this luncheon is over, that at least one of you will hear my words, will see the faces of my young friends, and will understand the cruelty of your ACLU. When that happens, free yourself by standing up and saying to the audience:
“I AM DRED SCOTT!!!”
"The only thing worse than a thief....is a liar."
Kinda makes me wonder where that puts the ACLU, seeing as they are both characteristics.
Let's be blunt.
The soccer moms in the suburbs who pay the high home prices and high property taxes so their kids can go to good schools in nice towns do NOT want anything potentially diverting funding from their school districts. And they most definitely do not want a wave of Jamaals and Lakeishas showing up at their kids school waving vouchers.
since when is it a civil liberty to have no choice in where your kid goes to school.
I think you underestimate the goodwill of the American people for anyone who is working hard to get ahead.
"Critics say vouchers weaken and fragment public education, rather than equalize it, while improperly subsidizing religious schools."
Yep.
The thrust of the voucher program is to put underclass kids in Pinecrest High School on Maplewood Drive and the parents will not like that. It's not about racism. It is about underclass kids tending to be undisciplined troublemakers wherever they go. The soccer moms will not like that.
And that is why voucher programs get no support from white voters. Cherry Hill doesn't want Camden kids in it's school.
You're a Freeper since 10-27-05 and you don't support vouchers, eh.
Gee, I wonder what that usually means?
I don't think that kids who have parents that care enough to get a voucher and shop for a good school would be troublemakers.
I live in an area like you've described and I support vouchers.
The objective of a voucher program is to create competition, which raises the quality of all schools (just like the worst car built in America was better than the best car built in the USSR). In the short run, Jamaal and Lakeisha may come to your neighborhood, but Jamaal's and Lakeisha's moms don't want them spending three hours on a bus every day. They'd just as soon send them to the local school if it were good enough. The competition under a voucher system would force the local school to become good enough for Jamaal and Lakeisha. Then they wouldn't have to bus clear across town.
Don't get bogged down in the short-range effects, take the long view.
I believe that to be a totally inaccurate remark. It is the teachers they can hire that might not meet state requirements; many public school teachers don't meet the same.
The ACLU isn't stopping Islam from being taught in public schools across the country.............
Voucher programs get plenty of support from white conservative voters like me, my family, and my conservative friends. My liberal friends, however, are unanimously against them.
Your statement about underclass kids being troublemakers doesn't apply to kids whose families are motivated enough to get them vouchers so they can attend good schools. Parents who do that also raise their kids to be well-behaved and hard workers.
Critics say that because they accurately perceive vouchers to be the wedge in the monolith of public school "education". They know that if they allow parents to send their kids to the schools of their choice, the lousy schools will lose funding as the kids leave, and will either have to improve their level of service or go under.
These critics don't want to be accountable to parents, nor to have to participate in a competitive, merit-based system.
I was unhappy with the cultural influences at that school and put my child in private school.
That new school had scholarship students of minority races.
The school set the rules of dress and behaviour and everyone benefitted. We loved the school, met some wonderful families who were also concerned with their child's education.
And my daughter made some friends who are still a part of her life.
Looked at in another way, vouchers may reduce class size - but only reduce government money to the school by a smaller percentage. In other words, taking the national average of $10,000 dollars received by a school per student, the child who leaves would take only $4,000 (on average) in vouchers with him. The school would then have a net of $6,000 for each child that leaves, plus a smaller class size, to boot.
"You're a Freeper since 10-27-05 and you don't support vouchers, eh.
Gee, I wonder what that usually means?"
Well...I think it means that if I don't agree with a given view(or anyone, for that matter) that I'm the enemy, so it's time to take out the heavy guns and blast away...
Granted this is not as good as vouchers, but it is definitely better than most states have. This gives all parents an opportunity to find a school that works for their kids. Transportation is the family's responsibility when they go out of district.
Open enrollment is much better than the normal system of keep those kids in their place schools. If the kids and parents are willing to get a better education than their neighborhood school offers, they can.
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