No, public schools are funded by WE THE PEOPLE.
The government works for us, not the other way around.
...therefore I have NO PROBLEM with this kind of garbage going on.
Both odd and disturbing.
The REAL QUESTION is just who are these parents and do they really have NO CHOICE but to subject their kids to government institutions?
Do SOME of the parents have a choice? Certainly. However, it is incorrect to assume that all do. There are many families who are unable to send their children to private schools or to homeschool them because of financial or other reasons.
The solution is to break the back of the teachers unions and provide vouchers for those families that do not want to use public schools.
The other thing this situation demonstrates is one of the major flaws in the libertarian mindset. They understand the inherent problems with the federal government while assuming that some sort of nobility exists at the levels of state and local government. The fallacious theory that more control at the state and local level is the panacea for America's woes is every bit as problematic as doing nothing at all.
” The solution is to break the back of the teachers unions and provide vouchers for those families that do not want to use public schools.”
AZ is trying to dismantle the public school system with vouchers and magnet schools. The teachers union is going insane right now, so it’s working well.
I’ll concede that there might be a handful of parents that cannot afford alternatives to public schools, but I’ve worked with enough people to know that is rarely the case.
In the VAST MAJORITY of cases, the question that parents ask themselves is whether they can afford alternate means of education while maintaining their lifestyle. In those case, the answer is usually NO. So yes, if the family wants to live 25 miles away from where the breadwinner works, and wants to maintain the ability of each kid to have their own bedroom, and wants a house that can give a match to the Jones’s - then no, they are stuck with public schools.
But for families that put their kids first (unfortunately a minority of the ones that I work with), they realize that a two bedroom apartment (in a not-so-nice neighborhood) for a few key years is NOT the end of the world, if it means that their kids are instead given a chance to PROPERLY learn math and reading.
So, in most cases, the concept of not being able to afford something is more related to lifestyle choices than anything else.