Oh The BALLS On These Betsy DeVos-Ass 'School Choice' Bitchez!
The BALLS!
NOTE: Because this post, which I wrote, did not get emailed yesterday, I am emailing it to everyone now. I blame, as always, Doktor Zoom. — Editrix
On Mondays we wear pink work at the school. “Ms. Schoenkopf,” said the principal, “I want you to apply for the job as parent outreach coordinator.” (The first time the other schools’ parent outreach coordinators on the group text mentioned a party for “POCs,” I just assumed the invitation didn’t apply to me.) And so I did. The Detroit Public School district pays me $15 an hour, suckas, to find resources for our school’s parents and presumably do woke.
Well, yesterday I not only found the answer to a parent’s plea for help (“can I get Microsoft Word for free for my daughter’s new Christmas laptop” YES!) but I did so much woke that I seem to have caused a CONSTERNATION and a KERFUFFLE and you know what? Fuck that mom I bet she voted for Trump.
When I arrived at the school there were two boxes of bullshit garbage on my little table in the hallway outside the first grade, where I sit and draw with any first grader who’s having a meltdown. The boxes held a certificate to honor our elementary school for “being part of National School Choice Week” and a bunch of those cheap-ass Lance Armstrong-type bracelets to give the children. Children love garbage! These would go like Taki-flavored hotcakes! “I LOVE MY SCHOOL!” the bracelets read. Neat! “#NATIONALSCHOOLCHOICEWEEK.”
You know, “school choice” sounded familiar and like I should look into it before I sent the children home with a hashtag, SPOILER IT IS BAD VERY BAD THE BALLS ON THESE BITCHES. It took several googles of “who funds National School Choice Foundation -ai” and “National School Choice Foundation donors -ai” (that is how you google things without getting fucked up AI hallucination results) before the internet gave me everything I needed to know from Truthout.
The answer was: Some billionaire’s great-great granddaughter is making half a million dollars a year to convince parents to vote to send public education dollars to private school vouchers and homeschooling. The billionaire’s great-great granddaughter’s husband makes $42,000 to spend half an hour a week (I call bullshit) on “board.” And the Koch Brothers and Betsy DeVos and the Independent Women’s Forum are alllllll up in this shit.
Hmmmm here’s a tab that I have open from just last week: “Thousands of Alabama parents apply for taxpayer-funded private school assistance on first day.”
More than 3,000 families applied for education savings accounts with the Alabama Department of Revenue on Thursday, the first day that they could apply for ESAs under a new state law.
The CHOOSE Act allows parents to use up to $7,000 per child for private school tuition and other eligible education expenses, or $2,000 per child for home school (maximum $4,000 per family).
Why, that’s up to $21 million blown the very first day! I’m sure the state of Alabama has many tens of millions available to send all its homeschoolers, and nothing bad will happen to the public schools at all. Sounds like the $140 million the Gleason family has invested into its “School Choice Awareness Foundation” has really paid off!
Here’s a news story from all the way back in July, I’m not sure we’re even allowed to discuss ancient history like that: School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.
Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.
My goodness. This sounded very bad. It sounded like the National School Choice Foundation was sending hashtags to little children in Detroit Public Schools and getting them to blindly swallow propaganda that would destroy their own schools and send the money to segregation academies instead!
On our POC text chain, the POC for another school had let us know we’d be getting these boxes. Sure enough, her name, call her Jackie, was in the attention line on the address label for the box delivered to our school. Jackie was very excited and wanted us to look out for these wonderful treats (of plastic garbage).
But I had done my due googling, and I wanted to let the other POCs know we had A BETSY DEVOS ASS ASTROTURF up in our grills! I am not afraid to be servicey. I texted:
Hi [Jackie], we did receive a box for National School Choice Week. I'm looking into the group's goals, and it seems to be a group whose goal is to divert public school money to homeschooling, etc. :/
Here's more on the National School Choice Week. It aims to privatize public schools and divert funding to both private schools and homeschools. https://truthout.org/articles/millionaires-are-funding-national-school-choice-week-to-attack-public-schools/ Just FYI for everyone. I'd talk to your principal about it before handing out these bracelets with their hashtag.
Jackie, obviously, was affronted.
Thank you kindly for the article. I am aware of their stance however as a DPSCD we can still tell the reasons why we as parents students etc why our schools are school choice and not the political aspect of it. It’s just some fun activities a few students can participate in with writing why their school is their school of choice. I’ve never had an issue with the organization since 2019. It was just another activity to do but I understand your point. If you don?t want the materials please leave with your principal and I can grab the box one day, I don?t want anyone feeling uncomfortable.
Was I leaving it there? Have you met me?
Not the political aspect of it? Here kids here’s your Mass Deportation Now Week activity box. But just for the activities. It’s not political!
I limbered up my texting fingers.
I appreciate your point @ Jackie. But I do have to point out it's literally political; there's nothing not political about it. The aim of the organization is to divert funds from public schools like ours to private schools and even homeschools. When we say it's not political, we're whitewashing the political intent of people who actively want to harm our public schools, where we all work and where my child and grandchild go 😊 I'll leave off, I'm certainly not trying to pick a fight or argument! I hope you have a wonderful week, and everyone else on the list too!
God I’m so fucking polite!
Other POCs were like “wow” and “wow I will look into it” and “wow” again. Nobody said MMMMHMMMM though so I may have failed.
Question (in my head, not out loud, which would be rude): Is Jackie taking a gratuity from the National Schools Choice Foundation? Or was she just a true believer in these wonderful activities? Probably definitely that other one, because she had a lot more texting to do! And she was kinda pissed!
As I stated this is something I do with students and some parents displaying why they pick their school of choice and school of choice is traditional public school public charter school public magnet school private school homeschool and online school. And as far as whitewashing I’m not doing that at all but if you feel that way that’s fine however I don’t because I’m representing DPSCD and nothing else. This is a project for a week only and nothing more. I had people wanting to get the scarves for their students and do some activities on it. So I just wanted to let you know I’m not whitewashing anything and I feel this is just being blown out of proportion for no reason. No one is coming for us doing this activity or making us change our minds about DPSCD. I’m just saying it’s an activity not a debate. I was trying to share an activity.
I didn’t reply. My point was made, and Jackie can stew in her SO MANY ACTIVITIES!
So listen. “School choice” sounds so nice, and choicey! And yet it is bad, racist, and will bankrupt our public schools. It’s already started! The evil masterminds getting public school employees to distribute their public-school-destroying propaganda have some balls on them (and alllllll the money). And if you’ve got kids, get loud, and get mouthy. You can still be polite while explaining to people to GO FUCK.
This has been MOMMYBLOGGING.
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All this for the price of a few plastic trinkets! Good God, they are so fucking ballsy, trading those shiny beads for the Island of Manhattan.
(If you ever want to make friendship bracelets the old fashioned way with the kids so they can have their own homemade goodies, hit me up. I have years and years experience of doing arts and crafts with kids).
"And if you’ve got kids, get loud, and get mouthy. You can still be polite while explaining to people to GO FUCK."
Very good advice from Rebecca!
In fact, I just got a call from my son's school.
Principal: "Mr. Kolmer, your son has been acting up in class."
Me: "He acts up at home all the time but I don't call you, do I?"