Guest: Ryan N.

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to preserving your parental rights, including the right to choose the best school for your child. This podcast is dedicated to gaining the option of school choice for every parent in America.

Here's your host, educator and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

All right, welcome in, everyone, to our very first edition of Old School, New School, Next School.

Couldn't be more honored than to have Ryan Boyer with us, who is a great Philadelphia success story.

And this is being recorded pretty early, so you're in the office already. That's good stuff.

Brian tell listeners to this that may or may not know you fully your current position what you do it is one of the most prominent groups in what some people have called the last big labor town let me ask you on that do you think Philadelphia is still the biggest labor town in the country good morning Dom yeah I like to think that we are one of the last I think that Chicago still lays some claim to that San Francisco but they have different unions

But I'm Ryan Boyer. I'm the business manager at a Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council. We represent almost 40,000 construction workers in the Philadelphia region. And I'm super proud to have that job. We represent workers that work hard for a living. I like to say we represent the people that do construction in 10 below weather and 110 degrees weather with a backbone of America.

It may be tangential, but I think it's important to the overall story, maybe. Are you the first African-American leader of this group? Yes, I am the first African-American leader. And the more I'm in that role, I don't like to say that because the fight for workers has been one that's fought for immigrants and African-Americans. If you look at the union struggle, it's always been the underdog. And I think that that's less important than how do we elevate the

voice of the worker in modern day America when corporations have such an outside voice.

Well, I think it's important to know that all that is background. I don't want to go back into your schooling here in a second. And as you know, I'm in Germantown, so we share some of this Philadelphia story. You wrote a piece a while ago at Philadelphia Citizen that I've marked up almost as much as anything I've ever done on the air and using it for this.

I-95 is a model for fixing schools. And Ryan, in there, you talk about the fact we all see the key word other than that Josh Shapiro was a master of showing us that split screen of I-95 being fixed after the explosion. I'd like to think we could do that with schools, but urgency was the key word for you. Does it seem a little bit out of the box that you as a top labor leader,

would be one of the biggest in the country are 40,000 workers, a supporter of school choice. And this column talks about urgency and school choice as a mechanism and your own personal story for fixing the schools. Dr. King talked about the fierce urgency of now. And there is no more urgent cause than education. Dom, you don't get a do over. You have 14 years to do it.

And then you're either educated for a lifetime or you're miseducated for a lifetime.

There are no do-overs. That 14-year period, the pre-K up into 12, is one of the most important educational times. And it's urgent. We can't have or be happy with incremental growth. I hate when I hear our reading scores went up 4%. That's 17, 18%. So what the hell, I care if it goes up.

That's still saying that two out of ten kids cannot read at grade level. That's horrible. Well, exactly. We'd still have the haul to continue in 95 for the next 10 years. Because it was very urgent. And the reason why I made that juxtaposition, it was urgent that we have commerce on the East Coast corridor, right? But educating the populace, it's not working, first of all.

We know that this public school model only does not work. Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories so we could try things. So why not school choice? Why not expand that? Because people with resources, and that's both financial resources while a social resource, exercise choice all the time. So it should not be a surprise that me where my mother and father exercise choice, and quite frankly, my family, because we didn't

come from wealth. So putting that tuition together wasn't just my parents. It was my extended family as well. You know, $10 here, $15. You know, you went to Catholic school. That's just where it was. The parochial school system was the school choice back then. I mean, we didn't have any money to go to any of the Quaker schools then, but it was the best choice for my mother to educate her son at a parochial school other than the neighborhood school that I would have

They're assigned you do. Right now, the biggest indicator of your success or failure in Philadelphia is your zip code. Yeah, exactly right. Meaning where you grow up, the quality of schools there is what determines it. And no surprise, in the poorer neighborhoods, the schools are falling behind. I wanted to go back to something. I've been sitting on this for a while when I read this. I had the experience of become very friendly with

Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice presidential candidate to be on the ticket.

And she told me the story and I stopped her and we just drilled down forever.

How after the war, she was going to a private girls school in New York.

The family couldn't afford it, but they had land in Italy.

We had an agreement post-World War II.

You couldn't sell that land.

She told me the nuns in Italy were able to sell the land, launder the money, send it to the nuns here.

Now, as I understand it, you wrote, and this is really a heart of a story that thrills me, your grandmother ran a speakeasy in order to have the money to send Ryan Boyer to school to the J-Zoo, which is a great school, even today, a Catholic school. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, every Friday and Saturday nights, we had a speakeasy with illegal card games, Dom. They played poker. They played a game called Tunk that African Americans play.

And we sold liquor and we sold, you know, dinners from the house. And that proceeds from that money was used to my tuition. I mean, listen, I lie. I don't like to lie, but I lied to send my son to a better school in Philadelphia. My son went to the McCall school. We couldn't afford private school at the time. And we had a family member living at, I still remember the address, 1217 South Street. So we told my son, you live with her.

And we had to teach our son how to lie because we knew how important education was. And I don't make any apologies for it. He's a successful man with a degree from Howard University. And his primary school at McCall Elementary helped him do that. And that's an option where we chose a district-run public school, but it was a good school.

It's in Center City. I know it well. We'll hear people all the time say, well, why are you two guys talking about the difficulties?

of the Philadelphia Public Schools.

What about Masterman? What about McCall?

What about, we might be able to name 10 or 12 of them that are high quality,

but then after that, the drop-off in some of these neighborhoods like where I am,

I think the one school, Kelly is in Germantown or near here,

you see on the statewide test about a 5% proficiency in reading and math.

And recently, not too far away from me, Martin Luther King School had a girl speak, you probably saw it, to the school board. It was in the Inquirer saying a teacher got slapped. And I'm a former teacher, as you know, got slapped the first day of school or something. He didn't come back. And over the course of the year, they've had teacher after teacher, long-term sub, many of them not teaching anything. If you show up, you get a good grade, I guess. A lot of kids don't show up now.

How in the world could an enterprise, in this case, public schools, and I know there are challenges, how in the world can you let that go on for a year? And the girl says, we don't want to take the Keystone exams, the end of the year statewide testing, because we literally have not had a teacher this year.

Dom, it's a lack of caring. I'm on a Dom dome, so I think I can be honest. Here's the quiet part that they don't say out loud. Most of the kids that they care about don't go to real public school. They go to some of the schools that you and I can name the 12, right? It's an unofficial stat. I'm trying to get good numbers, but I'm told, just polling teachers, that 80% of teachers,

that have school-aged children don't send their kids to Philadelphia Public Schools. And of the ones that do, 90% are in about 14 concentrated schools. It's a story of the haves and the have-nots, Dom. They have largely said, we don't care about these kids. We care about our special-admit schools, Central, Mastemann, Girls High, Bodine, Engineering and Science, Science Leadership Academy.

and Parkway. We care about those schools. The rest of the schools, the comprehensive high schools, they have largely left. And it's gotten worse. You know, my ex-wife went to all neighborhood schools, but they would have other class in there, academic plus. She graduated from Ben Franklin. It was called the Motivation Program, full academic scholarship to Villanova, finished one of those cum laude that I can only think about, then the full academic scholarship to St. Joe's.

But inside the neighborhood schools, there was an academy there for higher,

similar to my son now, takes honors courses, right? In Springfield.

They don't have that anymore. They no longer, now because of all this woke,

all the kids should learn the same. Kids learn different.

And positive peer pressure works as well as negative peer pressure.

You know, that's a great line. That's been my experience in schools also.

But in your role as head of the building trades, I know your members, you know them better than I, of course, over the years, they want their kids to go to a quality school too. What's the remedy? First of all, you and I agree on choice, charter schools as a laboratory. Is it with the public schools just a question of money, which I don't think it is? There's another dynamic there. It's a system where there's not urgency. And I'm not pointing fingers at, you know,

current administration or whatever. This just goes on forever, it seems like.

Inequality in funding has to be addressed. There's no question about that. But it's also an attitude adjustment that needs to happen. I personally believe, and I'm not a policymaker, that the district should be broken up. You should have a district that is for capital expenditures only, that they'll worry about the school buildings, the operations of the schools, and things like that.

I believe that and then somebody to run the educational part. It's just a difficult job because you're not only a, when you're the superintendent, you worry about education, but you're almost like a big land owner as well. Who operates your land portfolio? Making sure that the schools are adequate because if my environment isn't adequate, I cannot learn. And there is so many qualities. I've been fortunate to live all around this region.

You know, my children, the majority, they graduated from Strathaven High School in Wallingford, PA. And there was an embarrassment of riches there. We're not going to act as if the Philadelphia School District had the same amount of resources that the kids at Strathaven and that school district had. So we have to fix that. But I think the attitude is more important than the money. The money is important, but I don't think it's as important as the attitude.

And if you have a lack of resource, I think you have a duty to use them in the most efficient manner possible. And I don't know if we're doing that. So I would give you money, but you're going to audit. I will give you an audit and also give you a management audit to say, I think you should try this, do that better. And really bring the unions in to a real discussion and say, here are the two or three things that we absolutely need so the schools can run better.

not just management tools to control but things that we need like right now the best teachers because they have tenure they go to the best schools allow me to poach 10 of those teachers so i can create a central and mastermind culture at another high school let me get 10 of those central teachers and say look that culture and central and mastermind we want you to put that at ben franklin we want you to put that at martin luther king right if the contract doesn't allow you

I would fight for stuff like that. And also the right to pay them. If I poach you, I have to pay you a little more. Would you be in favor of merit pay? We're sort of talking about that. If you're willing to go to a harder school, I think that's a merit pay issue. You should get paid more if you're a high quality teacher. It's going to get me in trouble. But absolutely, I believe in merit pay. And I believe in subject matter pay. There's no way in the world that an art teacher should get paid the same as a science teacher. And they're harder to find.

And science is your equivalent on a private sector will pay you a lot more. So I believe that we should pay commensurate to the skills that we're trying to build. You say that a number of times going to get you in trouble. You amaze me because you are in your position. And yet what you're saying, I think, is supported by huge numbers of people across Philadelphia that, you know, want some kind of turnaround here. Wanted to go back, Ryan Boyer, to

Your childhood growing up, you were able to go to Overbrook. And for people in this area, we get a sense that's a step up. It's some breathing space. And it's a ticket to a middle class life. And then from there, you're able to succeed. And you talked about your sons and what they've been able to do. Yes. Listen, once one generation gets out of poverty, there's very great likelihood that your family lineage will never see poverty again. Tomorrow,

My niece graduates from Elizabeth City College with a master's degree. That's my sister's daughter. Think about that. My father, a construction worker, took us out. Now, his grandkids are having advanced degrees, right? This is what the American dream is all about. And if we don't change this, the upward mobility, leaving out of class, we're becoming no better than India, Dom.

where you're born in a class and you die in that class. I'm trying to fight the status quo vigorously. The status quo in schools does not work. So we need a clarion caller with the courage to say, let's do it differently. I love teachers. This is not about teachers, bashing teachers, but we have to give kids an opportunity to learn. And right now, if we have to have choice, if that's the quickest way, we have to do it urgently. We don't, we can't do it the best way.

We probably wouldn't build it the way we are now, built in with inequities. But we have what we have, and we have tools to get us out of there through some school choice mechanisms. One immediate parting question for Ryan Boyer. We see the budget battle going on in Harrisburg now. It's not so much a battle. I mean, they seem to be around it. But a top Republican, the state treasurer, Stacey Garrity, told me, and I think she's pretty transparent, I thought she would deflect.

I said, what about school choice? Because the governor before had made some motions toward it, etc. of some sort. And she said, no, don't expect any school choice. This is the Republican side being that blatant. What's the problem there? You're inside with so many committees, so many different things. Why would it not even be that we get our foot in the water more? The problem is schools are so ingrained in property values, Don. Okay.

So now, if Philadelphians have school choice and they can move freely in the education, maybe people move back into Philadelphia and your tax base erodes from suburban or Republican areas. No one talks about the actual economy of schools, right? There is a difference of $35,000 between one side of City Line Avenue and the other, the same type of home, right? That $35,000 difference. And that was back,

seven years ago. So it may be 50, 60. I don't know. That's the cost of schools, Don. So now that we can really go around, I may get the cheaper home in Philadelphia. Because if I can live in Old Brook Park, Germantown, you can manage everything else. The big thing is schools, right? We're getting safe. We have a mayor that actually is backing up the police. The police are doing a great job. So Philadelphia is becoming a safer city.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I agree with you on that. Ryan, thank you. Thanks for being our initial person on this great national launch. You've been very kind with your time. Anything else that you'd like to add that I may have left out here in the Dom Dome? Well, you just left out that Philadelphia is one of the greatest cities in the world. Come and join us. Bring your money here. If you don't want to live here, at least visit here and be a Philadelphian like Dom Giordano. Thank you very much. Like Ryan Boyer, Mutual. Thank you, Ryan.

Thanks for joining us.

You just heard from Ryan Boyer, our initial interview here, of people through their own lives, their lives of the kids. And what they do, realize he is a big-time top-ten union leader in the country talking bluntly and openly about school choice. That is amazing stuff.

Now, one of the choices for school choice is this is National Charter Schools Week. So Brian Boyer just mentioned that with charter schools this week, that's a laboratory to try out different things. And if parents think they don't work, then we are off to another school. And that school fails, unlike the public schools that are a monopoly.

So we should at least see in Pennsylvania and across the country more and more attempts to make sure that charter schools have an opportunity. In Philadelphia, there are all kinds of blocks, restrictions and all that. I believe the mass charter schools, when I've had them on, told me they had 9,000 kids. They probably have 20,000 now on their waiting list. Why? Because there are parental rights. And that's what this show is about.

There is parental choice when you have these charter schools. So I salute this week here on old school, new school, next school, parental rights. And part of that, at least getting our toes in the water, would be charter schools. If you don't want to go full bore vouchers. By the way, in Pennsylvania, a new poll out, Center Square, says that support for school choice doesn't hinge on any political affiliation, age, ethnicity,

or 2024 presidential vote. Rather, across all demographics, as many as two-thirds of respondents support the concept of educational scholarships that offer state funding directly to families to fund private school tuition. Support for the policy reached as high as 56 percent among Democrats and Kamala Harris voters. Think about that for a moment. Among Democrats and Kamala Harris voters, 56 percent.

Ragnar Research Partners interviewed 800 likely voters in person in March. The results showed 84% of Republicans, 79% the important independents, and 56% of Democrats supported the data. At least two-thirds of voters in every region of the state also approve of the context. The polling results are crystal clear. Pennsylvania voters want expanded school choice.

about that to Democrats, but I have to say it to Republicans. I'm going to call it as I see it here, as they get into the budget battles here in Pennsylvania. Texas, big state, has gone with universal school choice. We'll get to that in the next podcast. But for now, Pennsylvania is the biggest swing state, one of the biggest states. Why are Republicans not pushing harder for some form of school choice?

in the budget negotiations with Governor Shapiro, as a national political figure, who says he supports this. We will see. We'll keep our eyes on this as it continues. But again, I'd like to thank Ryan Boyer, the head of the Building Trade Union. You heard that 40,000 workers for being our first guest here, and particularly during national charter school weeks. Let's at least push the charter school movement forward.

Exciting Things. He called them laboratories. That's exactly what they are.

But school choice is not about just academics. It's not about people are going to make more money. It is a moral choice. That's the theme of this show. The moral choice is every parent in America should have a choice about their child and that child's future.

America will be a much better place if parents, middle class, lower means, wherever they are, have more choices. Schools, the public schools will be better. They have to compete. All right, just a few things from this week. It's a big, big week here. We're excited to bring you each week big guests telling you their own personal story, the story of their families. And this man today, Ryan Boyer, is an all-star.

of All-Stars.

You may want to respond.

You may want to tell me something.

You may want to challenge me.

We're up for it.

My email, domshow at aol.com.

Domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at aol.com.

Thank you for listening.

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Dom Giordano, until next week, here on Old School, New School, Next School.

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