Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children.

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.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Old School, New School, Next School.

We have someone with us today with Dom Giordano as we continue to explore what happens next.

Are we on the side as we head back to school across much of America of choice, of school choice, the civil rights issue of our time?

And I'm looking at an article that appeared just recently that I clipped that gets right into our guest. It says the OBBB Act is one of the most significant shifts in education in decades. Bethany Mandel wrote this and she featured our guest Tommy Schultz, who is the American Federation for Children's CEO. And he agrees that this is incredibly significant.

So, you know, we seem to be on a roll here, Tommy. I've interviewed some of the biggest people in the country, even former Democrat, well, current Democrat, the former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island here on Old School, New School, Next School. He's trying to coach up Democrats to be part of the school choice movement. We kind of agreed it's tough sledding. But what is so significant? Give us some of the things that you see that have happened in the big, beautiful bill as it,

starts to sluice out all those resources. Sure. So I know as people were watching the news, they saw all these huge provisions within the legislation, the one big, beautiful bill that was signed by the president on July 4th. But one of the biggest things that hardly anyone is talking about other than, you know, maybe Senator Ted Cruz and frankly, one of the stickiest, most impactful policy issues at the personal level is school choice.

So essentially what the bill does is it creates a method for taxpayers to donate to scholarship groups. Now coming online in 2027 every single American could donate $1,700 to a local 501c3 scholarship group and they would get a 100% tax credit. So it's a little bit different than a deduction right so if you donate to a current scholarship group in America, let's say you donate $100 you might get your tax bill reduced by let's call it 20%.

$20. This would be a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your taxes, and every single person in America can donate $1,700 to a scholarship group, basically tax-free. So what does this do? This creates an absolute revolution in the way that we do education in America. And I'm so glad we're talking about it today because we need as many people in America to become aware of this. We need scholarship groups, schools, everybody to get their act together such that in 2027, we can raise tens of billions of dollars.

for school choice opportunities, especially for lower income families in America. So it was a quiet, you know, change the tax code, easy few sentences within the law. But really, this opens up the doors for millions of families to potentially get access to a better school for their sons and daughters. To that, I think guys like you on the inside were on the down low. And I commend that. I only found out about it through doing this show, even though I'm at a 50,000 watt radio station on top of everything we think, right?

I didn't know about this until a couple of Bernie's that you know I think you know some of these guys that recommended you to told me are you aware they're trying to move this through you know and the parliamentarian at the 11th hour jumped in otherwise the money just would be there I'm more excited and you seem to be too that the average person though can do this themselves and if your state rejects it there are going to be some governors who reject this apparently which we'll get into

You can do it to the next door state or some other state. You can do this through these nonprofits that will be there. This is exciting stuff. So behind you, we have this giant AFC. American Federation for Children seems pretty specific. But Tommy Schultz, what do you guys do? What's the mission statement? We are the nation's largest school choice advocacy organization. And we our mission statement is that we want all families, especially lower income families, to have the

the freedom to choose the best K-12 school for their children. And so we do this at the state level where we get involved in elections. We have a political entity that does election work both in Republican primaries, Democratic primaries, also general elections. And then we have our advocacy vehicle that does a lot of our legislative and lobbying work. And then our broader marketing implementation vehicle, which helps families become aware of these options. And now, why you probably didn't hear about this within the federal bill, this huge change that was made,

It was partly, as you mentioned, whittled down from a larger version that had passed the House. When it gets to the Senate, it's going through the reconciliation process. The 11th hour and then 11th hour and 59th minute, the parliamentarian was making changes or wanting certain things restructured. So this was a, it's definitely a little bit more of a limited version that we initially had wanted and what we were working on for the last nearly decade. But at the end of the day, all 50 states theoretically could get access to this.

within their own community, with every parent's community. As you sort of mentioned, though, there is a provision in the law that says governors or state legislatures have to opt in and submit a list of scholarship groups that are eligible within their state. Let's say, you know, like J.B. Pritzker in Illinois does not want to opt in.

Let's just say, yes. Hypothetically.

Leading candidate or one of the leading candidates for president. Let me ask you, running for president, why would you do that?

No. And here, so the only reason that he or others would do this and not want to allow for local 501c3s in their state to get all this federal, federal, essentially incentivized contributions is that they're just so in bed with the teachers unions, right? I mean, as we all know, the teachers unions contribute 99% of their war chest each year to the Democrats. This, you know, I know you probably talked to Jorge Loras, I'm guessing. What's really interesting about this bill, though, because every single taxpayer,

in California or Pennsylvania or Illinois has the ability to donate. There's no restriction there within the law. If your state doesn't opt in, what you're essentially saying is potentially billions of dollars from your local taxpayers is going to Texas or going to Florida. Why would you do that? And now that means you have to be so far gone in the pocket of the unions that you're just ignoring the fact that millions of kids in your local communities, you're bringing private money off the sidelines to help these children. And yet you're just so entrenched in the

in the teachers' union's pockets that you got to say, I don't want local scholarship groups to benefit. It would just be absolutely abhorrent. Now, Pritzker is the only governor in America that essentially killed a school choice program in recent memory. He kicked essentially more than 10,000 kids out of the school that they love and back into the public schools that they didn't want to go to. And so I wouldn't put it past him to do it. But I think any other governor, they actually have this sort of new permission structure in the Democrat Party to say, look, it's free money. Every taxpayer in our state is able to do it.

Why not benefit? I mean, it almost reduces the kind of political wall that they would otherwise have to jump over in a, let's call it a state level school choice program. I think that there's going to be a low and I already heard rumblings from a couple confirmed sources that have talked to some Democratic governors. They want to opt in, they're trying to figure out ways to make it more favor public schools in some sense, but there's only really limited ways to do that through a scholarship entity, essentially. But the bill does

It does allow for tutoring, more computers, more of that. I think they have to, Jorge is consulting with Democrats. They need to consult with a guy like you to say, look, here's how you can pitch this. It will not take away a dime from the public schools. And as you said, Tommy, as I understand it, potentially give a little bit more, but it's just the whole idea of how big this is. Now, usually I interview a guest every week.

I think this is interview 13 lucky 13 with you I would tell great things yet I did my own manifesto I waited till I collected all of these voices one Democrat one a union leader of the building trades in Philadelphia Ryan Boyer who is 40,000 members Democrat Philadelphia and he said he would be a hypocrite because his parents lied about his address when he was a kid in order to go to a better school if he didn't go

on board with this.

So in my manifesto, I touch any number of these points and got more fired up.

And here's what I wanted to tell you and get your take on this.

You seem like a Reagan-esque type of figure, the sunny opposite.

I'm seeing if we're going to turn to you even more anger with this.

Forbes magazine, I held up this piece.

The first thing to Forbes, Capitalist magazine was against this, at least one of their

who said, well, these parents are unable by and large to make these weighty type of decisions for their kids.

Now, I just did a my radio show today on talk radio 1210 in Philadelphia.

We had on the Commonwealth Foundation who do great work.

They said in the Pittsburgh schools, 89 percent of those schools have been in judged perpetually dangerous.

89% in Philadelphia was about 78%. What do we say when a Forbes, and they didn't put somebody on the other side, they just publishes columnists with these six points, you work with these families, unable to make these weighty decisions, they won't be able to figure out these schools.

Well, I think if you take it to the premise of what they're talking about, I mean, it's just discrimination, right?

They're just saying that we believe that lower income families or often minorities just are not capable of making proper decisions for their sons and daughters. I fundamentally disagree with that premise, obviously. I believe that every kid can learn, every kid can thrive if they're given the chance. But the way that we have designed our education system has been around this notion of your zip code. The last five digits of your home address have arbitrarily determined your child's education destiny.

families that have just lost hope, right? Because if they know whether you're talking about Philadelphia or Baltimore or Memphis or Detroit, if every school that your kid is going to go to has been deemed bottom 5%, you know, failing school or, you know, chronically dangerous from elementary to middle to high school, and otherwise you either have to move or you've got to pay tuition to get out of it and you just, you're in this death cycle of poverty, right? So we've essentially instituted generational poverty through our public education system by the way that we've designed it.

Now, what school choice does and what this federal piece of legislation will do is it will open up the doors for all of these families, like we are seeing in Florida or Arizona or Ohio or Indiana, where you have all of these lower income families that are now getting that golden proverbial ticket out of poverty for their children. It's ending generational poverty. We have people on our staff that went through these programs that had these exact same stories of deep poverty, trauma in the family, but they got to go to that private school or the different school that just better met their

needs. And suddenly they've just broken that cycle. This is what can happen. And there's great gold standard research that has come out now from Florida and Ohio from David Figlio that's showing these incredible output results for lower income kids, especially black men, black boys who are the ones who are doing the worst in the public school system. You know, on average, maybe 13% of them can do reading and math at grade level. And suddenly the Florida and Ohio voucher programs are able to double, triple,

their output. It's really incredible. And I think school choice, as you mentioned earlier in the interview, is the civil rights issue of our time. Condi Rice has said that. Tim Scott has said that. And why is that? Again, because you're fundamentally going to the heart of what is really creating and sustaining poverty in this country. And school choice is going to open up so many doors. And I think a lot of Democrats will get on board over time as they're seeing that, well, this federal opportunity is here to open up these doors. Why not do it? And why not just

just allow us to avoid this notion that there's the difference in the wall between public and private. Why don't we just take the approach that these are all of our kids? Our education system is in crisis and has been for 30, 40 years. We have to put a, you know, we have to put every single boot on the ground that we can to tackle this problem. And this is doing that through school choice. Well, Tommy, I would say if one of them running for president in 2028 on the Democrat side sees what we're talking about here as the golden opportunity.

to distinguish and they get some traction.

Then I think we might see a breakthrough.

Getting ready for this, for listeners to talk with Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children.

I see why you're successful.

You were a three-time All-America trap shooter.

So you're throwing up these things in the air and inch by inch.

Is that true?

Three-time All-America trap shooter.

Yeah, gosh, it was about 20 years ago at this point when I was in high school.

But yeah, competing and trap shooting, there's a lot of clay targets that we took down in that era.

Okay. Well, also, I saw this figure somewhere here, too, in getting ready to talk with you.

And that is there are 700, and this is the guesstimate, 702,000 kids in school choice programs nationwide, not private schools or whatever.

That dwarfs that number. That seemed pretty small to me, that number of a little over 700,000.

And this could be a real infusion to put a lot more into that. Is that about it in school choice programs? Those numbers are a little dated. So if you, the prediction that we have for this upcoming school year is that there's going to be north of, you know, basically 1.5 million kids going to a private school with one of these scholarship programs. If you add in charter schools, that adds in nearly, you know, almost 4 million additional kids. But really, the private school choice program growth has been astounding. So yes, about right a bit,

at the outbreak of the pandemic, you had about, you know, five, six hundred thousand kids that were going to a private school of their choice. Since the pandemic, though, I mean, 29 different states have passed a law expanding their school choice programs. Florida and others, you know, more than a dozen of them have said every single kid is eligible. And about half of them have said every single kid will also be funded if they want it. So there has been a huge explosion, hockey stick graph the last four years, partly a reaction to the union antics of COVID, right?

Where in some places they kept schools closed for nearly two years. Right. I mean, just criminal, you know, things that they did with the CDC on that. So as I said, I meant that as a compliment. Certainly you have a drive in intensity. You've got a major organization, but you have this sunny side of yourself here to take this on. How do we take on the teachers unions? I had an interview for the show scheduled with Becky Pringle until somebody there apparently Googled.

And suddenly, unavailable for the next millennium, Randy Weingarten is probably coming on. She has a new book. Their emphasis this year is not reading and writing, but Weingarten has a book, Fascism. And Becky Pringle at their July confine for the NEA said, Fascism is the word of the year. That's where they're going. How do we break through in your day-to-day the power of these teachers unions? A guy like Pritzker, you're not.

I mean, there's some that just have made, they've charted their course, that's where they're going to go. How do we lessen that power? You mentioned what your group does. Is it lobbying, resources against them? What is it to lessen that? Well, what you're seeing, I give another example from Florida. Florida's been on the leading edge of the school choice movement, expanding more rapidly than any other state year over year the last 20 years. What's really interesting is, guess who is the most likely demographic of, you know,

a person or individual who is going to start a new private school in Florida. It is a former public school teacher, right? You look at the fact that the law in Florida allows for new schools to grow. There's good per pupil funding attached. Suddenly, all these public school teachers who the average lifespan of a teacher, Dom, most people don't know this, but the average lifespan of a public school teacher is about three years, and then they're gone from the classroom.

It's like an NFL football player. I'm a former public school teacher, and I can tell you, you get worn down. It's like a two-and-a-half-year shelf life of an NFL player. That's right. I mean, running backs, right? And they're getting blasted in the head. And you think about it, though, when you talk to any teacher, and I mean, most people have a teacher in their family who's left the classroom. What have they all said? They're like, look, I was pressured to go into administration. I wanted to stay in the classroom. They told me I couldn't make money there. It's why you've seen, you know, doubling of the administrative kind of

jobs within the schooling system. And why is all of that? And why don't the unions actually care about keeping our best teachers in the classroom? Because teachers unions is actually a bit of a misnomer. They will take any warm body in the public education system to be a dues paying member. So for them, if it's a bureaucrat or a they'll organize graduate students, you know, PhD students at colleges, they just want dues paying members. It's all about the money for them. Because if they're getting $1,000 for every single new, you know, person in the

the public school system, it's why you're always seeing them lobby for, oh, we need more school counselors. We need more X, Y, or Z, you know, support staff. Whereas again, it's like, let's get the focus back on teachers or let's think about kind of the front and center role that they should play. And actually that's where you're seeing in Florida, you know, they've actually almost decertified the Miami-Dade union because their teachers union levels of membership had dropped so low last year. You're starting to see the union kind of foundation crumble because again, it's really this

jobs protections program, their worst teachers they'll protect. And actually, you'll see these outrageous contracts get leaked that like from Chicago, it said you could show up drunk six times on the job before you get the reprimand, right? I mean, all these outrageous things they do to keep as many warm bodies paying dues into their coffers to fund their $3 billion a year war chest that they deploy. That's what their whole game plan is about. Whereas our whole game plan is how do we put children front and center? What gives them the best outcomes? Public, private, charter, you name it. That's what we need to be focused on.

So I have a sunny disposition because we're winning and the more that parents hear our message, the more they join forces with us. But the unions pre-COVID for so long were able to control the narrative with the media, throw the wool over the parents' eyes. But suddenly when COVID really brought parents front and center into this discussion, they really understood how political this system was and they understood that there's a better path forward and that's through school choice policies.

Yeah, absolutely. What would you say? We've talked about the big, beautiful bill that will be kicking in in the next year, not this year. What else is happening out there that is interesting? You're the guy with the biggest wrinkle on this around any parameter of this. Is it I'm fascinated by charter schools. I'm trying to track Jalen Rose, who played in the NBA and then was a sports guy. Charter school founder. Yeah.

He's a charter school founder.

Yeah.

Do you have information?

Could you be good enough if you have my email?

Yeah, Tommy, I'm serious.

Right here during the podcast.

Put me in touch with Jalen Rose.

We need to get guys like that out there.

As you said, former public school teachers are the face of it in Florida.

When people see that, they go, wow, Jalen Rose.

I mean, mutual.

You have everybody from Jalen Rose, Andre Agassi.

I mean, there's dozens and dozens of former.

Wait a minute.

Oh, you've got dozens and dozens of former athletes who either started or helped found, you know, really great charter schools. And some of them put a twist on it, you know, an athletics kind of focus division. But at the end of the day, too, I think what's going to be what I think is really interesting to your main question, and why I think we're entering the golden age of education in America, is that you have fundamentally more and more resources or capabilities to build out private schools, charter schools,

are great, but over the last 20 years, they've become so overregulated, partly because the unions are pushing for regulation after regulation upon them that if you wanted to start a charter school in California, I mean, the bookshelf behind me is probably the size of the regulation packet that they give you. And you got to find all sorts of capital to do it. Whereas now, again, teachers can start a micro school with 10 kids in a place like Florida or elsewhere and potentially be bringing in six figures of revenue. I mean, that's a business model all

and it's going to be so highly personalized. You're going to see

all these little revolutions that are going to be really supported with this foundation of student-centered funding policies, which is what school choice is, right? It's just putting funding in the hands of parents rather than the teachers unions or the bureaucrats. And essentially, when parents are in charge, rather than those bureaucrats, they're going to make way better decisions for their kids. And so that's where it's going to be so exciting. You've seen, you know, Texas, where we are headquartered here in Dallas, we just passed the largest school choice program at the state level in history. That comes online next year. It's going to be a billion dollars.

in new funding for school choice. It's also going to allow for homeschoolers to get access to funding. That's another interesting revolution that you've seen homeschooling rates since COVID essentially triple. And so now families are able to actually access scholarship funding for their homeschool expenses versus paying purely out of pocket. So all of these interesting things are going to lead to amazing innovations and revolutions within our K-12 system writ large. And I think we'll finally be able to get back on top of the national rankings after staying stagnant in the 30s and 40s.

in terms of the global rankings for the last 30 years. Well, Tommy, I might add, you know, the ones that take it to heart, the public schools and realize they're going to have to get better, too. I mean, some of them totally some of them will dig in and continue to fight the last survivors. Becky Pringle will still won't come on the show 10 years from now, but other public schools will take it up a notch because competition is always going to do that in one way or another. Right. And look, here's I mean, you could ask Becky or Randy if they

or get onto your show, you know, you have public school buildings all across the country that are unused, underutilized. And in some places like some of the worst districts where you might have, you know, staff to student ratio of, you know, like 20 to one, right? I mean, just crazy numbers where, you know, essentially you have empty buildings that could be converted to a charter school or to a private school or some other public use education facility, and they won't open the doors. They'll keep them closed. They would rather not let that real estate go to a competitor, quote unquote,

or allow that real estate, these public schools that we're all paying for, that we took out bonds for, etc. They'd rather keep those things closed from innovation or any sort of new person, new entrant, new entrepreneur coming in to do better with that public school building. That goes to the sinister heart of their political agenda, that it's all about money and power and control for them. It's not about what is best for students. Randy's new book, I find it funny that she found time to write a book, but I guess if she spent two years

years keeping schools closed. I mean, she had a little more free time than anyone else in America. So that is the highlight line. Sure. I'll put have her, you know, I can slap that on her dust jacket if she wants me to give her a quote. But yeah, it goes in the nature of what they are a political beast. They do not care about the educational outcomes for students. Their actions just show that at every step of the way. And my hope is that more and more people just start to see them as anathema. They want to abandon them. They don't want to take their money.

They want to actually just say, we're going to go all in on this parent-centered model. Because parents, they're the really the strongest interest group in America, right? And we should all be behind them. The unions themselves, I mean, this $3 billion creature from essentially, you know, the middle of the last century, their time has come and gone. Absolutely. Tommy, where do people go for your organization? Where do they find you? Sure. SchoolChoiceNow.org. You can find us on social media at SchoolChoiceNow.

And we'll be putting out more and more content about this federal legislation, how to make sure that you're eligible, you're qualified, how you make your contributions, how schools can get involved. That's going to be a huge opportunity for every single state. So more to come. And I'd be happy to come on another time to give you all the good updates. Oh, we will do that. But tell Jaywin Rose, if you have a contact, I'm coming. I don't think I am being in basketball anymore. And Andre, I can see. Wow. That just tells you that to me,

The innovation, the type of stuff that's happening out there is revolutionary. And again, I admire you are speaking truth to this, but you still have that fun way about it. So have you ever debated Pringle or Randy Weingarten or back and forth a little bit? I would love to. News Nation had me on with somebody and they said, hey, we have to, you know, it was going to be a separate interview, but we'd rather combine. And I said, sure, I'd love that. And the other person bailed that minute.

So I've never been able to sit down with them. It'd be a fun one.

Absolutely. Tommy, thank you. We will definitely get you back in the near future. And I mean that if you have contacts, send that to me for those guys and we'll follow up. And good luck with this. We'll keep you on our list and get you on my radio show in Philadelphia. Thank you, Tommy, very much.

A lot of fun, Dom. Yep, we'll get you. I'll try to get you in touch with Jalen's team and any other athlete that has started a school.

Anybody out there. All right. More than athletes. This is Philadelphia. We won't boo them.

Thank you. Bye-bye. Thanks very much. That's Tommy Schultz. That guy can teach me trap shooting anytime that he wants. Did you hear some of those names that he talked about in addition to the good news he's bringing us that have found charter schools? Apparently, Stephen A. Smith may be involved. Pitbull in Florida. Andre Agassi. Jalen Rose. Wow. You can start a pretty good basketball, tennis, ESPN.

And with that, that's what's happening in America. That's why this show's on the cutting edge, bringing you people like Tommy Schultz. Send me an email. Tell me what you'd like to hear. Give me some criticism or approval of what you have heard on Old School, New School, Next School. My email is domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, at AOL.com, domshow, at AOL.com. I'll see you next week with another big program on Old School, New School, Next School.

Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.