Dom discusses what he calls "the public school mentality" and some of this year's anti-sc…

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 into Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.

And it's that time of the year where Spotify is my theme this week.

Boy, these guys and women do an unbelievable job of promotion just in the last couple of days or so.

Spotify is out there talking about your rapper.

In other words, the end of the year, what it is that you've listened to all year long, and people can't wait for this. It shocks them to a degree of what they've been listening to, and some of them even deny it. One politician running in New Jersey had stuff that was, he thought, inappropriate for Jersey. He tried to lie and say he was listening to Springsteen all year long. Well, what we're listening here, two things, two major goals this year, and thank you for being someone who's listened to the end of the year.

this year, our first year of old school, new school, next school. One, the remedy, the great remedy to a lot of what ills America. We're about making America smarter. And the thing that ills America is lack of school choice. That's what our year, and I'm going to tell you some of the people we've had, some of the things that are upcoming. It's not quite the end of the year, but I thought with Spotify, it's a good time to take a look at some of these.

One of the things I've talked about since I'm in Pennsylvania, but we've talked nationally about this, who are some of the forces that really impede making America smarter again? And anybody that is against school choice or goes after cyber charters or charters or whatever, they are the villain. They're one of the forces that's making America dumber every single day. Because when you have an inferior product, the public schools, by and large, across the country,

and you don't have any competition, you're going to get more of the same.

In Pennsylvania, the villain, and this guy truly is, I'm looking at a guy this week who had some female groups, some conservative female groups approach him because he keeps on in Harrisburg moving a bill, the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, from committee to committee just to keep the clock running on it.

Why would anyone tell Moms for Liberty, the Keystone Town Hall, and the conservative voice who are leading a full-court press to convince this Pennsylvania House Majority Leader, Matt Bradford, to allow bills—let's have the vote on it, Matt—to stop girls sports from having men or boys in them? Bradford, you see, is one of the biggest enemies of choice. He is the biggest proponent of the public schools.

And he, people believe, is a co-governor along with Governor Shapiro. Every big-time person I have on Politically in Pennsylvania says that. So I've tried to get this guy back on my radio show, but he is an impediment. I don't know who elects him. He's only a House member in Montgomery County, but he is the powerhouse, and he resists at all costs simple things like this.

this year of old school, new school, next school. Corey DeAngelis talks and sent me material on a teacher on a Zoom call who is the epitome of this monopoly of the public schools. This guy on the Zoom call says he doesn't get why these messengers of the Democrat Party don't get it. What they ought to be saying when it comes to males and female sports is, hey, we're not talking about the Olympics.

Olympics here are pro sports. That's one thing. We're just talking about in high school and kids playing volleyball in middle school. Can you imagine the insult to females, their parents, who have found one of the greatest inventions, if you will, innovations over the last 25 years, 30 years, has been the growth of female sports. The competition, the WNBA at the pro level, but all the way down.

We know it breeds leadership. It breeds fewer unplanned pregnancies, less drug use. We know all those things. Why would anyone want to die on that hill? But this guy's a teacher's union head, I'm trying to get him on, who thinks the Democrats ought to continue to message and say, hey, tell your girls, you're not a pro, you're not being paid. What difference does it make that you have to compete with a male who usually is a lot bigger,

and even faster. This is the insanity of public schools and public school unions. Not all. The problem is, what is our solution to this? Well, politically, I know what the solution is, but I also know what the solution is for parents to opt out of this system where their girl might have to endure this type of mentality. One other thing that caught my attention that's part of this public school mentality,

Somebody who's also been on the show this year, she's a brilliant educator, assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia over in the Garden State in New Jersey, produced a document where you have the New Jersey public school system, the entire state, what they want to make the metric of being someone labeled chronically absent, chronically absent, is if you make 50%

of the year, 50% out of 180 days, you should not be labeled chronically absent. Now, what is that about? Well, it's about school districts not wanting to label people chronically absent somehow or another. The reality is that they think it makes them look bad. Well, it's on the kid and the parent, don't you think? But how in the world do you have a system, in this case, New Jersey public schools at the top, wanting to say, if you just make

50%, 90 days out of the school year, then you're not chronically absent. My point is, it's the language games. It's the inside games that often go on with public schools. This happens to be in New Jersey, but I think it could be going on across the country in your school district also. Another guest on the show, Guy Shiraki, who is a brilliant commentator and writer, wrote his piece this week at Broad and Liberty,

If the Russians or the Chinese Communist Party wanted to take over and weaken America without firing a shot, they could focus on our children to slowly undermine and weaken our society. Then we couldn't compete economically and wouldn't think America is worth defending. A frightening number of our students aren't proficient in reading, math, writing. With science scores so bad, they sometimes aren't reported. Their knowledge of American history is so demonstrably bad, their ignorance and misunderstanding are embarrassing.

Why does this go on? Well, the biggest reason, again, we pointed out early in the show, old school, new school, next school, is the fact that we have this monopoly that continues to try to crush any breakout here that I'm talking about each week, which is school choice, charters, cyber charters, forming your own school, all those things.

And here's somebody I talked about this year that surprises people.

They have another story that makes me go after them, though.

Forbes magazine.

One show I spent at least 10 minutes talking about Forbes magazine attacking school choice.

Now, this is the ultimate choice, capitalism, freedom economically.

Well, Forbes, how do we have freedom economically if, as Guy Sharaki says, kids are so far behind in these public schools and we have no choice?

to get out of this.

If we want to make America smarter again, and that's what this show is devoted to.

Then here's one of their six top education stories for 2025.

So I've given you some of mine.

Forbes says the school debate, the school voucher shift.

They say after a period of explosive growth, school voucher advocates have found themselves

facing new resistance, notably from rural Republicans.

Forbes talks about Governor Greg Abbott and school vouchers, they say, have never been approved by the voters. That's why they've now shifted school voucher rhetoric has shifted deliberately from talk about freedom and choice to the language of the culture wars. No, buddy, I have not shifted. And Forbes magazine, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Think about this point for a moment. It's one thing when you see the big teachers unions or a politician like Matt Bradford,

here or some of the Jersey politicians catering to these teachers unions.

But when Forbes magazine attacks people for wanting freedom of choice and saying, no, rural Texas and Trump voters and all that are not about that.

Well, then this gives away their phoniness, their fraudulent nature.

I'm going to try to get them on.

They are all about, in the economic sector, freedom, freedom of choice.

Stop Government Regulation, all of which I agree with.

Well, when it comes to you making a choice with your kids or people you know,

Forbes magazine finds anything in the world to be against it.

It should shock people.

That's my job to find out what's really going on here as we attempt to make America smarter.

That's all that we're trying to do here.

Are we going to continue to make America smarter with the current public school system?

And you know what?

The Pittsburgh Public Schools and Pennsylvania's largest cyber charter school clash over a lawsuit. Pittsburgh Public Schools and three smaller districts accused Pennsylvania's largest cyber charter school, Commonwealth Charter Academy, of failing to provide adequate education to its students. Oh, wait a minute. Look at the record of the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Look at the Philadelphia Public Schools. Well, they have poverty.

They have challenges. Would anyone say, I know the Philadelphia public schools better? They are providing an adequate education to their students? Of course not. It's a joke. Yet, they're all about squashing the competition. They don't like that cyber charter public schools are a thing in Pennsylvania with tens of thousands of parents trusting them with their kids. One of the reasons, Pittsburgh public schools, that they do that, they're afraid of bullying at schools. They're afraid of safety in schools.

and getting the schools and having their child at home with the cyber charter as a backup, that allows them the peace of mind to deal with this at least part of the time. These public schools and the unions, they're great, are they not, at all out of tax on any threat to them out there, but not so good at doing their job. You know, we invite them on. I invite them on my radio show. They don't have to defend anything.

Matt Bradford in there. If somebody plotted to do what's done every day in America with all that money and the lack of public education being affected, we would go to war. We're not calling for a physical war. We're calling for an education of people to make America smarter. It's out there rather than throwing up our hands and accepting it. Another article from PennLive right next door to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania, because of the governor and this Matt Bradford guy, are at the center of this universe, headline Pennsylvania is losing the school choice race to its neighbors, Ohio and even West Virginia. I never knew West Virginia to be noted for their school districts, but they're noted for school choice versus Pennsylvania. And that brings us to Governor Josh Shapiro. Governor Josh Shapiro, I think, is among the top two candidates to be the presidential candidate, ultimately on the Democrat

He's running for governor again. And the media loves this guy. He has said all children are children of God, and they deserve the best. They deserve choice. And then he reneged on it under pressure from Matt Bradford. Well, the big, beautiful bill takes effect in just weeks, the Trump big, beautiful bill. In there, there are billions of dollars, money that can go for vouchers to private NGOs, nonprofits,

to be set up. Many governors are signing off on it. Shapiro still hasn't told us anything, and the media doesn't seem to press him. Doesn't he know by now? This is money that would not go to the public schools. We're spending at historic levels in the public schools in Pennsylvania. This would be money for parents who want to make a choice. Why is the media not pushing him, and why can't he tell us what his choice is? What magic crystal ball does he have to look at in January?

before we know that. I'm betting he's not going to take the money, and he's going to try to connive his way out of it. Again, not giving choice. You're not allowed to give choice. So be it Matt Bradford, Governor Shapiro, Forbes magazine. You see why the school districts, and again, Forbes magazine principle is, if you have a monopoly, you're not going to have a good outcome. And yet, they attack choice for parents up and down the road.

All right, I have a lot more as we continue the year together.

You want to send me an email?

Just go to domshow at aol.com, domshow at aol.com.

Got a lot more coming up in coming weeks, some great guests coming our way.

But remember, this show is about making America smarter.

And that means at every level, allowing people to have the best outcome, your kid in school,

and best school experience, like girls playing sports and not having to worry about males and not being told, well, you're not in the pros, honey. Suck it up. No, that's not going to go here. Send me that email, domshow at AOL.com. Please tell people about the show. Have a great week. Until next week, Dom Giordano on Old School, New School, Next School.

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