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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 this week, I'm holding a news article about our guest.

Sadly, though, it's dated June 11, 2024.

The Reverend Joshua G. Robertson, he and a consortium of other black ministers,

Headline Dozens of Black Pastors. As Shapiro to embrace school choice, that would be Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, national figure running for president, and he's running for governor at the same time, engaged in a big battle with Stacey Garrity, the state treasurer, and the education front is critical. So my point is that this goes back to June 11, 2024, the pastors still trying to get Shapiro to do the right thing.

the thing that he said he would do and actually give meaningful school choice in Pennsylvania.

And we're all the way up now into 2026 without that happening and no sign of it happening.

So without further ado, the Reverend Joshua G.

Robertson joins us, who we've spoken with before from Harrisburg, a guy who leads a consortium of ministers who are doing their own school choice program and reaching a lot of kids,

but certainly could use help from governor shapiro and the people in harrisburg pastor happy new

year it's always an honor to speak with you thanks for joining us today happy new year and thanks

for having me it's such an honor uh well when we spoke before i was very much impressed

a question sort sort of out of order here before i get to the crown act how much money do you have any

the governor would be able to sign off on under the big beautiful bill that would go to

nonprofits organizations like yours i would hope where people could access that and free their

child to a better environment how much would pennsylvania get do you have any idea it's 1700 per kid okay

um yes and that that would be it's a tax credit program 1700 per kid and that would and that's

The great thing about this bill is it's for all Americans. So it doesn't matter what school system the kid is in. This is really at the delegation of parents to use for the, you know, to really help their children as far as their educational plight. Now, they at least take your call, I think, when we've talked before, Pastor. Do you have any idea whether or not Josh Shapiro will sign that? It should be a no-brainer, right? It should be a no-brainer. And I think that absolutely.

He should. I haven't heard any rumors of him not signing it.

But, you know, you just never know.

I don't know if there's any political reason why not.

My concern with our governor, although I know he's well capable and he's very intelligent and articulate,

I don't know that he has the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in his heart as much as he has Pennsylvania Avenue.

And so, you know, I'm sometimes a little leery about, you know, what's his real motive.

And so I'm hoping that he will do it. And I believe that, like I said, he has, I believe he has every faculty to do it. But I just don't know. Don't don't know what's really in his heart right now. Now your piece in the Washington Post, which is a good territory to be in. You talked about the term blackwashing. You talked about the Crown Act, which, okay, there's discrimination there. We ought to address it. But the elephant in the room, so to speak, is what is happening in cities like

Harrisburg, where you are, Philadelphia, where I am. And the beat goes on and on and on. And we don't want to free kids up. The governor said that. Then he backed away. So tell me what you meant by blackwashing. Well, I mean, again, I feel like in one way he is looking for to remain in office and and giving the appearance that he is for all people and trying to help specifically people of color.

And, you know, I actually appreciate, you know, the Crown Act and the fact that people are not discriminated on on on any basis.

But when you have 250,000 children in Pennsylvania that are not at grade level in reading and math, you know, it's a national crisis, you know, it's a crisis in our state.

You know, what good is it if the child won't be discriminated once they get to the interview if they're if they can't fill out the application?

because they can't read and write. And so we have our priorities messed up. And that was the point of the article that the priorities should not be on, you know, being able to get your hair braided or dreaded. And I know what that's like as a person who experienced that myself. I know what it's like to feel that discrimination. But what's really important is that we help these children and these communities to educate our children better. That needs to be the focus. And so for me, it was a calling card to our governor to get his head in the right place.

Well, and you and the pastors are doing that. Explain to the listeners, and we've talked in the podcast, and I think on the air, a little bit more of what your gift is. What are you doing for children? What's the program? Absolutely. We have the Rock City Learning Center, but not just that. We have five learning centers across Pennsylvania now, and we are rescuing kids and utilizing our church spaces to do it. So we partner with education providers, and then we provide in-person care for virtual kids.

students. That's not the only model that we have. We also have a private Christian school. We support a charter school. But any pastors that are leveraging their church buildings for education, we want to partner with to help overcome this educational crisis we have in Pennsylvania. And so, you know, when we first started in 2023, it was really a black pastor, you know, united for education. But now it's black pastors and beyond, black, Hispanic, white, Asian, all throughout this country and all throughout this great state of Pennsylvania.

who are uniting and really taking on the mantle of the 21st century trustees of our children's future. And I believe that education is that cause of the 21st century and we're saving America. Absolutely. And, you know, if I might add, you shouldn't have to cobble all this together. It takes a lot of initiative what you've done to put this together. But having the resources, having this be facilitated more, and then you guys can concentrate on saving more

kids, particularly one of the pastors, I'm not sure if it was you or I think it was the Philadelphia pastor, I talked about with young males in the neighborhood not too far from me being a prime target to be rescued. Absolutely. When you look at, you know, in a community like I serve where my church is and in Philadelphia, and you look at how many young black males are, you know, involved in street drugs and gang activity,

And what we have to realize is when you don't get the right community,

which should be your churches, your D9 organizations, your community organizations,

your Boys and Girls Club, when you are not surrounded by that type of community,

there are alternative communities that steer children in the wrong direction.

So it's time for us as a community, as a church community, to step up to the plate.

And stepping up to the plate sometimes means having hard conversations with our lawmakers. The truth of the matter is I would love to talk to Governor Josh Shapiro without having to write an op-ed, but he doesn't seem very interested in talking to, you know, someone like myself, even though I'm in his state. And so for me is, you know, if we could talk about it and come up with mutual solutions, you know, things could be a lot different.

But I am not about to allow politics and all of that to get in front of our responsibility to serve people.

Well, the guy I'd like to have you have a conversation with, though, Shapiro, you played it out very well.

It's Matt Bradford. Do you know of him, Reverend? He's in my neck of the woods. He's the majority leader.

I have Garrity on. I have the head of the Senate.

Every one of them, almost unprompted, talks about the deal is, all right, Josh Shapiro's running for president. He'll go play ball with Bradford, and Bradford is the one standing in the schoolhouse door here, the Democrat majority leader in the House. Nothing can be done because this guy has the ability somehow to block a lot of this.

Well, I mean, all of that, to me, boils down to a political game. And to me, it's a bunch of excuses. And I know what that's like. I'm a pastor of a church. So I have people who are subordinate in my, you know, my church. And but at the end, at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. And excuses are tools of the incompetent. So, you know, when you have 250,000 children hemorrhaging in Pennsylvania, you know, I'm not I'm not down with the finger pointing.

The reality is we need our governor to have courageous, bold, transformational leadership, visionary leadership for the future. Our kids need him to make important decisions to get the right people around the table to make the important decisions and to put politics aside and put people first. That's what he was elected to do. And so, you know, I think if he would do that, just look at the polls. I mean, over 90 percent of black pollers want school choice. Over 80 percent of Hispanic pollers want school choice.

But let me ask you on that too. And you know, I'm not saying I'm just doing this to be rational. You know, I'm a conservative. But they don't vote on that, though. This should be the prime issue to vote on. If you oppose that, it's inexcusable. The success academies in New York, there's 59 of them, 22,000 students charter. They're number one in the state. And that's a pretty good sized school district. Number one in the state in math and number two in the state.

in reading. That's against some pretty high-powered school districts.

They are number one. So we know that this works. It's just a question of people have to vote on it.

I think people have to vote on it, but that's another piece of evidence that you're saying right now that our educational system is not working because people are not civically engaged and informed enough to understand the power of their vote.

That's my opinion. And so for me, I look at an African-American man who is independent and not tied to either party. But I look at the majority of the people who come from my community are by default Democrat. And because of that, I believe that the Democratic Party ignores the black vote once they get in office, then they do their own agenda and they don't consider the real interests of black or whoever else voted them in office.

I think that there are underlying agendas that are cascading as what people want, but it's not true.

And so I think if we had educational systems that would teach children how to rightly engage in the democratic system, then you have people who are voting based off of their ideals, their principles, the laws that they want to see,

versus voting by default to a party that doesn't carry and with integrity keep their interests at heart.

Now, do you, does your group or you individually, do you endorse saying the governor's race? And have you talked to Stacey Garrity yet?

No, no, we're a non-partisan organization, so we wouldn't do that.

Have you talked to Garrity, though? Has she talked to you?

No, no, not as of yet.

Well, I got to make that happen. I'm surprised because education in this race, I've spoken with her, had her on a dozen times, and we agree it's one of the top two or three issues. It's civil rights issue of our time. And I will try to make sure that she talks with you because I feel what you're doing obviously works at so many different levels. We just have to scale it up more.

Absolutely. And we are open to talking to any and all of our lawmakers because our job is to pray for them. Our job is to encourage them. But our job is also to tell them the uncomfortable truths to make sure that they are caring about the least of these. And so I think that if, you know, that's the job of pastors, that's the really the role of Black Lives Matter for Education. Absolutely. Where do we find you, Pastor? You can find us on all social media network as far as Instagram, Facebook,

Facebook, YouTube, BlackFastersUnitedForEducation, bpue.org is our website.

You can get more information there.

Appreciate it very much.

Happy New Year to be continued.

Thank you, Pastor.

Thank you so much.

Happy New Year to you and your family.

Blessings to you.

All right.

That's the Reverend Joshua G. Robertson.

And this guy is right on the cusp of this heated race for governor that has a lot to do with what's going on nationally.

Now, you know our mission here.

We see school choice as the solution to a lot of problems. But since people like Josh Shapiro and others are blocking school choice until we get there, wear them down, elect enough people like this governor's race, we have to deal with the day-to-day of trying to make America smart again. At one point in time, I'm not going to call it a golden age, kids did better in school by far than they do now. Case in point, let's go to Chicago.

We're going to have a guest on next week, Sean Thompson, who's a talk show host there. And he maintains, and I think he's right, that the Chicago Teachers Union is the worst among all these teachers unions. It's thuggish in their behavior. And the head of that union, Stacey Davis Gates, will now bring her education failures of the Chicago Teachers Union to Springfield, to the state level.

The Wall Street Journal says, Stacey Davis Gates, the Chicago teachers president, who's presided over the educational failures of Chicago public schools, has been elected to head the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Uh-oh. Bring those failures across the state. And the point being here, the Chicago teachers, with the president capturing Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela,

have had their signs printed up and they're all about stop this outrage in Venezuela. Release Maduro. Now think about this. What does the teachers union, particularly one where I believe 55 schools in Chicago don't have any students that are proficient in reading and math based on the statewide tests such as they are. Why are they engaged in this? Because the activists that head those unions are ideologues.

who engage in this versus the basics of reading, writing, math, that sort of thing.

That's why Chicago Teachers Union is incredibly bad.

They are a force in making America stupid, making America dumb.

They're succeeding at that.

And this number just out, I just got this week here on Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.

K-12 spending 2025 and bumping into 2026, the prediction is that spending across America, this is across America, this is a nugget for you to use whenever this debate comes up. And I'm going to next week be ready to break down what a trillion dollars is. The annual public school spending is now set in several sources at $1 trillion.

Not a billion. Not a hundred billion. Not a half a trillion. One trillion dollars. Now you're really getting into the big bucks. Is there anything else out there on which so much is spent with so little results? One trillion bucks. How much is a trillion? I'll give you some nuggets with that next week. I'm going to get some to break it down. In other words, stuff like if you stacked $100 bills,

on top of each other, how many times would you get to the moon and back? I bet a lot. One trillion dollars being spent with the paltry results that I've talked about. That is an embarrassment. It's a disgrace. It is just something that we have to rectify. So here's the proposition as we head into 2026 together. We want school choice coming into this. Two big things you should know. One, 18 states,

now have universal school choice. Even the Washington Post over the holidays commended that. Two, the Big Beautiful Bill takes effect, has taken effect now post-January 1st. Governors on their own will be able to decide whether to take that money under the Big Beautiful Bill and dispense it to nonprofits in their state, which parents then can activate and get that money so that their kids can go and have a decent chance.

All those things are the upside. The downside is we are still facing a lot of people who are not going to be able to take advantage in states across the country of this or get out of those schools, essentially. So what we have to do is we have to help parents take on that role with their kids. We have to continue to agitate against teachers unions like the Chicago

teachers unions that are just in it for the adults and the ideology of Nicholas Maduro. They care more about Nicholas Maduro than they do those suffering students in Chicago schools. Evidence. Look at the test scores. Look at how bad it is. Look at how much money they take in. And now that the head has been made the head of the Illinois teachers, I think she's in line to be the head of the NEA in the near future. And from what I know,

Becky Pringle, the head of the NEA, is certainly nothing to write home about.

This woman would be noticeably more aggressive and worse.

So two-pronged, get kids out of those schools as many as we can.

Two, fight for those that are in those schools in all the ways that we try to do on this show.

So thanks for listening in 2025, and thanks for being part of it in 2026.

Spread the word.

There's a lot of information here that can help parents. And next week, I will break down what a trillion dollars. Imagine a trillion dollars in school spending K-12. Not colleges, just K-12. Are you listening to Dom Giordano? You can hit me with an email. domshow at aol.com. And this is, each week proudly, Old School, New School, Next School.

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