Businessman and philanthropist Jeff Yass details his plans to fund scholarships for 500 P…

Welcome to Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano, a podcast devoted to shedding light on issues pertaining to making America smart again. These include, among many topics, school choice and parental rights. This podcast is dedicated to reversing the deeply disturbing trend known as the dumbing down of America. Now, here's your host, Educator.

and noted talk media commentator, Dom Giordano.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's edition of Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano.

And boy, on the school choice front, almost at the one-year anniversary, there's been no bigger news than what's happened in the last week or so.

And that is that Kathy Hochul has signed off that she says New York, which is much more liberal than any number of states that are still outstanding, to the big, beautiful bill, all that free money. This could be billions of dollars, and it's estimated about 240,000 students over three years would get that school choice money, meaning the money would go to nonprofits set up for this purpose.

in New York, as with the other 31, 32 states at this point, and then parents would apply to them to get money to go to the school of their choice. Why is she doing this? Well, she's in a battle. She's running for office, and all kinds of metrics are out there saying that this is the type of thing that anybody seriously running for governor should do or any politician should support.

It is life-changing what's happening here with Hochul. But where I am in Pennsylvania, where you might be in Illinois, for example, with Pritzker, California with Newsom still, they have not moved an inch here. Josh Shapiro is the key one. And what this means is they are saying so far, well, Hochul doesn't know what she's talking about. They keep on talking about we have to study it more.

She was at a group for a Jewish day school education when she leaked this announcement out. They sent it out. So Hochul going down to this front is big, big news. Also this week, and I have a good follow up for this. It's very hopeful if you're on the school choice front, if you have kids, if you want to get your kids ultimately out of a bad situation.

Manhattan Institute event this week, big time conservative libertarian group. Jeff. Yes.

Is the biggest benefactor that I know of, of school choice, meaning supporting it with resources in a couple of different ways. One in Pennsylvania, despite what Josh Shapiro is doing, Wall Street Journal reports this morning, Thursday of this week, Pennsylvania's new education.

Hope, Jeff Yass and his wife have set up the Yass Prize. Founded by Susquehanna co-founder Jeff Yass and his wife, Dave Report, Janine, announced Wednesday it will fund scholarships for 500 Philadelphia children to attend private school. The need is pressing because the city plans to close 17 district schools in 2027 thanks to declining enrollment. The 4,000 or so students whose schools are closing

are eligible for the scholarships worth $8,000 a year through high school graduation. Scholarships are awarded first come first serve. Students can take the scholarships to some 16 private schools near Philadelphia that the ASPRIZE organization has recognized as innovative and promising. Those include Liguoria Academy, a high school that offers building trades training, and St. Francis de Sales, a Catholic elementary school.

So you notice it, it's not just academically in the sense of college oriented, building trade skills. And we had on the show, the very first guest on Old School, New School, Next School, Ryan Boyer, who is African-American, is the head of the building trades, 40,000 strong union members, Democrat, supporter of Josh Shapiro. And I constantly am trying to nudge him to nudge Josh Shapiro to do the right thing with this.

So it's a building trade school, for example, that the YAS people, and that might be a nod to Ryan Boyer, to ally with him to move Josh Shapiro to do this. Why won't Josh Shapiro do this? He's afraid of the teachers unions. He's a chameleon. He's trying to constantly figure some kind of lane out there that squeezes all sides. There's only one side here. These parents, and more importantly, their children.

So good for Jeff Yass. Here's Yass at this award dinner, big dinner in New York this week with the people around, as I said, a conservative think tank kind of. Here's what he said, not just about scholarship money, but listen to what he says about the $42,000, $42,000 a year New York is spending on each and every child.

If you took that money, you could go to school for $21,000

and put $21,000 into a secure account.

When that kid graduated, that kid would have over $300,000

to start a business, to do something with it,

to do whatever they want to further something

when they were done at the end of senior year in high school

or to go to college, whatever it might be.

Why can't Mondani and New York consider something like this?

because it flies in the face of their socialist dreams. So here's what Jeff Yass said at that awards dinner. New York City spends roughly $37 billion a year to educate about 850,000 kids. That's over $42,000 per child per year. And the results are abysmal. Two-thirds of fourth graders can't do math properly and almost three-quarters can't read at grade level.

We have to be an expert in fractions to know that is bad. Let's agree that the political reality is we cannot reduce the amount of public education spending at all. Fine. What can we do, Mr. Mayor, is tell every mom in New York City that the $42,000 currently spent on that terrible education is going to be her money. Here comes...

Here comes some more advanced mathematics, some more long division. We are going to give her half, 21,000. That's 42,000 divided by two. Every year she will receive that as a voucher for her child to attend whatever school she wants. We are going to take the other 21,000, put it in a real account, not a fictional Social Security account, for which her child is the sole beneficiary. If it returns a paltry 2% of the next 13 years,

That child will graduate high school with $300,000. Enough for college, trade school, or a down payment. Give $300,000 to a graduate who can do math and read and write, and adios affordability crisis. No more need for $30 million government grocery stores, free buses, or rent

This solution is such an obvious win for New York City mayors that I am confident that Mayor Mamdami will hear this talk and he will agree and he will change the policy.

business, go to college, whatever it might be. All right. That's why this show is so invaluable. That's why this show cuts right to the center of the action. Let's bring back in the guy who is the school choice evangelist, the guy who, in addition to Jeff Yass, is the guy freeing America's kids from these schools with these teachers unions that care nothing ultimately. Yeah, I'm not saying they were intentionally trying to,

not educate kids, but that's not the prime goal. The prime goal is power for adults, for teachers and for the teachers union. Let's bring in again, frequent guest, Corey DeAngelis here on Old School, New School, Next School. Hey, Corey, welcome back. And you hit a button on Twitter today saying this was not on your bingo card. It's suddenly New York of all states. What's Gavin Newsom next going to be out there on a show with you saying, Corey, you were right all along.

Randy Weingarten is going to have a party for Corey DeAngelis.

Yeah, you'd think Josh Shapiro would be able to beat Gavin Newsom or Kathy Hochul of New York on the issue of opting into the school choice program.

She, you know, on the campaign trail, Kathy Hochul of New York said that she supported lifting the charter school cap, but that's not really very groundbreaking.

And that wasn't like a big deal. But Josh Shapiro, when he was running for governor in 2022, said he supported private school choice with scholarships. And yet he still hasn't opted into the scholarship program. It's just a real head scratcher. But I do think, Dom, at some point, every single state's going to opt in. You think about the 21 drinking age. It didn't happen, you know, immediately. But after about four years, every state opted into 21 because it was tied to federal highway funding.

And similarly, with the school choice program, if you don't opt in, you're going to guarantee that charitable contributions are going to flow out of your state to get scholarships in Florida, Texas, and other red states. So I think that's why Jared Polis of Colorado and Kathy Hochul of New York both saw the writing on the wall. Jared Polis even called it a no-brainer decision because he sees how anybody can donate, but you can only get the scholarships if you opt in.

So you're leaving money on the table if you don't. And the numbers are staggering. The projections, Corey, it's not like 10 kids are going to get these scholarships. Billions of dollars. Yeah, billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of them over the three year period of time. So the economic argument at some point now, look, I really like Stacey Garrity and all, but we try to get them on instantly. I think their campaign's missing a boat. I know there are other issues they have with Shapiro. I'd be going down Broadway.

with this. I'd be at every one of these schools. And look, there's a diversity element to this, too, across the board. There's a lot of parents in the inner city that you tell them your kid can go to a safe school or cyber school or whatever. They're going to jump on the bandwagon. It's a manna from heaven. The Republicans have to jump on this more. We had Mike Johnson on, I think I may have told you, and he promised that this would be a priority. It's affordability on top of everything.

Exactly. Yeah, it's $1,700 a person. You can donate each year to get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit. So either the government's going to light that money on fire or you're going to be able to send it to a place like Ace Scholarships or otherwise, other scholarship-branding organizations where they can give that money to a kid to get a better opportunity. And, you know, I just looked up Pennsylvania earlier today. The Census Bureau shows Pennsylvania spending now over $27,000 a kid on average.

from the 2024 school year is probably higher now. It's the sixth highest state in the country when it comes to per student spending. And it's just abysmal, the outcomes. I mean, don't you think parents could do a little bit better job with that, even a fraction of that money, even if you gave them a third of that, you know, $10,000 per kid. Families know their children better. And the private school tuition is on average a lot less than $27,000 per kid.

students. So it's also about equality of opportunity.

You know, there's a lot of parents who can afford to pay for private school tuition.

But, you know, if you're being forced to send your kids to these public schools and you have to pay property taxes for them, it's really hard to pay twice.

So if the money followed the child, you'd have more of an equality of opportunity.

Well, as this gets in the news now, there's because they really now are having to dig in the teachers unions and others. I've come up with the 10 biggest lies, as I see it, about school choice. But you are the number one guy. So each guest that I have on, I'm going to write down theirs. What would you say the most either, you know, if we had you in a showdown with Randy Weingart, that's pay-per-view. What would happen there? She's better.

I think even you would say she's better than the Becky Pringle and some of these you know she's got she'll say anything too and she's got the gravitas of previous years with a believer her side what would she say what's the big lie that you think Randy would tell well there's a bunch of them but her main one and this is the only thing that they have left is they try to argue that it's that school choice steals money from the public schools and I respond by saying that no the the public schools steal money from the public schools

families and the school choice just returns the money to the hands of the rightful owners and if you want to go to the public school fine if you like your public school you can keep it for real this time but unlike with your doctor and what obama said but you can actually keep it and the public schools time and time again we have tons of evidence on this 27 of 30 of 30 studies find positive effects of school choice being a rising tide that lifts all boats because of competition so the public schools

up their game in response to that competition. And families are able to vote with their feet. And the money doesn't belong to the schools to begin with. It doesn't belong to the public or the private schools. It belongs to the parents and the kids. And so it should follow them to the school that works best for them. And if they think their public schools are so great, why are they so worried about a little bit of competition? Absolutely. Now, while all this is going on, you and a couple of others, but you're the main

You've hit upon the idea of helping teachers who feel they don't want to be part of the NEA, AFT, and the like, but they're kind of afraid to be out there on their own. How's that going, the numbers of teachers taking advantage of that? Yeah, there's now 14,700 teachers in the past year alone that have joined the Teacher Freedom Alliance after leaving their government union. And so they're sick of the politics in the classroom. They're sick of people

People like Randy making over half a million dollars a year. I mean, she just announced that she used her pension funds at the AFP to hold sway over Target to threaten them because they weren't coming out against immigration enforcement. That seems like a breach of fiduciary duties. It seems like it's illegal to me. And here you have Randy Weingarten telling the Target executives, hey, we own 7% of your stock and your pension funds.

You better think about coming out and protesting against immigration enforcement. I mean, first of all, stay in your lane, Randy Weingarten. Second of all, this seems pretty illegal to me. It's using mafia-like tactics, using pension funds. And they also passed a resolution at the AFT to boycott Target. That has nothing to do with education, Dom. And it's just crazy to me that she said that publicly.

And hopefully more teachers look at that and say, the heck with this.

I'm going to join the Teacher Freedom Alliance.

I don't have to send my money to Democrat politicians.

I don't have to send it to Randy, who's making the entire profession look like a clown show.

And they could be respected and they could feel confident and support their profession again and feel great about what they're doing.

And so the teacher Freedom Alliance also provides liability insurance for free. Donors are covering the cost. So if you're afraid of getting sued by the parents or the students, I understand those concerns. This provides up to $2 million of liability insurance in the teacher's name, whereas Randy Weingarten's insurance is only $1 million per teacher. And it's in the union's name, not the teacher's name. So you're even more protected than you are under Randy Weingarten's union. So that's why so many teachers are using.

The 25th anniversary of the

We're seeing stories today that Democrats are fracturing over this, meaning they either don't want to celebrate it or they want to try to diminish it. How about these two teacher giants? Do you have any sense of what they're saying about it? Yeah, I haven't really seen yet. They ran off to Blue Sky, by the way, Dom. We bullied them too much on X, and so they're in their echo chamber. And Randy Weingarten did have this book calling conservatives fascists.

Last year, they passed a resolution to declare President Trump a fascist. And in that same resolution, they misspelled the word fascism. You can't make this stuff up. Nicely played, yes. I mean, this is the central conclusion of critical race theory that they're trying to push into the schools. They want kids to hate their country. And so they're in a very – they're in a pickle, right, at the Democrat Party, which is heavily influenced by the teachers' union.

Becky Pringle still has an at-large position at the Democrat National Committee.

And Randy Weingarten left, I think, because the DNC was, to her, too moderate.

And I think she wanted to pull the party even more leftward.

They weren't listening to her, she said in her own words.

And so that was after 29 years of the DNC on the Rules Committee for over a decade.

And this is another reason why parents need to homeschool their kids, pull their kids out of the public school system. And teachers need to say, you know what, we're not seeing the money. It's going to the very top. It's going towards political activity. And Becky Pringle's union, less than 9% of their total funding goes towards representing teachers. So it's not really a teacher's union. It's a government school union and is protecting the status quo and the monopoly.

Not teachers

Absolutely

So where do we find you Corey

In all the pursuits

And your book too please

Yeah it's on

Get It All Tots

It's on Amazon

It's like 40% off right now

It's endorsed by Trump

It's endorsed by Secretary of War

Pete Hegseth and others

It's called The Parent Revolution

So get it now

And also you can follow me on

X at DeAngelisCorey

And you can check out my work

At the Heritage Foundation

It's heritage.org

Thanks Corey

Very much as always

And again

I agree with you

Kathy Hochul

Wow, we're moving here. Yep, not on my bingo card. More will come. All right, that is Corey DeAngelis. This is a great week. There's hope here on this front. I think by the time we get to July 4th, we're coming up on Memorial Day soon, we are going to see about 35 to 38 states committed to a revolution, a second American revolution. And that is having these parents and students

be able to maneuver through this and to get back to the basics of choice for their children. It's a great day here. If you like to send an email, reach me for anything here, just always go to domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com, domshow at AOL.com.

And thanks to this new program for these students in the Philadelphia area. Imagine building trade schools that Jeff Yass money. But also thanks to Dave McCormick, the senator in Pennsylvania and others who got the big, beautiful bill passed. We're on the way by July 4th, 250th anniversary. Will we see about 80 percent of America liberated? That's my prediction. I'll see you next week. Old school, new school, next school.

Old School, New School, Next School with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.