Pastor Joshua Robertson Challenges Pennsylvania Democrats

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.

Hey, everyone. Welcome into Old School, New School, Next School.

This is a July 4th special. Dom Giordano with you.

And boy, what a week to talk about why I live in Philadelphia.

The cradle of freedom, 250 years of America.

And what did Democrats do last week?

Democrats in a weird, the last 10 days in Pennsylvania,

a big swing state. They regressed back to the bad old days against school choice.

You know by now, if you listen to the show, that across America, we're energized, gathering numbers of states somewhere in the mid-30s plus have said yes to the big, beautiful bill and that free money that will be coming for school choice.

These Democrats in Pennsylvania attack school choice for poor kids.

A 25-year scholarship program that works big time with 100,000 kids out of the blue affected.

All in the name of what? The teachers unions. That's what's behind this.

Here's a headline at Real Clear Politics. In the cradle of liberty, education freedom should be the default.

It's not the default position with these Democrats in Pennsylvania.

So, an old friend, the Reverend Joshua Robertson, the head of the Rock Church African-American pastor in Harrisburg, which is very hard hit by bad education system, and he's the founder of these Black Pastors United for Education nationwide. He took the gloves off. He wrote a piece accusing these Democrats, any number of them,

are also African-American, of racism, of the low expectations of racism, of blocking poor kids of color. So without further ado, let's welcome back to see where this charge of racism goes, a powerhouse and becoming a powerhouse nationwide. Let's bring back to old school, new school, next school, the Reverend Joshua Robertson. Reverend, welcome in and thanks for joining today.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate the time to explain what I mean by that. Absolutely. So you're not a guy based upon previous conversations that says that willy-nilly. So this seems to affect the arguments we've been hearing here. A lot of white people, their kids in the Philadelphia area. And there are a number of people that are heavily involved in this. One is Latino. She's the driver.

of it, I guess. So in what sense could it be racist?

I think for me, I don't use that word lightly. And if you've tracked my advocacy, I usually don't say anything relating to racism. And I don't say that our public schools are failing. I say underperforming. But I'm getting to a point now where when you have this

This gross attempt to harm specifically low-income, particularly black and brown children, this just looks malicious. In Pennsylvania, the state budget allocates $17.7 billion a year to public schools. Meanwhile, the funding for K-12, the tax credit scholarship program, is $575 million.

is slightly more than 1% of the overall education spending. And we're talking about putting a tax scholarship program that impacts and helps the least of these. And it does it in comparison to what we spend in Pennsylvania for education. It does it at a minimal level. When you look at public education,

State Funding for Public Education has increased $7.2 billion in the last 10 years, reaching an all-time high of $17.7 billion in 2025-2026. And this current budget projection earmarks $18.7 billion to public education. And so here's what I'm saying. If the taxpayers in Pennsylvania have continuously raised the bar and been able to raise the levels,

and we've been funding education and increasing the funding of education.

Why would we now, given the NAEP scores that show that in Pennsylvania, 20% of Harrisburg students are proficient in reading and 11% are proficient in math.

In Philadelphia, 34% of students are proficient in reading and 19% proficient in math.

We have abysmal testing scores.

Why would we be not fully investing into tax credit scholarship programs like we have now, as well as making the investment in the public education? So for me, the notion of cutting this funding is, I can't call it anything other than there must be a racist intent to hinder a group of people or to keep a group of people stagnant. And I don't think that stagnancy is even what's happening.

I think that things are getting perpetually worse.

Well, let me ask you, though, but there's the Black Caucus.

Education is parenting.

Every one of the Black Caucus, as far as I know, one who's even a friend.

I can't even talk to them about this.

This is so miserable, mean, diabolical.

Matt Bradford's one of my personal antagonists, reverence.

So Black people voting for this, though, why would they vote for something that ends up being racial or racist?

Well, here's the thing. I really feel like that black people, more and more black people who I'm speaking to, and specifically among the clergy, are realizing that our politicians lie to us. And when I say lie, I mean lie is the intent to deceive. Because even someone like Matt Bradford, who, you know, in the Pennsylvania Inquirer today, he will make it seem like he's a public school, or excuse me,

that he's a school choice advocate. And really what he's doing is vying for what I believe is a political vire for his background or his backing, which is ultimately the teachers union. Yes. And I don't know if the teachers union and teachers feel the same. I have a teacher who I am very close to in the Harrisburg school district, very close to. And she's communicated to me that if it wasn't for the fact that it will be,

It would be career suicide. She would come out and talk about how her opinions about choice are so different from the union's opinion about choice. And she wishes she didn't have to pay her dues to her union, given their political stance against choice. And that's what I think Matt Bradford, ultimately what he's trying to do is play the middle of the road and trying to show that he's for, you know, all of Pennsylvania students when in reality he's, you know,

He is beholden to the teachers union. And I think he's one of the greatest oppositions to school choice right now. And so this is diabolical. And for me, I am willing to explore any and all options. And if I have to call it racism, I'll have to call it racism. But I can't see no other reason why somebody would fight against a tax scholarship program for black and brown children in America.

One of the words you use in here, I underline all the time, and Ryan Boyer is a good guy, the head of the building trades, and first interview for my podcast was with him. He goes against the core, and he says urgency's got to be the word, and you emphasize that. Kid shot just getting off the school bus in Harrisburg, and the best way out of all this to lift everybody as best we can would be education. Not five years from now, not ten years from now. It's got to be immediate starting now.

Absolutely.

Like for me, like, you know, I'm tired of doing funerals.

Like I'm tired of grandmothers coming to my church and saying,

Pastor, is there any other way?

I don't want my kid going to that jungle.

I don't want my kid going to that prison yard.

I don't want my kid going to that circus.

That's the way that parents and grandparents and guardians talk about our current public schools. There's a fight every single day. I have a member of my church who's a probation officer at the local high school. She says there's a fight every single day at the local school. Every single day. That's traumatic. And so for me, for people who have been entrusted in these elected positions to choose politics over people, to choose profits over people, to choose, you know, these policies that can injure

over 100,000 Pennsylvanians is a crime. Right now, the tax scholarship program in Pennsylvania has a reach of over 101,000 low-income students annually with a waiting list of 69,000, and we're talking about cutting those funds. To me, I can't see that as anything other than potentially being racist.

Ms. Rivera, Bradford, and others say all this is to you and me and others that are advocates is they want an accounting. She's one of the people that says this the most. Where's all that money go? How do we know it's not going to a bunch of white people in private schools who are rich? What's your counter to that? Well, here's the thing. People who are rich already have choice. The question isn't about the rich. The question is about the least of these. The question is about the

I think it's a single mother who's raising her four children who have very different needs and only having one location to send their kids for education and that one location is not suited to give all four kids the proper education and there's other educational opportunities within miles away but accessibility is undermined because of affordability. We're in America. We should be Americans. We live in a country that can properly educate every student but that only happens if we put parents

in the driver's seat and expect us to get justice.

And you say that as someone who I hope listeners remember has been on before,

who's deeply involved in your own efforts to scale that up along with the other reverence.

Give us an idea of that. Do you receive any of the scholarship money?

What would be needed to help you scale up what you're doing right now?

Well, here's the thing. The EITC program is an opportunity for education entrepreneurs to, you know, create educational opportunities and nontraditional ways in order to help our children. And so, yes, my organization, we're looking to leverage those EITC provisions.

And we are looking to help churches

to leverage those EITC, federal tax scholarship programs,

state tax scholarship programs.

All of these programs should be used.

Given the crisis that we have,

we should be accelerating opportunities

and accelerating educational opportunities.

Like I think about the current Opportunity Knocks scholarship

in Philadelphia right now for the 17 schools that are closing.

There are 17 schools that are closing in Philadelphia,

and there's a scholarship program. There should be pastors, community leaders, fraternity, sorority leaders filling the pipeline with children to get into these educational opportunities. We have an opportunity, but we also have a gross concern. The gross concern education is failing in America, but we have an opportunity to fix it. I know you and a minister that you introduced me to in my neighborhood, Germantown, around due to our conversation for the podcast.

Are some of these ministers afraid to be that pipeline, the ass money you talked about, etc.? It's unbelievable. You can go to a father judge, these other schools in our area, through your high school years. I mean, it is like winning the lottery to thousands, well, maybe hundreds at least, of students. Are they in sync with you? I mean, do you converse with them? Is there a sense, well, I can only go so far with this because

Democrats are supportive in other ways.

Well, here's the thing. I think that more and more pastors, there's a pastor that I know, a very renowned pastor in Texas that I know, who said something very key. And here's what I would tell you. He said, once he found out, after we gave him the proper information concerning the Texas Education Federal Scholarship Program, we gave him the proper information, documented information,

And he said, man, this is completely different from what my local lawmaker told me. Why are they lying to me? And here's what I'm going to tell you. I believe more and more pastors are waking up and seeing that a lot of our local lawmakers, what they do to stay in office is they give us the rhetoric of freedom. They give us the rhetoric of upward mobility. That's what they run on. But then they get in office and they vote against programs that could actually do that.

that could actually help our communities.

They either want to make black people and brown people dependent upon the government,

or they want to just take advantage of our vote and just have us vote for them by default.

And I think pastors are waking up to this.

Pastors are seeing that what politicians are saying isn't checking out,

and pastors are coming to the table more and more, what I'm seeing,

willing to fight and to stand up against, you know, these policies that would take precious resources away from our children. Absolutely. Pastor, thank you very much. As always, where do we find the Reverend Joshua Robertson? Yes, you can find me on all social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Black Pastors United for Education. You can find us there. Thank you, Pastor, very much to be continued. Okay, sounds good. All right, that's the Reverend Joshua Robertson.

making the case of how severe this is. Just give you one stat about this whole thing we just talked about. In 2023-2024, more than 100,000 K-12 scholarships were awarded through the ETIC that we talked about. But families submitted more than 170,000 applications that year. This means around 70,000 scholarship applications were turned away.

In other words, these are very popular with Pennsylvania families. So Democrats, beware. You heard the Reverend Joshua Robertson. Could they debate this guy? Why won't they debate him? Let's have a debate right here on this podcast. The guy we talked about, this big mouth guy from Norristown, Matt Bradford. I'd love to see him tell Joshua Robertson why school choice is not the answer.

The Harrisburg Public Schools are a failure. 11% proficiency in math. You heard the reverber. School shooting right off a bus. Kid killed right there just recently. What is the answer to that? What's the teachers' union's answer to that? Well, maybe 20 years from now, things will be better. No, this is July 4th weekend. 250 in America. And America is about anything. It's about freedom. And it's about opportunity.

Big Time. And it's also about that word choice. These words have meaning. These words have power, particularly for parents and kids, sometimes poor kids, in very bad zip codes. And as we often hear from progressives, your zip code shouldn't determine your destiny. And in America, it doesn't have to. And we're in the business of making sure it doesn't have to.

Watch how this attack backfires. It's already starting to backfire. Watch how this plays out in upcoming political battles, because a lot of this is, sadly, politics. Everybody should be behind these EITC, and everybody nationally should be behind the big, beautiful bill. I'm convinced someone like Pritzker in Illinois, ultimately, is going to bail on a lot of these Democrats and is going to go for it to open up the

up a lane here. I don't think Josh Shapiro would. He's too much of a chameleon.

One of them is, and then we're really going to see an interesting debate.

Well, we'll be here each and every week. Tell people about it. Old school, new school, next school.

Bringing you people like Joshua Robertson, prime person. You're going to hear about this guy nationally in coming years. Right in the center of the action.

Send me an email. Domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W, at AOL.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Domshow1210. Be here each week. Pass it along. Tell people about this podcast. The battle is on. They made a big mistake here in Pennsylvania. And going forward, this is going to open up the way for the big, beautiful bill. Thanks for listening this week to 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.