When Families Cross District Lines for Better Schools

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 with dom giordano your host each and every week we're on a big week we'll get to this uh this week celebrating the one-year anniversary of the big beautiful bill where all that money is going to come to deserving families across the country but i have something that happened near where i am but i would tell you this it could be any town

USA where this happens. In fact, I have a pretty startling case you may never have heard of before that illustrates this. Where I am in Philadelphia, Philadelphia Public Schools has got a $157 million increase in their budget, even though they are fraudulent when it comes to providing any kind of proficiency in anything. And also, they can't seem to take billions of dollars and have air conditioning in schools, so they're off all the time.

So if you were in that school district. And you apparently either didn't know about school choice or somehow or another don't agree with school choice, it might be you don't know about it and it's not pushed for enough. What would you do with your child? Just let them rot in what you consider to be a bad school. Well, there's a town that borders Philadelphia. There are several towns that border Philadelphia. I mean, touch right against it. Ben Salem is the one in question.

A lot of casinos there. I know the people, the mayor, the police chief, I like them a lot. But Ben Salem had a big deficit recently, millions of dollars. Now, Ben Salem is also diverse. A lot of people coming from foreign countries, I'm told, and there's good suspicion, they may not even be here legally. But there is also no doubt that they have to spend a lot of money on English as a second language.

So with all that being said, might that be where Ben Salem would want to tighten up their budget? No.

They've just instituted what is called a tip line. I would call it a rat line.

In which you can contact an owl. I'm not making this up. O-W-L. An owl named Benny. Get it? Ben Salem, Benny. Benny was apparently something. The owl. They were the owls.

You email Benny the owl and Benny the owl you're emailing about someone you know or suspect is not in the Ben Salem perimeter their school district aka probably Philadelphia northeast Philadelphia that somehow or another is using an address. Sometimes it can be as simple as the family's divided divorced and they use the father's address to the mother's address whichever one is advantageous. We've been doing this podcast.

for over a year.

Isn't this an illustration of the desperation that is there, even if you think it's misguided?

Okay, okay.

This has gone on for quite a while.

There was an infamous case in which, heaven forbid, I sided with the ACLU.

This was the case of an Ohio mother.

Here's the headline.

This is about 11 years ago.

granted clemency after being prosecuted for felonies for sending her child to the school district she did not live in. In other words, this woman, her last name was Kelly Williams Boar, African-American single mom convicted of two felonies and facing prison time because she used her father's address on a school enrollment form so that her daughter could attend.

And listen for this line, not only a better, a safer school. How often have we talked about some of these schools not only being academically not so good, but also not being safe, not even being clean. We talked about rats in some of the Philadelphia public schools, things of this nature. This became a national stir. She was facing felony charges for this. The judge ultimately suspended the sentence to 10 days jail time in

But because of the status as a felon, it barred her from being able to obtain a teaching license, a credential she was working toward. She lived in Akron, Ohio. Akron, Ohio is pretty famous. I think LeBron James even put a special school in there. But the schools are not top notch. That's putting it mildly. They're not good. I don't know day to day. Have they changed since then?

This became such a national stir that the ACLU became involved and ultimately Governor John Kasich pardoned her and I think removed some of these restrictions on her. Now what did this woman do? We're not condoning illegal behavior. It was illegal to use her father's address to say the children live there versus living with the mom in Akron. I don't know if I remember the name of the school district.

that he was in, but it was a school district in the mind of the mom that was noticeably better. The person writing about this says, are criminal laws and sentencing policies needlessly inflict grossly disproportional punishments upon those who are doing good? This is the ACLU writing that. Look, I'm trying to be consistent with this, and I agree with the ACLU on this, but the ACLU is not a proponent.

of freedom, of school choice. They're negative, particularly if religion is involved.

So let's just be consistent. But think about this story, this one that I'm telling you about that I'm involved in now, and this infamous story of this mother who was going to go to jail for quite a period of time, all because she wanted a better education for her kids.

Now, I don't know the situations with vouchers, school choice. Remember, this is quite a number of years ago.

I do know that our mission is to free these people from having to make that choice. I mean, just think about it. Are they aware of the penalties that could be exacted here? I would also tell you, though, the Ben Salem School District, the one with the Benny the Owl that you rat on people with. As I said, they're spending a lot of money. I know this on English as a second language, and maybe you had people here that are here illegally.

Meaning they're not citizens, they don't belong here. And yet, who are they going after? They are going after American citizens. And these people in Northeast Philadelphia, that's where the guess is, it might be other places across Bucks County and Philadelphia. I would like to try, once we see some of these cases surface, reach them and clue them in to school choice. So as we enter this week, the one year anniversary of the big, beautiful bill,

and the money that will go to school districts. Experts in this field, proponents of school

choice, tell me one of the biggest problems they face is people being unaware of choice, unaware of some of the options that are out there because the media doesn't want to tell you. School districts don't want to tell you. It's all word of mouth or whatever. And I guess his mother thought this was an easy solution. Here's just one stat. Recent survey that we've

only 8% of Philadelphia voters think that public education is headed in the right direction according to this recent poll. The data shared with Chalkbeat, local magazine, had 1,029 registered Philly voters found that more than half of the respondents think the state of public education is worsening. Voters said they're unhappy with the conditions of buildings, the outcomes, etc. Are these people, say, in Philadelphia,

aware of a route to volunteer, to push for school choice, and to take advantage of various scholarships and programs that are there already to get out. Only 8% think that this is happening. I question how the 8% think that. I think they're an abysmal failure and will continue to be an abysmal failure. We have one school, Lincoln High School, due to the fact they've had an influx of people,

coming to Northeast Philadelphia that they couldn't handle, where the entire freshman class is going to school this year and next year in trailers. It's a trailer camp, giant trailers all around the school building that filters you back into the school for lunch. But trailers for the entire 900 or so in the freshman class. So would these people reject it or as a school choice message,

not gotten to them. And I would argue that in this anniversary of the big, beautiful bill, that it has not gotten to them. And this is the year, these are the months coming up where that message has to get across so they can take advantage of relief that's coming their way and maybe more in the very near future. But this is stunning to me.

Stunning on the national level, and we haven't had a chance to fully talk about this, I have an update, is that the NEA, National Education Association, and the AFT, American Federation of Teachers, Becky Pringle, for the NEA, and Randy Weingarten for the AFT, have held their annual conventions. And now we see they're calling for a march on Washington, not for better public schools, proficiencies, anything like that, taking care of business.

in order to go after the Trump administration and do this before the midterms.

In other words, they've completely lost their mission and their purpose.

It's completely political and it involves them and their own jobs and their own power and their own future.

That's what's gone on with this.

And Randy Weingarten is also there's an investigation underway.

Her book about fascism.

Was it funded by teacher funds?

That's some of the things that are going on with that.

Here's one other story to show you to this point about people not knowing about this or having a shot. The New York State Teachers Union has filed another lawsuit to limit school choice. Facing declining public school enrollment, the unions are litigating against the state to block a charter school. There's a wonderful charter school group in the New York area.

Harlem mainly. And it's limited to the number of charters that can be given out.

And this school was able to give one of these charters to a new group.

And the New York teachers immediately are hell bent to try to stop anybody new from getting into the charter field and to make sure they can't educate kids in that manner.

Now, you do know by now a charter school is not a private school.

or part of the public schools, but they're often more desired and more effective because if they don't function well, what happens? They go out of business. So there's an incentive to make them better. Long ways of making this come together. We are in a pitch battle here day after day with teachers unions and other entities that support them to prevent kids from getting the education that suits them and suits their

parents' needs. And I don't know why umpteen parents in Philadelphia would want to go to the Ben Salem schools, but they are. So now we set up a tip line, rat line, to stop them. This is the United States of America. This is a freedom of choice issue. What I'm saying is it's coming to a head. My hope is in this midterm election cycle, and any Republican, you remember our mantra here on Old School, New School,

Next School. Any Republican who votes against does not support school choice.

You have to move against them politically. They are not a Republican. They don't get it. They're fraudulent.

Any Republican should be for school choice, liberating people in every way, shape and form that we can.

We're not going to wait for some pie in the sky telling us how billions of dollars more public schools will be great.

People want to make a choice now for their kids. This is precious time that's going on. So as we go back to school, expect that come September, you're going to start to see there's still about 15 or 18 left of states that have not declared, will they take this free money, meaning new money. This is not going to be a taken away for their budget. By the way, in the big, beautiful bill, a good amount of this money will go for intense tutoring for public schools and other things. It's all a win.

Win-win-win. But think about it as we go through the summer. It's always good to have a human, the face of this mother who risked two felonies in order to get her kids into a better school district than the Akron School District, making that judgment as an educator-to-be, not just as a mom, backed by both Dom Giordano and the ACLU. Okay? So what we are seeing here is something,

Very, very rare. And something that needs to be exemplified again and again. I'll let you know next week. I'm having the mayor on my radio show in Philadelphia on Talk Radio 1210. What the mayor tells me, the reason is for engaging in this type of stuff where we're setting up rat lines, Benny the Owl, in order to stop people from getting the better education for their kids.

So kudos to the Bent Salem schools that maybe their school district's a little bit better than Philadelphia.

But is this the way to deal with this issue? And the only way I know to deal with it is what we tell you each week. It's to push and fight hard for school choice so we don't have to deal with these annoying public school issues. They're only going to change minimally, no matter how much money is put in there, and the parents should be the final arbiter of this.

So do join us. Let people know about this old school, new school, next school each week. You want to send me an email, something you heard, something you agree, disagree with. My email is domshow, D-O-M-S-H-O-W at AOL.com, domshow at AOL.com. I will see you next week on old school, new school, next school. Old school, new school, next school with Dom Giordano is a presentation of Giordano Productions LLC.

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