Extremism at the State Capitol Paved With “Good Intentions?” (chuckle, chuckle, wink, wink)

Extremism of all kinds throughout history is often justified by those perpetrating it as being rooted in having “good intentions”. We have all heard the centuries old aphorism/proverb, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, meaning that the wrongdoings of those imposing willful harm against others are often masked by some twisted rationale of good intentions. Such extremism with similar justification as admittedly being rooted in “good intentions” was on full disheartening display at the State Capitol this past week during the Assembly Education Committee hearing.

Assembly Education Committee members Patrick O’Donnell, Chair (D-Long Beach), Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), and Christy Smith (D-Santa Clarita), are among the co-authors of three very extreme and harmful bills against citizens’ individual rights to public school choice, specifically targeting and crippling public charter schools. Assembly Bills AB 1505, AB 1506, and AB 1507, under the false and misleading pretense of so-called reform, are instead designed to sabotage parents’ and students’ fundamental rights to public school choice, while favoring the self-serving territorial and financial protection of powerful public education special interest groups. These bills represent a blatant violation of public trust that WE THE PEOPLE have granted these officials to represent our collective best interests as California citizens. These three bills together will, if passed into law, severely harm the lives of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of children, parents, teachers and public charter school employees, and, by extension, countless businesses and communities in California whose quality of life, civility, and success rely firmly on a well-educated population.

Given that these four co-authors control the majority of the Assembly Education Committee, the passage of these bills through this committee was, as Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) so astutely articulated during the hearings, “already a done deal”. In other words, RIGGED! Yet, more than 500 parents, students, teachers, pro-children, pro-freedom of choice, and pro-public charter school representatives filled the committee hearing room and lined the halls of the State Capitol to stand united and protest the willful harm of these bills against them. As if it weren’t bad enough that the passage of these bills was already rigged, and in spite of how many hundreds of real people showed up in protest, these four co-authors smugly and cynically reassured each other during the committee hearing in front of these more than 500 witnesses that their actions against them were rooted in “good intentions”. (chuckle, chuckle, wink, wink).

Must we be reminded who our public education system is there to serve and whose tax dollars are funding it? Aren’t our children and their parents the rightful consumers and customers of our public education system? Aren’t WE THE PEOPLE funding the system with the public trust that these tax dollars will be used in good faith to serve the education needs of ALL of our children? It is our children who receive the service of public education and who ultimate benefit from its quality, or conversely in far too significant percentages, who are tragically sentenced to significant harm and potential life-long struggles from the lack of quality of its service. Shouldn’t children and their parents, as rightful public education consumers and whose lives are being directly affected by its quality of service, have the individual freedom to decide and choose which public school best meets their needs, rather than the government dictate to them through back room deals, ill-advised laws, and short-sighted public policy, what limited public school choices they can have?

California’s public education system embarrassingly ranks 46th in the nation currently in academic results. Therefore, isn’t it the job of these elected Legislators to, instead of sabotaging citizens’ public school choices to cater to self-serving interests, concentrate on how to improve the public education system to ensure that ALL students have equal access to a variety of quality public school choices, both District-operated and public charter, to afford them both ample and equal opportunities to succeed? Just as with any other consumer-oriented service, it is consumers and the choices they freely exercise that help drive the overall quality of the services being provided and that hold each consumer system more accountable. Yet, these three extreme bills recklessly abandon these consumers and time-proven principles altogether and are in their true essence ALL about money, power, control, and political favors, the consequence being a direct attack on the freedom of parent and student consumers to choose the public school, either District-operated or public charter, that provides them with the best opportunity to succeed.

The 1,300+ nonprofit public charter schools and the 650,000 children and parents that choose them in California are not the scapegoats for whatever academic failures and fiscal deficits have been created, of their own doing, by the status quo education system. As Assemblymember Weber (D-San Diego) also astutely observed during the Assembly Education Committee hearing, it is the public school system that needs to ask itself why parents and students are in such a desperate position to want to leave their district public schools and enroll in public charter schools in the first place! Ms. Weber hit the nail on the head. However, that IS the question that the status quo public education system will never honestly ask itself. For to do so would force them to admit to themselves their own chronic academic failures and fiscal mismanagement, and their individual and collective failures to ACT to adapt to the very diverse needs of 21st century students, who are their customers. Consequently, they must then come to the uncomfortable conclusion that it is they who must change and adapt to the needs of 21st century learners. Instead, it is much easier to avoid the truth and use public charter schools as scapegoats for all of the problems that they themselves have created. Good intentions for WE THE PEOPLE? (chuckle, chuckle, wink, wink).

Citizens of California, regardless of your political affiliation, you too should be outraged at such extremism of these elected officials to attack and willfully harm the lives of the very people that elected them, to violate our public trust, and to sell our fundamental rights to freedom of choice down the Sacramento River. The threat of the loss of individual rights to freedom of choice is not a partisan issue, and is one upon which WE THE PEOPLE must all stand united and fight against! What makes this so-called “road paved with good intentions” direct attack against WE THE PEOPLE even more insidious is that the most extreme harm of these bills will be against hundreds of thousands of innocent and vulnerable California children, particularly those in poverty, representing ethnic minorities, in the most socio-economically challenging circumstances, and with special needs and other unique disadvantaged conditions. In other words, those who are constantly struggling to attain equality, and who are already facing the disadvantages of fewer options and choices than other citizens. These are the very children that public charter schools are proving to serve most successfully, and whose fundamental rights to choose public charter schools in the future will be severely undermined and limited. As such, the extremism of these elected officials is further rooted in violating the core California principles of social justice, equity, and equal opportunity for all that we collectively hold so dear. Let the people of California and the rightful consumers of public education, not politicians and self-serving special interest groups, decide what quality public school choices meet their collective best interests.

Though these three extreme bills have now passed through the Assembly Education Committee, there is still time to let your voices of opposition be heard and contact your Assemblymember and Senate representatives to stand united with WE THE PEOPLE. STOP this road paved with so-called good intentions from leading to hell for hundreds of thousands of our fellow California citizens!