President-elect and Mrs. Obama have made a choice for their children. They have chosen the Sidwell Friends School for Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.
Sidwell is a private academy that educates many of the children of Washington, DC’s elite, including Vice-President-elect Biden’s grandchildren and former first-daughter, Chelsea Clinton. An Obama spokesperson suggested that they “selected a school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.” Apparently that “fit” doesn’t apply to the public school system in Washington, DC, the nation’s worst.
Sidwell Friends School costs close to $30,000 a year in tuition. Most of the District of Columbia’s parents would love to be able to afford an escape from the enslavement in their failing schools but they lack the financial means to do so. However, there is hope and change with regard to education in the District these days. No, it isn’t the result of the great agent of change named Barack Obama, but rather the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program that offers $7,500 in scholarship vouchers to nearly 2,000 children to attend a private school of their choice. The average income of the families enrolled in the DC scholarship program is about $22,000 per year. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama glibly dismissed the program during an October debate with Senator John McCain, and now the Democrats who control Congress want to destroy it.
The Obama family and members of Congress don’t qualify for the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program because they can well afford to send their children to elite private schools. This year, Malia and Sasha would have sat next to a few of the Scholarship Program's recipients who now attend Sidwell. Unfortunately, those scholarship students will return to the failing public schools of DC when the Democratic Administration and Congress kill the program. Hope and change will soon become nothing more than empty political slogans for nearly 2,000 economically poor students. They must watch as Malia and Sasha receive an education they were once promised but was stolen away from them by a President and Congress who have chosen to ignore them and their families.
President-elect Obama, Vice-President-elect Biden, and many other Congressional leaders are the products of private education, and even on their current publicly-financed salaries are able to make an educational choice for their own children. We ask Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid: Why the double standard for the economically poor African-American students who comprise much of the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program? Why do the parents of poor children not deserve a choice in their education? Where is the hope that was promised to the poor and needy during the campaign? Where is the change in the way Washington does business proclaimed during the campaign? Hope is happening now for nearly 2,000 families in Washington, DC. We call upon the new Obama Administration and Congress to keep it alive, not kill it.
