Chicago Teachers Union Boss Sends Son to Private School

The pinnacle of the Chicago Academics Union who has described faculty alternative as “the selection of racists” sends her son to a personal faculty. 

Stacy Davis Gates, who was elected as president of the Chicago Academics Union in 2022, has lengthy derided faculty alternative—a variety of insurance policies that make it simpler for folks to ship their youngsters to colleges aside from their native public faculty, usually by getting again a number of the authorities funding that might have adopted their youngster to public faculty—as inherently racist.

“*College alternative* was really the selection of racists,” Gates tweeted in August 2022. “It was created to keep away from integrating colleges with Black youngsters. Now it is the civil rights wrestle of our era?”

In a letter she wrote earlier this month, Gates defined her choice to enroll her son in a personal faculty whereas her different two youngsters remained in Chicago Public Colleges (CPS).

Chicago school rooms are “struggling to get well from waves of college closings and disinvestment underneath earlier mayors. Public and constitution excessive colleges in our Black and Brown neighborhoods live and respiration examples of inequality,” she wrote. “For my husband and me, it pressured us to ship our son, after years of attending a public faculty, to a personal highschool so he may dwell out his dream of being a soccer participant whereas additionally having a curriculum that may meet his social and emotional wants.”

This excuse misses key context. Whereas Gates is correct that faculty techniques throughout the nation, together with in Chicago, are nonetheless reeling from pandemic-era setbacks, she herself led the cost to maintain Chicago Public Colleges closed sporadically as late as early 2022. When CPS introduced a two-week shutdown in January 2022, Gates instructed The New York Instances that the closure was vital for colleges to “get themselves collectively.”

Gates additionally frames CPS as underfunded, describing “a long time of systemic underinvestment in marginalized communities.” Nonetheless, over the previous 5 educational years, CPS’ working funds has really skyrocketed—rising from $5.92 billion to $8.49 billion, regardless of enrollment dropping by almost 40,000 college students over the identical interval. 

Additional, in persistently framing faculty alternative advocates as racist, Gates additionally ignores the truth that minority dad and mom are sometimes the strongest supporters of college alternative. In keeping with a RealClear Opinion Analysis ballot from earlier this summer time, 73 % of black respondents supported faculty alternative, the best of any demographic group. No less than 70 % of different demographic teams additionally assist faculty alternative insurance policies.

However Gates is appropriate a few core a part of her justification for sending her youngster to a personal faculty: CPS is failing to serve households and college students. Regardless of spending an eye-popping $29,000 per pupil, three-quarters of CPS college students failed to satisfy state requirements in a studying take a look at this 12 months. Over 80 % failed to satisfy state requirements in math.

“You’re making a alternative as a result of maybe, I assume, you may afford to do this, that loads of Chicago dad and mom do not as a result of they cannot afford it,” CNN Primetime host Abby Phillip instructed Gates throughout an interview final week. “Proponents of college alternative say the state ought to have a task in serving to these households who cannot afford it make the identical alternative that you just did for your loved ones.”

“The varsity alternative motion was a cudgel for integration on this nation, that may be a truth,” Gates responded.

Gates understandably needs her son to have the chance to attend the very best faculty for him to, as she put it, “dwell out his dream.” However she would not appear to see an issue with denying different dad and mom that very same alternative—or framing them as collaborating with racists for doing so.