Governor Lee continues assault on public education

This week the Governor’s latest assault on public education got underway with a special session. Now there are certainly valid reasons for assembling a special session on public education. The biggest would be to address the climate of fear and anxiety so many children, parents and teachers feel when another tragic school shooting incident occurs. But rather than address the gun violence issue, Bill Lee is conducting an attack on the schools. He’s resumed lobbying and pushing for his voucher system, which does nothing positive to aid educational opportunities for deserving children, but instead creates a two-tiered education system that siphons folks hard-earned tax dollars away from the public schools that serve the majority of our Black, brown, poor and disabled children. This system seeks to funnel those funds into private schools that are unaccountable and inaccessible to most of the population. Contrary to what Lee keeps saying publicly, his bill isn’t about giving a majority of parents school choice. It’s about setting up a special fund that mostly benefits students and parents who don’t need help. His bill would fund 20,000 private school scholarships of just over $7,000 each. In exchange for this blanket appropriation of public school funds,...