The debates between Maggie Hassan, Democrat, and Ovide Lamontaigne, Republican, remind me that the success of our children is at stake in this election. Democrat allegiance to Unions and the Educational Establishment lock children into failing public schools.
Today’s Democrat solution to educational problems has been providing increasingly poorer results for decades, just spend more money. That fits Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” More money is not the solution, it just raises the cost of poor results.
The Teachers Unions and Educational Establishment oppose school choice, they like their monopoly. No one providing services wants competition. If they don’t compete successfully, they lose power, influence, and money to dole out to themselves and their supporters.
The Republican solution is to encourage competition in education. Republicans want to help parents move children to better schools than the failing schools that the Democrats lock them into.
The NH Republican legislature overrode Governor Lynch’s veto of a bill that enables scholarships to help poorer families afford to move their children from failing schools to schools of their choice.
Democrats complain that each scholarship reduces state funding. True, but the lost funding is small compared to what our schools get and spend per student. As I understand it for example, at most the Interlakes’s state funding would have been reduced by about $60,000 this year, a tiny amount compared to the Interlakes’s $20 million budget or this year’s $1 million surplus.
Of course public schools can increase their funding by proving a great education and thus attracting fee paying students from other schools and states.
There are many wonderful and outstanding teachers dedicated to helping children. Yet, many are frustrated because they work in an educational environment controlled by unions and an education establishment which are dedicated to their own power rather than the education of our children. Albert Shanker, President of two major American Teachers Unions shows the attitude of the teachers unions and educational establishment when he said, “”When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
President Obama sends his children to a private school, yet he stopped the successful and popular school voucher program in Washington, DC. Some of the Democrat candidates for State Representative from Meredith & Gilford are rich enough to send their children to private schools, but they don’t want the children of poorer parents to have the same chance for a successful life.
Any citizen who cares about our children’s education and future needs to vote a straight Republican ticket in this election.
