When Republicans won majorities in both the Mississippi House and Senate in 2011 and broke nearly 100 years of iron fisted legislative reign by Democrats, there were a certain list of priorities that everyone generally agreed would happen: fair redistricting, the Sunshine Bill, meaningful change to the appropriations process and, of course, charter schools.
Education union-backed opposition to the charter schools bill has exposed an interesting political irony. On one hand, Republicans have the votes to get charter schools passed into law. It’s a political reality that’s coming, and we’ve documented that simply having the real threat of charter schools is forcing a change in attitudes and behavior in the public school lobby.
But the irony is that success in the charter school debate will not just be won with a charter school law. The fight is bigger than just the legislative effort.
Ultimately this fight is and has to be about giving school choice to all, particularly to those who are forced (by law) to attend failing schools. People with means, even in the lower middle class, often move out of their neighborhoods just to escape underperforming schools that they would otherwise be forced to send their kids to if they remained. Nancy Loome, Milton Kuykendall and the rest of the public school mob bosses are trying desperately to keep administrators, teachers, parents and kids under their thumb because it’s good for their bottom line.
Whether Gov. Phil Bryant calls a special session or not, it’s time to pause. To pass charter schools legislation the effort needs to be run like a real campaign. It needs to seek to change hearts and minds and capture the narrative. When legislators who are ostensibly proponents of education can get away with voting against something that would help so many of their constituents, that’s what has to change.
This is particularly the case in the Jackson area (home to a severely underperforming school district) with legislators like Senators Blount, Horne, and Frazier and Representatives Clarke, Evans, Coleman, Evans and Wooten – these shouldn’t be given the option to keep kids in their district forced by law to attend schools that don’t educate them. When underserved parents and kids from poor rural and inner city areas march on the state Capitol demanding charter schools, it will pass unanimously.
Interestingly, Republicans have a huge ally in the charter school fight . . . Barack Obama. Obama has been vocal about the success of charter schools nationwide. Republicans need to pit that narrative against the education mafia in Mississippi that stand ready to order the death of charter schools at all costs.
The bottom line is that Republicans and the few true Democrat supporters of charter schools, like Rep. Chuck Espy has been, need to make an organized grassroots outreach on TV, radio, direct mail and otherwise, particularly to poor rural and inner city black and white Mississippians connecting their desires for charter schools with that of President Obama and a better education (even if it pains me to say it).
Just like BIPEC, Fire McCoy, MSTP and others in the last election made sure that people calling themselves ‘conservative’ Democrats were truly juxtaposed with their actual voting records, so too must charter school proponents not allow people to say that they’re for better education but then feverishly work against the legislation (like Parents for Public Schools and The Parents Campaign). Get the grassroots and the people who can most benefit from the change engaged and you not only win the political fight, but you will go a long way to winning the war against monopolized and underperforming schools and change the culture of parents and students and administrators and teachers throughout Mississippi.
So who’s up for a campaign?
Magnolia Tribune
