CNN host Abby Phillip exposed on Tuesday the hypocrisy of Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates.
Davis Gates is a fierce opponent of school choice. She believes offering parents school choice is "the choice of racists." But apparently Davis Gates doesn't believe her rhetoric applies to her family.
Last week, it was revealed that Davis Gates does not send her son to public school. Instead, she exercised her choice to send him to private school.
Before interviewing the union boss, Phillip reminded viewers what Davis Gates herself has said about private schools.
She has called them "segregation academies of the Jim Crow South," according to Phillip, while championing public schools and promising that she "can't advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household."
When Davis Gates denied condemning private schools, Phillip reminded her, "That was literally your language," and told her the concern that people have with her is "whether the rhetoric matches your actions." But at every point in the conversation, Davis Gates ignored that point and rehearsed the complicated history of school choice and race in America.
But Phillip was not deterred.
The CNN anchor told Davis Gates that black families in Chicago and other cities "want the same choice that you were able to afford to give to your child."
"What I'm trying to ask you is, do you think that your rhetoric at some point went too far when you are making a choice? Because perhaps I assume you can afford to do that, that a lot of Chicago parents don't because they can't afford it," Phillip said. "And proponents of school choice say the state should have a role in helping those families who can't afford it make the same choice that you did for your family."
In the end, Davis Gates only defended her choice to send her son to private school while ignoring Phillip's point.
"As I've said before, my children do attend public schools. My son, he has the opportunity to play sports at a school — sports, by the way, that are not offered at our neighborhood school or any school close to our address. Again, students in Chicago, especially black students, on average, travel almost two hours back and forth to school," Davis Gates said. "So the real scandal is why in 2023, black families in Chicago and across this country have to deal with such severe inequities and such high stakes."
"I totally agree that is a scandal," Phillip responded, "but I also think that what you just described for your son is choice that you made for your family, and I think that's what your critics are pointing out here."
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Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates is sending one of her children to a private school.
"It was a very difficult decision for us because there is not a lot to offer Black youth who are entering high school," in Chicago, she said, according to WBEZ. "In many of our schools on the South Side and the West Side, the course offerings are very marginal and limited. Then the other thing, and it was a very strong priority, was his ability to participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities, which quite frankly, don't exist in many of the schools, high schools in particular."
in a statement posted on the union's website, Davis Gates noted that her two daughters are still attending public school.
And while Gates has chosen private school for her son, she is no fan of school choice policies.
"Our critics want you to believe that 'school choice' is a black-and-white issue that lacks nuance and hard choices for people like us, Black families – especially when you are parenting a Black boy in America," she said in the statement. "For my husband and me, it forced us to send our son, after years of attending a public school, to a private high school so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs, even as his two sisters remain in Chicago Public Schools."
"We will continue to oppose siphoning public school resources off to private institutions through voucher programs," she declared in the statement.
In a recent interview, she seemed to describe school choice and privatization proponents "fascists."
"Do you have concerns about school-choice and privatization supporters running for the school board, and a strategy to oppose that?" South Side Weekly asked. The outlet noted in the piece that the exchange as printed had been edited for clarity and length.
"Yes, we are concerned about the encroachment of fascists in Chicago. We are concerned about the marginalization of public education through the eyes of those who've never intended for Black people to be educated. So we're going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that type of fascism and racism does not exist on our Board of Education," Davis Gates said while responding to the question.
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Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson nominated seven appointees to the city’s board of education early last week after the previous board collectively resigned in early October. The move stunned the city and the rest of the nation. The drama is the latest sad episode of Chicago’s downward spiral, thanks to its Democrat mayor and the […]
To save democracy for future generations and revive the education system for America’s children, we desperately need school choice and competition.
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