Don’t withdraw funds from public schools to create choice
Buzz Brockway’s support for Georgia Senate Bill 233, “Ga. needs to widen school choices in ‘24,” (Opinion, Aug. 8) neglects the fact that the $6,500 “made available” for school choice will be withdrawn from public school funding.
If advocates like Brockway think these “choices” are as important as public education, then ask the General Assembly to fund them separately. That would reflect their professed interest in public education and school choice.
MICHAEL G. NANCE, ALPHARETTA
Not every student can afford luxury of ‘school choice’
Buzz Brockway’s masquerade tale of “school choice” disguises a raid of the state treasury.
Suppose each of the current 242,930 home-schooled and private school students in Georgia accepts the $6,500 offered to them. In that case, Georgia taxpayers will redistribute $1.5 billion from public schools to families who either: A.) already pay over $11,000 per child in private school, or B.) enjoy the luxury of an adult at home, able to teach a 12-year academic curriculum. This supplement reimburses over half of what they currently pay.
As for Georgia’s nearly 2 million students currently enrolled in public schools, public students also receive exciting new choices. For them, we call it the “Hope for A Promise Scholarship”.
They can hope that their parents can afford what the state cannot; they can hope that $6,500 is sufficient to enable their family to now home-school; they can hope that new, legitimate private schools pop up everywhere that charge $6,500 tuition with no additional costs.
Lucky kids, so much choice!
BILL NEWNAM, ATLANTA
Progressive education is not always age appropriate
The sky is falling! As in “Schools turn on lights, turn back clock” (Opinion, Aug. 8). If young -- very young -- students can’t get inundated with racial and sexual input at early ages, how are they to grow up “normal”? How have decade after decade of 5-to-10-year-old children managed to grow into responsible adults without having race and gender as the guiding lights in their education?
Here’s a term progressives can’t seem to grasp: age appropriate. Their fear that some small child somewhere might be laboring under impressions appropriate for their age is unconscionable. Such a child needs to be disabused of “childish” things and propelled straight into adult material before leaving kindergarten. How else can they become well-adjusted post-toddlers without questioning their gender or being schooled into racial awareness and the need to see everyone through a lens of oppressed and oppressor?
Yes, society -- and its gender-questioning, anxiety-ridden, climate-fearing youth -- need more progressive education to solve its self-perpetuating problems.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
Let both sides have their say in court
Many people on one side of American society try to label whatever does not agree with their idea/agenda as “the big lie.”
They cluster in defending their position and then claim they have “debunked” an opposing idea/agenda. Then they essentially say their idea/agenda is true/right “because we said so.” Refusing to allow the presentation of evidence by both sides for open viewing and consideration in trials violates Americans’ constitutional right to “equal justice under law.” Some have even fought to disbar opposing attorneys for defending their clients! Until recently, they have held momentum in many people’s opinions.
Recently, in spite of those people’s desperate efforts, momentum has started swinging in the other direction. Day by day, more evidence has been “leaking out,” overcoming the resistance to that truth becoming known. More informed, evidence-based decisions have started happening. Some questions arise: “Who has been mislabeling; who has been telling ‘the big lie’ “?
Open forensic investigation will prove which!
TOM STREETS, ATLANTA
