If you really care about the kids of Hamilton County’s most distressed schools, then you’ll take help where you can get it. The question on your mind isn’t which political label someone wears. Anyone who shifts attention away from the critical issues facing public education and toward political labels is not really committed to public education. Their support for equitable, quality schools for all Hamilton County students is superficial and disingenuous.
As a conservative, if the values you wish to conserve include this area’s historically stubborn resistance to integrated schools, then you need to question your values and your understanding of the term “elitist.” The truth is that the arguments against accountability for our system’s lack of equity are the same as those made in response to every effort to desegregate our schools over the past several decades: outsiders go home, let us continue white flight to private schools or to secluded public schools built for whites.
Apply whatever political labels you want, but conserving those values is shameful.
None of UnifiEd’s critics have conducted the same sort of research regarding what our county’s nationally recognized commitment to segregation and our low educational funding have to do with our comparatively low education outcomes. No other group has successfully rallied public support for our schools. No one else has challenged the back-slapping, goody handouts that pass for public school support. Those charged with funding and oversight of our broken, segregated system must face accountability at the polls. That is where the rubber meets the road.
Ron Lowe