Virginia Walden Ford, Executive Director of DC Parents for School Choice, Inc., informs me that two of the children who currently receive assistance under the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship program attend the exclusive Sidwell Friends school in Washington. Sidwell, where tuition and fees run parents about $30,000 per year, is the school the president’s two daughters attend.
This highly regarded $14 million scholarship program is slated for termination in the omnibus spending bill now before Congress. This raises a very logical, and difficult, question for President Obama: Will this parent of two Sidwell students affix his signature to a law that will force two of his daughters’ less privileged schoolmates to return to the dysfunctional and dangerous District of Columbia Public School system?
Some of the 1,700 D.C. Opportunity Scholarship students undoubtedly attend other exclusive schools in the District, schools that many of Washington’s liberal power elite chose for their own kids. Should the Congress ultimately pull the plug on these scholarships, will some of these well-intentioned folks feel at least a smidgeon of guilt or, better, anger over their departure? After all, what do they say to their own children, who may have befriended the scholarship kids, studied and played on sports teams with them, invited them to their birthday parties and sleepovers?
If nothing else, this story line ought to intrigue the enterprising investigative journalists out there.