The New Plantation
By Mitch Berg
Another example of the absurdity of our idiot school system; a black woman, tired of her neighborhood’s wretched school system, tried to get her children a better education.
She was one of about 100 families investigated – but Kelley Williams-Bolar committed the greatest crime there is, in the eyes of soulless administrations; she fought back.
And now she’s in jail:
“It’s overwhelming. I’m exhausted,” she said. “I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them.”
Williams-Bolar decided four years ago to send her daughters to a highly ranked school in neighboring Copley-Fairlawn School District.
But it wasn’t her Akron district of residence, so her children were ineligible to attend school there, even though her father lived within the district’s boundaries.
Ohio has an open enrollment policy – but it grants a lot of latitude to schools as to whether or not they (and their tax bases) will participate.
The school district accused Williams-Bolar of lying about her address, falsifying records and, when confronted, having her father file false court papers to get around the system.
Williams-Bolar said she did it to keep her children safe and that she lived part-time with her dad.
“When my home got broken into, I felt it was my duty to do something else,” Williams-Bolar said.
There’s a reason that black families are the most enthusiastic supporters of charter schools in Minneapolis and Saint Paul; schools in inner city neighborhoods are that bad.
And here’s a statement you can just hear coming out of the mouth of some DFL hamster, can’t you?
While her children are no longer attending schools in the Copley-Fairlawn District, school officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it.
“Those dollars need to stay home with our students,” school district officials said.
Yep. I hear it.
January 27th, 2011 at 8:04 am
If only there were some way the dollars could follow the student from school to school. Some way parents could pick the school of choice and the school would be assured adequate funding for the student. Some simple funding mechanism that anybody could manage, maybe like a coupon or a ticket or . . .
a voucher?
January 27th, 2011 at 9:02 am
The reason Mpls North High School was closed wasn’t racial in any way. They had 200-some students in their school. The reason it was closed is because parents knew enough about the school NOT to enroll their kids there. They voted with their feet. The nightmare scenario would be for a thousand ladies – like this Akron mom – marching on the capitol and demanding the freedom to spend vouchers at the school of their choice. Think MPR or ‘CCO would cover it?
January 27th, 2011 at 9:04 am
Well we do need a way to deal with malcontents. You can’t build utopia without cracking a few eggs. Or buying $50,000 drinking fountains.
January 27th, 2011 at 9:19 am
No, no, no, you don’t understand! They put her in jail FOR THE CHILDREN!
January 27th, 2011 at 9:22 am
If they’re not murdering them as they exit the womb, they put them out on the streets innliterate.
Mitch, why to leftists hate black people so much?
January 27th, 2011 at 9:23 am
illiterate
January 27th, 2011 at 9:32 am
Leftists love black people. As long as they know their place and stay in it.
January 27th, 2011 at 9:44 am
While her children are no longer attending schools in the Copley-Fairlawn District, school officials said she was cheating because her daughters received a quality education without paying taxes to fund it.
Uppity…..
January 27th, 2011 at 10:31 am
nate;
Thanks for the laugh, bro!
January 27th, 2011 at 10:43 am
If Ohio is anything like Minnesota, the State was paying the vast bulk of the tab anyway, and the father was certainly paying HIS no doubt outrageous property taxes to cover the rest. So what’s the problem? Oh, that’s right, we can’t be having people think they have a choice in how their kids are educated. It means that part of our carefully-built facade would be cracked and allow people to see that parts of our “system of public education” is a dung heap.
January 27th, 2011 at 10:57 am
I object to the term ‘DUNG HEAP”. It is Vitriolic Rhetoric ™. I prefer “poopy pile”.
Thank you.
January 27th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Choice works when the issue is life or death. When it comes to smart of stupid, the state prefers stupid. After all, you can’t populate the plantation with critical thinkers…
January 27th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Why would you even take something like this and turn it into something political and racial and blame the left? Is this just another opportunity to say “poopy pants”? Last time I hung with a crowd who thought poop jokes were funny was…..
January 27th, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Last time I hung with a crowd who thought poop jokes were funny was…..
Your last DFL caucus?
January 27th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Why would you even take something like this and turn it into something political…
Because the topic of “school choice” is a fundamentally political question. It involves “allowing” a student’s tax-funded allotment to follow them involves cooperation between jurisdictions; the Democrats have made the political decision to try to eliminate meaningful school choice.
So far, it is a fundamentally political issue.
and racial
Because Ms. Williams-Bolar is like an awful lot of Afro-American parents, disgusted with the educational ghetto her kids have been shunted into, unwilling to settle for her kids being on the wrong side of the achievement gap, and apparently singled out for prosecution for trying (outside the lines) to get her kids a decent edumacation.
It’s not something I made up. There’s a reason that over 80% of Minneapolis and Saint Paul charter school families are families of color; the achievement gap is real (worse in St. Paul than the national average, in fact), and the parents perceive that the school system just doesn’t care. I think they have a point.
Perhaps you’ve had better results getting responses from school districts than I have… 😉
and blame the left?
Because the mainstream education system is controlled, lock stock and barrel, by the left. The teachers unions are the largest single body of activists in the Democratic Party, nationwide – and the main motivators to oppose any sort of school choice.
January 27th, 2011 at 4:38 pm
or accountability, or teacher performance standards and last but not least, they oppose any kind of fiscal sanity.
January 28th, 2011 at 1:12 am
Boss, you’re wrong. The don’t oppose standards, they just want to be the ones who set them since they “know stuff” about education. See all those shiny degrees they have from other folks in the education racket? That gives them the right to tell the rest of us how to raise and instruct our children (in their eyes, at least).
There’ll be standards, just incredibly low ones.
January 28th, 2011 at 7:05 am
nerdbert;
I stand corrected.