For
Me,
Not
For
Thee
Elite schools for their kids. Empty promises for ours.
This website shines a spotlight on politicians whose personal educational choices for themselves and their families conflict with their opposition to charter school and other education choice policies, raising questions about their commitment to equitable education for all.
It serves as a resource for citizens to understand the true priorities of their representatives. Contact us through the form below if you have any tips on other hypocritical politicians that we should highlight.
Send Us Tips
Help us expose politicians and insiders who oppose school choice but benefit from it themselves. Send tips about any school choice opponents who attended or send their kids to private, innovation, or charter schools on the form below. As a matter of policy, we will not publish any minors’ names.
Hypocrite Highlights
This website is dedicated to exposing educational hypocrisy – powerful political insiders utilizing the benefits of their position to access elite schools while actively trying to deny those same options to other families.
For those powerful political insiders, elite schools for their kids courtesy of the privilege of their positions. But for thee – for the rest of us – we get empty promises for our kids.
A case in point is in Indianapolis, where safety issues have exploded across the school district. This is what families must endure when they lack the ability to send their kids to the elite schools reserved for the wealthy and well-connected.
Just last Friday, another fight-club-style fight broke out at Broad Ripple Middle School, the latest in a growing series of serious safety issues plaguing the school. Concerns have been growing from increasingly frustrated parents that their kids are simply not safe at the newly-reopened Broad Ripple Middle School.
Take the situation at George Washington School 87, where a teacher allegedly created a “fight club” environment, encouraging violence among students. Despite parents raising serious concerns, the school district ignored them until a shocking video surfaced. Even then the school district leadership declined to involve police.
And worse, they kept the teacher’s resignation quiet for weeks.
It doesn’t stop there.
As gun violence escalates—evidenced by loaded firearms found in backpacks, a tragic shooting of an IPS student by another high school student, and a staggering 41% increase in bullying this past school year—Indianapolis School Board member Will Pritchard dismissed the unrest as merely students struggling to “self-regulate and de-escalate tense moments.”
There you have it, dear reader. Teachers cheering on kids attacking each other, growing gun violence at school, and parents fearful for their children’s safety are dismissed by elected school board members like Will Pritchard.
For thee, unsafe schools.
No wonder parents are growing increasingly frustrated.
Is basic school safety too much to ask?
IPS school leadership, with their own children safe in their elite and safe schools, say yes, it is.
UPDATE: With news breaking about NYC’s COVID Czar living, well, a more social life than the rest of us were allowed in 2020, it’s worth noting that during COVID, while Brad Hoylman-Sigal insisted that reopening NYC public schools wasn’t safe, his own children enjoyed in-person learning at the elite Windward School, which stayed open throughout the 2020-2021 school year.
He ensured his kids avoided learning loss, while leaving New York families to struggle with school closures and the consequences of remote learning.
Sure must be nice to live by a different set of rules than the ones you force on the rest of us.
New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal has been a long-time, vocal opponent of charter schools and school choice.
But while opposing choice for working families across New York, he was busy enjoying the benefits of school choice for his own children.
He decided NYC public schools were not good enough for one of his kids, instead, sending his eldest to The Windward School, one of the city’s most exclusive private institutions for kids with dyslexia.
But it doesn’t stop there.
While Hoylman-Sigal rails against charter schools and takes tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from anti-charter school special interests, all the while sending his other kid to Manhattan’s elite selective admission magnet school, Hunter College Campus Schools. He uses his political influence to get out of NYC’s DOE schools, secures top-tier education for his own family, but works to block laws that would allow working class families the same opportunities.
While he keeps your kids trapped in underperforming schools, Hoylman-Sigal’s children enjoy the best private and elite schools that his political pull can buy.
Hypocrisy?
It’s worse than that.
It’s a deliberate effort to deny your family the same privileges he takes for his own.
New York City Council Member Julie Menin has proclaimed that she is a “long-time critic of co-locations for charter schools” – opposing the ability for public charter schools to use empty classrooms or school buildings to teach public charter school students.
While standing loudly and proudly against basic charter school operations, Council Member Menin also told the Gothamist in a candidate questionnaire that she sends her three kids to private schools.
While New York City working class families seek better school options for their kids, Julie Menin stands in their way.
What’s it to her? Menin’s kids are already safely tucked away at elite private schools, like The Dalton School, where she sent one of her kids.
It seems the louder that a politician shouts their opposition to school choice options for working families, the likelier it is that their own children are already enrolled in the most elite private institutions that money can buy.
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