CatholicVoteAction.org

Patrick Gillen, chief counsel for CatholicVote.org and a professor at Ave Maria School of Law, penned a great op-ed in the Washington Times on the disastrous decision by the University of Illinois to fire Dr. Kenneth Howell:

“Set aside the obvious absurdity (and injustice) of firing a man for teaching about the subject he was supposed to teach in order to ask an even more fundamental question. How did we get to the point where Robert McKim, head of the Department of Religion at a major public university and founder of its “queer studies” major to boot, can relieve a man of his duties for teaching about a perspective that merits discussion in any department of religion worthy of its name?”

Read the rest of the article at WashingtonTimes.com.

Teachers unions are so unreasonable. Especially so in New Jersey where they haven’t had anyone say no to them in awhile. If you dare suggest that now might be the time for a modest correction in their generous salary and benefits, they’ll call you anti-teacher.

To reign in education spending and deal with New Jersey’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Chris Christie proposed a one-year pay freeze on teacher and state employee pay. He was immediately denounced by the teachers’ unions. Here is in Rutherford calling for a 2.5% cap on property tax increases, an utterly reasonable proposition. But a teacher railed on him for his one-year teacher pay freeze plan.

I think this teacher’s response is downright scandalous.

The average teacher at a government-run school in New Jersey pulls down $63,000. I know it costs more to live in New Jersey than in Nebraska, but we have to remember that this salary is earned only working nine months of the year. If $63,000 doesn’t pay all the bills (hard to believe) a teacher could easily supplement his income with summer employment. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could have our summers off?

Teachers have a lot of goodwill from the American people. But I’ll say it: They’re getting greedy. And anyone who suggests a reasonable correction gets attacked and receives protests. Kudos to Governor Chris Christie for standing up to this pressure.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele wrote an op-ed for CNN in time for the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education. Steele uses the historic date as a means to defend the Opportunity Scholarship program that had provided vouchers to kids in failing schools in our nation’s capital. The Democrats and President Obama opposed this program — and they have voted to terminate the program — despite the fact that the money for these vouchers did not come from the DC Schools budget.

Steele writes:

The special-interest government unions that fund Democratic campaigns insist that payback requires throwing poor minority students under a failing public school bus. Democrats have kept their end of the campaign-cash deal. In one of the earliest acts in Obama’s term, Democrats enacted legislation that killed the Opportunity Scholarship program and abandoned struggling minority families who had the audacity to hope for a better life for their children.

It was a deeply cynical act Democrats did not even bother to try to justify. When the Senate held a hearing on the program, the administration did not send a single witness to defend the administration’s position.

Obama, having made millions on two autobiographies with “Hope” and “Dreams” in their titles, has denied the hopes and dreams of poor, minority families who simply seek the opportunity that he and I and so many other Americans had — quality education despite our families’ income.

Fifty-six years after Brown v. Board of Education, Democrats are again standing in the schoolhouse door and on the wrong side of history. That’s why it is critically important we stand on the right side of history and elect Republican candidates to office.

If Michael Steele writes more op-eds like this one, he’ll start improving his image with Republicans.

You’re asking, aren’t school vouchers a Republican/conservative/libertarian core belief? You’d expect Democrats to kill it — and certainly many did their part — but why would Republicans join in execution?

The usual explanation is tempting.

Leading the House GOP opposition was one Rep. Roger Eddy, a double dipper from downstate Hutsonville. According to a Family Taxpayers Foundation database, Eddy gets $90,000 as a school superintendent, and his wife, Rebecca, a teacher in one of his schools, earns $40,000. That’s in addition to the $68,880 plus per diem he receives as a state legislator. Wait, there’s more. According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, state teachers unions have given him $79,182 over nine years in campaign contributions, including $7,750 from the Chicago Teachers Union. You fill in the blanks about why Chicago teachers would be working for the election of a Republican from a town that’s a four-hour drive away.

Closer to home, GOP Rep. Rosemary Mulligan of Des Plaines, another voucher opponent, has received $91,482 over 17 years from teachers unions. Of course, when she spelled out the reasons for her nay vote on the House floor, she didn’t mention the contributions. In fact, her explanation was so muddled and unpersuasive that I felt embarrassed for her. Stumbling through a web of non sequiturs, she talked about how all kids deserve a public education. Yes, and so? Does that mean they all must be confined to Chicago public schools?

Some other GOP “no” votes and their teachers union contributions: Rich Brauer, Springfield, $11,400; Renee Kosel, Mokena, $119,371; Bill Mitchell, Decatur, $19,830; Jerry Mitchell, Rock Falls, $130,245; Donald Moffitt, Galesburg, $111,125; Sandra Pihos, Glen Ellyn, $5,700; Raymond Poe, Springfield, $55,561; Dennis Reboletti, Addison, $22,250; David Reis, Olney, $7,750; and Chapin Rose, Charleston, $14,602.

More from Dennis Byrne at the Barbershop

image Ursuline Academy, Springfield, IL

Senate Bill 2494 could come up for a full vote in the Illinois House as soon as today.  SB 2494 provides for a limited voucher for students at under-performing public school students to use at the private school of their choice.  It does not reduce funding for public schools, and is fully supported by the Archdiocese of Chicago and Superintendent Sr. Mary Paul McCaughey, OP.

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Here are a few Democrats that are considering supporting the Bill (and thus students)

Representative Jack D. Franks (D) – 63rd District
Springfield Office (217) 782-1717
Woodstock (Illinois) Office (815) 334-0063

Representative Marlow H. Colvin (D) – 33rd District
Springfield Office (217) 782-8272
Chicago Office (773) 783-8492

Your calls have been effective with the Republicans (but more is better). Rep’s Franks and Colvin have shown support for school choice and need encouragement to continue with it.

Update

From the esteemed Chris Robling: Here’s some Republicans for a second shift call

There is a small list of vitally needed state reps — Representatives Tracy, Coulson, Pihos, Ramey, Reboletti, Bassi, Bost, Hatcher, Myers and Brauer — that will benefit from friendly and issue-based encouragement to support Sen. Meeks’ bill.

Telephone numbers here for the Republicans

From the Illinois Review

The Illinois House of Representatives is considering a key vote right now. Senate Bill 2494 would save thousands of children from Chicago’s worst schools by giving them a voucher allowing them to attend the school of their choice.

This program has been successful in other states, and it won’t cost downstate or suburban schools any money. After years of your tax dollars going to failing schools, this bill will also hold Chicago Public Schools accountable for their performance.

Is your legislator standing with the kids who need help, or with the teachers unions who oppose this bill? Below is a list of undecided legislators.

Call them and tell them to support Senate Bill 2494.

The Illinois House of Representatives is considering a key vote right now. Senate Bill 2494 would save thousands of children from Chicago’s worst schools by giving them a voucher allowing them to attend the school of their choice.

This program has been successful in other states, and it won’t cost downstate or suburban schools any money. After years of your tax dollars going to failing schools, this bill will also hold Chicago Public Schools accountable for their performance.

Is your legislator standing with the kids who need help, or with the teachers unions who oppose this bill?  Below is a list of undecided legislators.

Call them and tell them to support Senate Bill 2494.

Add your funny caption to the comment box below!

Photo: AmP reader Miguel.

The beautiful:

Dignitaries preview ‘Sacred Made Real’ exhibit at National Gallery of Art

Moments after walking through “The Sacred Made Real” – an emotionally searing exhibit of Spanish paintings and sculptures from 1600-1700 that will be on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from Feb. 28 through May 31 – the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, said, “Some of these images will remain forever in the eyes and hearts of visitors.”

… The exhibit was organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and by the National Gallery in London, where it was on display from Oct. 21 to Jan. 24. (Archdiocesan newspaper of Washington, DC)

The not:

“WOMEN & SPIRIT: Catholic Sisters in America” is a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in association with Cincinnati Museum Center. It reveals the mystery behind a small group of innovative American women who helped shape the nation’s social and cultural landscape. (Official website)

It is currently exhibited in the Smithsonian. The actual content might be okay, but I’m skeptical considering every single one of the nuns involved couldn’t be troubled to wear their habit for the official photo (I mean, not even a veil?).

If you subscribe to the CatholicVote emails and live in Illinois, you would have received an invitation to an excellent luncheon held earlier this month sponsored by the Illinois Policy Institute.  Yesterday Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal reported on the lunch and the shocking subject that was discussed – vouchers in Chicago.

Rev. Senator James Meeks, a powerful African American state senator is leading the charge to help kids in the worst public schools.  The bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a start, and I am told the Archdiocese of Chicago is supportive.

A few years back, Barack Obama named him someone he looked to for “spiritual counsel.” Now the man they call “the Reverend Senator” has done the unthinkable: He’s introduced a bill to provide vouchers for as many as 42,000 students now languishing in Chicago’s worst public schools. He tells me he thinks he can get enough Democrats on his coalition to get it through.

Read more here

My first encounter with Rev. Meeks was rather comical…there are two organizations on the South Side of Chicago named House of Hope, one a shelter run by Catholic Nuns, and the other a 25,000 member mega-church led by Rev. James Meeks.  Driving to drop off some items for the shelter, I called the number I had for the House of Hope and was greeted by one of Rev. Meeks staff.  After a quick explanation, the staff member gave me the correct address for my delivery.  A few hours later, I received a call from another  Rev. Meeks staffer asking if there was any way they could help with the (Catholic) House of Hope Shelter.

Rev. James Meeks is the Senior Past at Salem Baptist Church, a 10,000 seat, televised, politically active congregation in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago.  He is also an Illinois State Senator and the head of the Senatorial education committee.  As Senator, Meeks is known as a partisan Democrat backing the party line in the sometimes fierce Illinois State Senate.  Rev-Sen. Meeks has been a leader of public demonstrations to increase funding for Chicago Public School students that, truthfully, have not been effective on a variety of levels.

However, starting late last year, Rev-Sen Meeks changed tactics in his quest for improving public school education.  Disgusted by neighborhood violence, and generations of failed schools in the City of Chicago, Rev-Sen Meeks has become a champion for funding students above the education system.  Today’s Chicago Sun-Times (lightly) touches on some of his proposals for reforming education.

A proposed state bill by Sen. James Meeks could signal the end for the Local School Council.

“I think they are radical changes,” the Chicago Democrat said Wednesday of the two bills now in Senate committees. “Isn’t that what the president ran on — change? America has voted for change.”

Hundreds of parent-led local school councils would be stripped of the critical power to pick principals under a bill introduced this week by the Rev. James Meeks, head of the Senate Education Committee.

Plus, up to 42,000 students at 65 of the city’s lowest-scoring public schools would be entitled to tuition vouchers to attend private or parochial schools under an amendment Meeks said he is planning to another bill.

“I think they are radical changes,” the Chicago Democrat said Wednesday of the two bills now in Senate committees. “Isn’t that what the president ran on — change? America has voted for change.”

To put it bluntly, the Local School Councils are a disgrace, corrupted via insider trading and a complete disservice to the students. Good riddance, but the more thorough fix is in Rev-Sen. Meeks plan to provide Dollars for Scholars. Under a preliminary proposal, $6500 would be provided to students aligned with 65 of the lowest performing public high schools in Chicago. The money would be available to younger grades as well, encompassing the grade schools which feed into the 65 high schools.

Sounds good, but Rev-Sen Meeks has made it much more interesting by attaching a capital expenditures reimbursement of up to $3500 per student per year for building and facilities for the schools receiving new students, bringing the total payments close to the full cost of education. The funds would be used by parents to chose any type of accredited education for their children, including Catholic and Christian Schools, Jewish Schools, Charter Schools and unaffiliated private schools.

Rev-Sen. Meeks recently spoke to a crowd at the Illinois Policy Institute about his plans, describing this as not a Republican or Democratic issue, rather an effort to educate children. This Monday, I shared a cab with a member of the Big Shoulder’s Fund, a support organization for Catholic Schools in Chicago, who explained to me that his great-grandfather campaigned for public support of parochial schools in 1909. I explained that this time we have broad leadership (and a catchy Dollars for Scholars slogan!). It’s election year in Illinois, so maybe it is time for a new alignment behind education and a turn away from an impasse as old as the public school system itself.