If you have been reading this blog for a while, you are familiar with Jeff Yass. He is a billionaire, the richest man in Pennsylvania. He spends money lavishly to privatize public schools. He gave Governor Abbott of Texas $6 million to promote vouchers and to defeat moderate Republicans who opposed vouchers. He also opposes abortion. The “Center for Education Reform” in DC gives out the Yass Prize for the most successful charter schools. Top prize is $1 million (a school in Harlem, NYC, cofounded by Sean “Diddy” Combs was recently a semi-finalist). Now Yass has decided to buy the Republican Party in North. Carolina to advance his goals.
Bob Hall of NC Newsline reports:
Despite strong opposition, the North Carolina Senate voted this month to boost enrollment in privately run K-12 schools by doubling state funding for tuition subsidies called “opportunity scholarships.” More than $200 million is earmarked for kids in high-income families.
Why would Republican leaders do this now when polls show voters oppose subsidies for the rich? And when public schools clearly need those funds – North Carolina ranks 48th in per-pupil spending.
It’s not about helping children. It’s about getting the money to win elections.
Truth be told, public education has long been warped by the corrupting influence of big money. Generations of North Carolinians suffered because employers profited by exploiting poorly educated workers. Politicians gave pro-education speeches but deliberately underfunded schools – worse in Black communities – effectively pushing students out of class into low-paying jobs.
I’m old enough to remember a textile mill CEO – and top political donor – telling state leaders that the UNC system was vital for training the managerial class but investing in a quality K-12 system was unnecessary. The elite and wannabe elite sent their children to private, all-white academies.
The mills are now largely gone, and there’s broad support to improve our schools and make real the 1997 NC Supreme Court Leandro ruling that our constitution “guarantee[s] every child of this state the opportunity to receive a sound basic education.”
The answer is campaign money. GOP leaders are telling the billionaires financing a national movementto privatize public education that the General Assembly will take radical steps to prove that, as one senator said, “North Carolina is at the forefront of school choice and education freedom.”
But an elitist, racist bias against robust public institutions, coupled with a political system tilted to wealthy donors, keeps slowing progress and distorting how legislators address the Leandro mandate.
For example, from 2010 to 2016, Oregon millionaire John Bryan contributed $700,000 to dozens of North Carolina politicians to gain support for his “school reform” agenda. In 2016, his investment paid off with legislative approval for an “innovative” program to convert low-performing public schools into charter schools, which his corporation would manage for a fee.
The program became a boondoggle, with no academic progress achieved. Bryan said his goal was to “inculcate my belief in the libertarian, free market, early American Founder’s principles” into schools. He died in 2020.
Sadly, a host of Bryan-like millionaires are now handing out big checks to encourage politicians to privatize rather than strengthen public education. At the top of the list is Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire with a passion for subsidized private schools and gambling.
In October 2022, Yass gave an eye-popping $1 million to a committee controlled by North Carolina Republican legislative leaders – its largest donation ever from an individual. Several months later, the General Assembly legalized sports gambling and expanded the voucher program to subsidize more private schools.
Yass is dramatically increasing his donations this year – he’s now the nation’s single biggest donor to federal campaigns and committees. He’s teaming up with other millionaires and Super PACs to finance advocacy groups and candidates who demonize diversity, promote censorship and attack schools.
He just donated $6 million to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his controversial voucher plan, plus $3.5 million to elect pro-plan legislators. Another $2 million went to a Virginia PAC backing GOP state legislators.
North Carolina Republican leaders also want more money from Yass and his ilk – and that inspires more radical steps, like giving vouchers worth millions to wealthy families.
Long range, these steps create a two-tier system: subsidized, costly private schools with little government oversight, geared to middle- and upper-class kids, and under-resourced public schools for the low income and poor who are disproportionately people of color. This is the opposite of the civic commitment to mutual uplift embedded in the Leandro decision.
Republicans will likely get their millions in campaign money from Jeff Yass et al, but at a steep price for the people of North Carolina.
One of the first voucher programs I remember reading an op-ed about was a proposed program for Washington, DC, in the mid- or late-90s, with the same name: opportunity scholarships.
Euphemisms galore.
Segregation is harmful to both students of color and white students. Black and brown students have more opportunity in mixed settings. White students in isolated settings tend to see those that are not like them as stereotypes. If we want our nation to be about opportunity for all, we should support opportunities for diverse students to be educated together. Public schools bring people together. School choice is a device that deliberately drives people apart and enhances segregation. In a country as divided as this one, it is essential that we provide quality public education for all.
Retired teacher, I wish you were Secretary of Education.
This confirms my speculation that the rash of choice bills are just a peeing contest among red state legislatures [“No, WE’RE the most conservative!”]: “GOP leaders are telling the billionaires… that the General Assembly will take radical steps to prove that… ‘North Carolina is at the forefront of school choice and education freedom.'”
Meanwhile, NC’s General Assembly has been run by the Republicans for over a dozen years now. They would probably make the same moves without all this dough, but they’re not going to turn it down 😉
I attended and taught in integrated schools. I saw the value of diversity and opportunity for all, but I am not a politician. It makes my skin crawl. My district tried to recruit me for administration. I took a couple of courses and decided against it. I’m a really teacher at my core.
The billionaires and millionaires who are bankrolling Trump don’t care about his threat to democracy — in fact, those billionaires and corporations see democracy as a threat to them because democracy allows mere ordinary citizens to tax them and to force them to produce products that do what they are intended to do and that don’t harm people or the environment.
But, there is an important aspect to Trump that billionaires haven’t considered:
BILLIONAIRES BEWARE!
Hey, Billionaires — Have you been counting how many Russian billionaires have been clumsy enough to fall out of windows stories above the street? Hmmm.
And what about those Russian billionaires and millionaires who have just sort of…well…disappeared from the public view?
America’s billionaires and millionaires need to pause and think what can happen to them if a Putin wanna-be like Trump gains the absolute power he craves to control everything from Congress to the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department to weaponize them against anybody who even merely irks him?
So, Billionaires — Beware of open windows if Trump gets power. If he wants what you’ve got, he’ll take it. If he takes a dislike to you, you disappear.