Betsy DeVos visited Kansas City Academy, a progressive private school in Kansas City on her national tour promoting school choice. Probably she expected a Queen’s welcome but that’s not what happened. The students were not happy. They felt used. They didn’t u detstand why she came to her school.

Their responses appeared on Alternet.

One was a transgender student. Some students decided not to come to school that day.

An eighth grader wrote:

“I honestly do not understand why she would want to visit our school that stands against almost everything she stands for. I also do not understand why my principal would accept her visit, but I’ll get back to that later. But what truly angers me is she’s using this school as an example of a school that works. Her stance on public schools angers me to a point I can’t describe in text. And at first I might come off hypocritical since, well, I go to a private school, but the reason I’m here is public school isn’t properly funded and equipped with the capability to help me. And if they were better funded I’d like to think I wouldn’t have to be at KCA. But all of this leads me to believe the only reason my principal accepted her visit is to get the press to grow the school and possibly to feed his ego, but I don’t truly know.”

A junior was not impressed. “As one of the students who had the opportunity to ask the Secretary questions, the experience was dispiriting at best. In response to a question about her plans, she mentioned through a jumble of repetitive, pleasant-sounding word salad with assorted jargon as garnish her plans to do away with “burdensome regulations.” At that point my concern was that even regulations that are apparently burdensome can still be necessary to protect vulnerable students. My curiosity was piqued, so I asked for an example — just one example, that stuck out to her. I got a whole lot of not much at all. She mentioned there being regulations that required the documentation of certain information that, as she described it, may not be necessary. But no specifics. Insisting did no good. DeVos instead chose to turn to our principal, Kory Gallagher, for agreement. It became a laughing matter to them. I could not find the humor in what seemed to me to be a show of incompetence.”

A junior, far wiser than Secretary DeVos, wrote:

“Before Betsy DeVos’s visit to my school I remember not caring that she was coming. My main reason for not caring was because this is just high school, and once I am out, none of it will matter. But I realized it goes beyond high school. I realized her policies go beyond school. They will affect the whole of society. Public school is a necessary instrument in building and fortifying a strong society and public. We must educate the people to avoid an obsolete country, where a few rule the majority, because the majority are not educated enough to stand up for their rights. And that is what I learned after DeVos’s visit.”