The American Dream Starts With a Quality Education

People from around the world come to the United States for a better life. They understand the greatness and uniqueness to our country and want to live the American Dream. A quality education is the starting point for their children to obtain the American Dream.

There are many stories of parents who will do whatever it takes to make sure their children has access to a quality education. There are some that even are willing to go to jail. Let's look at a couple of examples from around the country.

Hamlet and Olesia Garcia in Lower Moreland, PA were arrested and charged with Education Fraud (stealing services) of $10,752.81 in August 2012. Their crime, using Olesia's father's address so their 5 yr old could attend a better school than the one in Philadelphia. The Garcia family has offered to pay the tuition, but the school district has refused opting for prosecution.

An Ohio mother, Kelley Williams-Bolar, spent 9 days in jail for wanting to get her daughter into a safe and better school. She used her father's address to get her daughters into to the highly ranked schools in Copley-Fairlawn School District instead of the Akron district she lived in.

"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she said. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them."

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.

Our current system of public education is broken and has now reached a point of great disparity between rich and poor schools. Denying parents access to quality education should be found unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as was done in 1954 in Brown vs Topeka. That ruling ended the practice of "separate but equal" used to justify segregation of schools by race. We must now end "separate and unequal" between rich and poor.

ALL children deserve access to a quality education and should not be arrested or imprisoned to make sure that happens. Fund the child and not the bureaucracy.

The disparities of funding and parental choice were highlighted during School Choice Week at a rally at Chicago's Union Station on January 29th. As you can see from the pictures of the rally, thousands came out to tell Springfield "We want choice". Here are some of the slogans on the signs:

• Great Teachers Change Lives!
• Got Choice?
• I yearn to learn!
• An effective education for all!
• Let me Learn!
• Choice means Hope!
• The American Dream Starts With a Quality Education

View pictures at Champion News....