Most schools will be closed this fall to the pandemic, and families need help right now. Last week KOMO Radio interviewed me about giving parents $3,000 per child to hire tutors, create learning pods, get access to the internet, or defray the cost of private school tuition. The unions attacked the proposal. Here’s the key exchange:  

Carleen Johnson, KOMO News Radio (ABC Seattle affiliate):

“…Now comes the suggestion that with schools being closed, parents should get a portion of their child’s educational costs back, about $3,000.

Liv Finne, Washington Policy Center:

“Yes, so parents could hire a tutor that would meet in a small pod with another group of children, and get educated.

National Education Association, the national union:

“This will do nothing but hurt our most vulnerable students.

Carleen Johnson, KOMO News Radio:

“Washington Education Association sent this statement in response: Voucher schemes take funds away from schools for private use, hurting students and exacerbating inequities.”

This is no surprise. It is in the union’s economic self-interest to oppose helping parents educate their children while schools are closed.   

Washington’s taxpayers provide the schools about $17 billion in funding each year, from all state, federal and local revenue sources, which is $15,800 per student on average statewide. In Seattle taxpayers provide $20,200 to educate each student. Taxpayers don’t provide this funding to maintain closed schools, or to fund wealthy unions. They provide this money to educate the 1.1 million students in Washington state.  

Schools are claiming they will improve online instruction this fall, but many parents are skeptical. Children, especially young children, cannot sit before a computer screen all day long. Instead, parents are taking charge and forming learning pods. Parents are hiring tutors and retired teachers to teach a small pod of children, while keeping them safe from the virus. Parents with economic means can afford to create these small, alternate schools. But working parents do not have the time or resources to do the same for their children.    

The closure of schools is the greatest inequity in public education today. Working families cannot teach and supervise their children while schools are closed. Their children are vulnerable, and falling behind. Their children have already lost one-third of a school year, and now it appears they will lose the entire 2020-21 school year. The education of a whole generation of children is being hurt by these school closures. It is young children who will suffer the long-term consequences of fewer higher education and job opportunities.     

Giving parents $3,000 for each child is a modest proposal, representing only 15 percent of spending in Seattle Public Schools. Helping parents in this way would help reduce the enormous inequity of closed schools. Parents need this funding to help their children learn.  

A society committed to reducing inequity in public education would listen to the pleas of parents, and not accept the mean-spirited proclamations of self-interested unions.