John Kirtley's reply to an article
What is the purpose of All Children Matter? We work for the election of public officials who support school choice for low income parents. Plain and simple. We are a single issue group. The more important question is: why do we need to exist?
Conveniently, on the same day your column appeared, your paper provided a perfect illustration of why ACM needs to be. The SPT did a photojournalist feature on issues in the election:
Click on “Portraits of the Issues.” This story featured Laquanda Fields, a teenager on the tax credit scholarship program. I know her story well. She was on track to be another statistic—one of the more than 50% of African American children who don’t graduate. Instead she is dual enrolled at her chosen school and a local community college. According to her, she would not have made it without the scholarship.
As you know, there are parties that want to kill her scholarship program. She and more than 16,000 other low income children depend upon it. They have a chance at a productive life because of it.
Those who want to kill the program are very powerful politically. This power is in part due to money. The public school teachers’ union takes money out of hundreds of thousands of paychecks every week—even from teachers who strongly agree that Laquanda should have her scholarship (we have the poll results that show that). The union uses that money to help elect legislators. Until recently, Laquanda, her parents and the tens of thousands of low income families who have or desperately want choice had no one fighting for them. Now they do.
It’s important for you to know that ACM is non-partisan—we will fight just as hard in races where there are only Democrats, or we will go after Republicans who don’t support school choice for low income families. Our biggest investment in Florida House races this year was in a Democratic primary involving a supporter of parental choice.
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I thought you might be interested in seeing both a column that appeared in the St. Pete Times yesterday and my email to the columnist. It complains about the tactics of All Children Matter in a Thanks, John By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist Charlie Justice, 38, is a mild-mannered Democrat from But according to the stack of campaign brochures sitting on my desk, he is a bad man.
Published October 29, 2006
posted by Whitney Tilson at 1:32 PM
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