-By Israel Teitelbaum
School Choice Voter:
The good news is that you can now place four phone calls that can improve the future of this great country. Four of the leading presidential candidates spoke out strongly for school choice at their last debate of this primary season. Your phone calls can get them to actualize this position into public policy. This is their opportunity to demonstrate their leadership ability by translating their policies to proposed legislation. They are asking for our votes. The least they can do for us is to demonstrate their ability to translate their policies into action. It takes only one Congressman and one Senator to sponsor legislation in Congress.
Below are the four presidential candidates who spoke forcefully for school choice, along with excerpts of their statements and their campaign phone numbers. Phone calls are preferable because you are assured of direct contact with a campaign representative. The best way to do this is to get the name of your contact, ask for a response, and follow up. Your calls represent many thousands of voters, because very few voters actually pick up the phone and call.
Feel free to express your feelings on school choice. Our objective is for the candidates to use their considerable influence to sponsor legislation that will restore sanity to our educational system. In short, our message is: “We agree with CANDIDATE NAME that school choice is the solution to our broken educational system. Please ask him to sponsor now legislation to provide equal educational opportunity for every child.”
We have dubbed this legislation The Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity. This will provide equitable educational funding for all children, including those attending private and religious school, while respecting the liberty of schools in hiring and provision of services.
Although there is not now in Congress enough support to pass this legislation, we have the enormous opportunity to elect – on November 4, 2008 – 435 new U.S. Congressmen and 35 new Senators who favor this legislation.
Please pass this great opportunity on to your contacts and keep us informed of any developments.
Thank you for your efforts.
All the best.
Israel
**********
Sen. Fred Thomson: Phone: 515-276-9427.
“…every time someone wants to inject a little choice into the equation for the benefit of the kids, inject a little freedom, inject a little competition…the National Education Association is there to oppose it, and bring in millions and millions of dollars to go on television and work and scare people and misrepresent the situation on the ground. I think that just goes against everything that we know, that can make progress in this country.”
Gov. Mitt Romney: Phone: 857-288-6400.
“I agree with Senator Thompson on that. Boy, they’ve been the biggest obstacle to change in education and choice.”
Sen. John McCain:Phone: 703-418-2008.
“We don’t have a choice and competition. We need it in K through 12.”
Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Phone: 212-835-9449
“Parents should choose the school that their child goes to, the same way people choose higher education.”
____________
Israel Teitelbaum is currently creating a new school choice organization to help further the efforts to improve our public schools. His blog will soon be up and running at SchoolChoiceVoter.org. Mr. Teitelbaum can be reached at israel@schoolchoicenj.org.