Your Kids, Your Money, Your Choice — with Michael Alexander

[00:00:00] thanks for tuning in today you’re listening to educate for life radio down here in southern california we’re on k praise 12 10 a.m as well as

[00:00:07] fm 106.1 in north county i’m your host kevin conover and my website is educate4life.org and

[00:00:13] today we’re talking about school choice if you have if you know anything about school choice

[00:00:19] it means a lot of things to a lot of different people but it’s a movement that is gaining speed and gaining ground and

[00:00:25] there are more and more students that are engaging in school choice uh the exciting thing about it uh kovid

[00:00:31] really had a big impact on the education system as schools shut down more and more people

[00:00:36] have been looking at alternatives to standard uh public schools just because there seems to be uh for a lot of kids a real

[00:00:44] uh gaping hole in their education since covet happened and so lots of people have been exploring uh different options

[00:00:51] and i’ve always been passionate about school choice because i believe that it’s the key in in

[00:00:57] improving the education system and helping kids to really um get the education they need all across the board my guest today is

[00:01:04] michael alexander and he is the founder of uh the website and and the movement in

[00:01:11] california uh which is california’s the california school choice foundation

[00:01:16] and uh michael i just want to thank you for being on the program today hey it’s my pleasure and thank you for

[00:01:22] having me on it’s a it’s a it’s a privilege and an opportunity

[00:01:27] to talk to you and to parents all over the state about the crisis in california schools

[00:01:34] well tell us about that i mean um what was the impetus for you getting involved with the school choice movement and uh why are

[00:01:40] you so passionate about this what’s going on with education in california well my own uh involvement in school

[00:01:47] choice uh goes back uh decades uh you know i uh i’ve always had my children

[00:01:55] in private schools because of the problems with quality uh with discipline with safety and a

[00:02:03] number of issues in other words the same issues that every parent faces in california

[00:02:08] each day back in the early 90s the last time we tried to deduce school choice i was a vigorous

[00:02:15] advocate on behalf of school choice but my real

[00:02:20] uh impetus is it comes from the freedom and the right of the primary

[00:02:27] right of parents of natural and divine to educate and to morally form their own children

[00:02:34] without interference from the state and when we look at what schools are more than any place anything else they

[00:02:42] take your money at gunpoint it’s called taxes and then they take your kids so they

[00:02:48] take your money put it into school they take your kids they teach them what they want if they teach them anything

[00:02:54] and then tell you if you don’t like it well you have school choice right now you can take

[00:03:00] your kids out of this public school and put them send them to harvard west lake or some

[00:03:06] other private school except for they have your money so we need to drop the con here and

[00:03:13] and if there’s anything that irritates me it’s to listen to these

[00:03:19] defenders of the indefensible talk about how how

[00:03:26] objectionable public funding of private schools is well let’s stop right there there’s

[00:03:32] no such thing as public funding of anything they take our money routed through their

[00:03:37] post office box send out a government check and call it public funding you are always and in every instance

[00:03:44] privately funding everything in this state including your

[00:03:49] uh your children’s education that’s why we always say it it’s your you know it’s your children

[00:03:57] it’s your money and it ought to be your choice so you know i share with millions of

[00:04:03] parents they’re concerned uh uh about their children’s education

[00:04:08] but go ahead i’ll let you ask a few questions or yeah i can go on for an hour

[00:04:13] well you don’t pull any punches that’s for sure no no no neither do they that’s right so

[00:04:20] well i i love what you’re talking about a lot of parents are and students are completely unaware of

[00:04:25] school choice especially if they live in california because there’s been such a an effort to essentially uh silence any

[00:04:32] opinions about school choice or that movement um even though you have states like florida and arizona which are

[00:04:37] uh going full tilt school school choice and are giving incredible opportunities um to them you know a lot of people

[00:04:43] a lot of people don’t know this um but i want to i want you for our listeners to explain this that this is not a partisan issue this

[00:04:49] is something that everybody on both sides of the fence can get on board with can you explain

[00:04:54] school choice in layman’s terms for our listeners who may not know what that is thank you uh and first of all uh for

[00:05:02] your listeners the place to go is california

[00:05:07] schoolchoice.org california school choice dot o-r-g we there’s a

[00:05:13] full range of materials there you will see that we have a wide range of educational

[00:05:19] issues that we’re dealing with helping parents to opt out of these these things they like

[00:05:27] to call sex ed you know perversion class 101

[00:05:35] helping them homeschoolers to access other resources know what their rights are and so forth

[00:05:41] but probably the biggest and most significant policy initiative that we’re supporting is our

[00:05:48] plan to place on the november 2022 general election ballot statewide ballot

[00:05:56] a school choice initiative now we call it the educational freedom act

[00:06:01] and it has four key features number one it will create what is known as an

[00:06:07] education savings account esa is sometimes known for every k-12 child in the state of

[00:06:16] california number two that account will annually be

[00:06:21] credited for each child in every family each child

[00:06:27] the child’s pro-rata share that is his percentage of the of the overall amount of money

[00:06:34] spent under what is known as proposition 98 and that’s a basic school funding

[00:06:40] mechanism in california and that amount is currently 12 500

[00:06:46] per year wow number three the parents not the politicians

[00:06:52] will be able to direct that money to a participating school now i can be the existing public or

[00:07:00] charter school or listen to this an accredited private or parochial or religious known as a

[00:07:08] religious school and number four sorry about that that’s unheard of in california too

[00:07:14] there is no there is no private school choice in california i mean we have charter schools and so forth but there’s nothing like that

[00:07:19] no we the yeah number four let me come back and this is the most important thing is that any money left over

[00:07:27] can be saved and used kevin for college vocational training or other approved

[00:07:34] educational expense so yeah it’s complete freedom it doesn’t discriminate

[00:07:40] for or against anybody it’s pure american it’s logical and it’s long long overdue

[00:07:48] and you’re quite right uh when you say there’s no no school choice in california as we

[00:07:55] know it uh you know now you do have the choice if you have a heck of a lot of money or

[00:08:01] you’re willing to sacrifice everything else in your life like so many parents and families do

[00:08:06] well then you have a choice or if you got a lot of money you could buy a house

[00:08:12] and pay an extra million or two million dollars to live in san marino or palace verdes or the west side where

[00:08:19] all the rich folks live well then you have the choice so what you and i are trying to do here

[00:08:25] kevin is to make sure that every family has the choices that rich families

[00:08:32] already have right and this is why this is this is why this is a nonpartisan issue

[00:08:38] so you know a lot of this is coming from a lot of conservatives uh have been have been um you know

[00:08:45] shouting shouting about this and talking about this but this is something that democrats want just as much as any any conservatives or

[00:08:51] oh yeah and talk to us what has been your experience discussing this with democrats

[00:08:57] oh democrats you know in the past organization if you want to call these guys democrats

[00:09:03] la rasa has supported school choice black panthers have supported school

[00:09:10] choice there are lots of pla people in places that want to educate their own children

[00:09:15] their own way and i’m fine with that they’re the parents not me so you will find for example a very

[00:09:23] well-known uh democrat gloria romero of former senator romero

[00:09:31] she is a vigorous advocate of school choice and i believe that she will support our

[00:09:37] version of it there are many versions um when you go into the neighborhoods

[00:09:43] and and if you don’t start talking about donald trump or joe biden republican

[00:09:51] conservative if you just go to them and you you ask them would you be interested in

[00:09:57] in this program they universally uh 99 out of 100 people

[00:10:02] signed our electronic free petition that’s not the formal one but you know any of your listeners

[00:10:09] should go to californiaschoolchoice.org and look up their sign the petition that’s the

[00:10:16] digital one before the real one comes out november so we are getting 99 out of 100 people

[00:10:23] because who knew uh you know they care more about their children than they do about party

[00:10:29] and now i make no bows about it i’m a conservative i’m a republican

[00:10:36] i’m a catholic i’m not asking anybody to vote for school choice

[00:10:42] because i want them to be republican or anything else how they vote is their business not mine

[00:10:49] but what we need is a better educated populace and let me come back to the big issue

[00:10:55] here here’s why this is nonpartisan right now in california

[00:11:02] we call school choice this operation that they’re running right now kevin how in the world is it a

[00:11:08] school you know if you’re 47 48 in the nation and if you’re in lausd

[00:11:16] los angeles unified school district or it’s equivalent down there in san diego

[00:11:22] where you’re at you’re literally at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the heap

[00:11:28] and that’s what phony uh testing standards which have been dumbed down over the

[00:11:34] decades what these kids don’t know is amazing they shouldn’t even be able to call themselves schools

[00:11:41] but here’s our our problem we’re bringing in all kinds of people from all kinds of

[00:11:47] places and we’re not giving them or anybody else the tools that they need

[00:11:53] to participate fully in our economy and in our our our society

[00:12:00] and in our republican form of government with this hollowed out left a little

[00:12:06] i’m sorry oh no go ahead sorry that was all right yeah keep going no no problem

[00:12:13] what we’re uh what what we’re dealing with here is a hollowing out of our society with a

[00:12:19] lot of people grouped at the bottom a lot of people grouped at the top when in fact

[00:12:25] america has always depended upon economic social and political mobility

[00:12:33] and the the irreducible condition preceding to that is

[00:12:40] education literacy if we don’t educate our children all of them no

[00:12:46] exceptions i don’t care whether they’re legal illegal or what their sex orientation religion i

[00:12:52] don’t care how their parents vote that’s what our country requires in order to survive

[00:12:59] and right now we are no longer uh no longer there and when you consider

[00:13:04] all the people that we brought in from other countries we’ve done nothing to actually assimilate them

[00:13:11] so they come here and they still remain alien quote unquote that is

[00:13:16] they are still something other than you and me that’s why they the root word of alien is

[00:13:21] other somebody other than us they never get uh assimilated and they never get the job

[00:13:28] skills they need they never get the language schools that they need and we end up with this chaos that we

[00:13:34] have in our society and believe me the teachers unions are presiding over all this

[00:13:39] those people don’t care they don’t give a darn yeah and that and that kind of uh is kind of a segue into

[00:13:46] into the next subject here which is that you know you you said that it was all the way back in the 90s when you uh

[00:13:51] tried to get a bill passed uh you know in california yeah and you’ve been passionate about this for a long time a

[00:13:56] lot of people gave up hope and said hey this is never going to happen in california right what makes you feel like it’s different this time than it was before

[00:14:03] well these clowns overplayed their hand right yeah yeah you know there’s uh

[00:14:09] remember that old joke if a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear did it really

[00:14:14] make a sound well if a teacher doesn’t teach how the hell do you call them a teacher

[00:14:20] right so those people you know part of the the overall corona con shut down the

[00:14:26] schools they shut everything else down refused to go back to work and imposed

[00:14:32] conditions that could not be met and they kept moving the goal post changing the rules

[00:14:38] everything else and they’re still only about halfway back but if you’re only overall in this state 47th in the

[00:14:46] country why bother right yeah why don’t we just end in in this joke and and give your kids back

[00:14:53] give you your money back and you go make your own arrangements so these people are just horrid i mean they look bad

[00:15:01] they look angry and for the first time on tv uh in the home the parents got a load

[00:15:09] of those people that were teaching them and they found out what a motley crew they were

[00:15:15] and how little real learning was going on and on top of it after paying their

[00:15:20] taxes people found them we went from one teacher in a classroom with

[00:15:26] 25 kids and one teaching assistant to one teacher working three hours on tv

[00:15:31] and 25 teacher assistants called parents right so you know they won’t do their

[00:15:38] job they assist that you pay taxes and then do their job for them on top of it

[00:15:44] and people are right up to here so what happened next it went on and on and on along with the

[00:15:50] rest of this corona con and finally the parents hit the streets

[00:15:56] and this happened more in affluent communities than than elsewhere they hit the streets to

[00:16:02] protest it nothing happened of course yes so then they went to the school boards

[00:16:07] and the school boards all of whom had been elected with teacher union money right and don’t cross the street

[00:16:15] with without permission from the teacher union they they held up their hands oh our

[00:16:20] hands are tied well who tied them right he answered the the teacher unions

[00:16:26] so they said well this isn’t working i tell you what why don’t we recall them so then they they got up

[00:16:34] they found out just how long an expensive and uncertain a recall is because the only thing that you do is

[00:16:41] replace one with another right so he said well you know americans

[00:16:46] are dumb they’ll try a lot of things well that didn’t work so all this is going through so finally

[00:16:52] they said you know something you know we had to just figure out a way to get our money and get our kids to go someplace

[00:16:58] else and people started looking around and they’re you know that my phone has been ringing

[00:17:05] for years but it really started to ring here about 60 to 90 days ago

[00:17:11] and right now parrots are no longer demanding that the schools be reopened parents are really saying never

[00:17:19] again so a lot of parents will go back maybe to these public schools but they want the right to take their

[00:17:25] kids elsewhere because they don’t want to put up with this ever again they learn their lesson yeah they’re much go ahead well i was

[00:17:33] gonna say and they got a real close look at the leadership of the unions and man so some of those

[00:17:40] uh teachers represent man those girls are gnarly right wow yeah so that so the

[00:17:48] parents finally got a got a uh really got a grip on what’s actually happening for the first time and then

[00:17:54] they’ve woken up because they have to they have to be aware because they’re seeing what’s going on with their kids i mean i’m a vice principal at a christian high

[00:18:00] school and we have numerous we have numerous uh parents coming over going i gotta get my kid

[00:18:06] in a normal school because this is a disaster and so um it’s really an amazing thing

[00:18:13] so uh so for those of you listening who are just tuning in my guest is michael alexander he is the founder

[00:18:19] of the california school choice uh foundation you can check them out on the web they are at

[00:18:26] californiaschoolchoice.org and he has put together an initiative

[00:18:32] to get on the ballot an educational freedom act which is meant to give students and

[00:18:38] parents the opportunity to go to the school of their choice which is really exciting to me yeah i think we’ve been we’ve been dying

[00:18:43] for this so um tell tell our listeners again uh michael um when is this going to be on the ballot

[00:18:50] and what do they have to do to make sure it gets on the ballot right very good thank you uh the

[00:18:56] initiative is uh is going to be on the november 2022

[00:19:02] ballot now before we can do that we have to submit our petition to the attorney

[00:19:08] general there’s this regular schedule that we follow that language of the initiative

[00:19:15] will be submitted to the attorney general no later than august 1st of this year then the attorney general

[00:19:23] gets to write what they call title and summary you ever see those paragraphs at the top of the bill

[00:19:29] that says what the bill’s all about well in there they will say that uh you know

[00:19:35] the school choice bill calls for human sacrifice and and what

[00:19:40] towards your head and the republican collapse and the rest of western civilization with it

[00:19:46] yada yada okay so i get back that phony title and summary about 45 or 60 days

[00:19:54] bottom line we’ll probably be going out for real what we call wet signatures

[00:20:01] on the petition so then we have 180 days to collect

[00:20:07] uh a million valid signatures we’ll collect 1.5 million to make sure

[00:20:14] submitted and then once approved all the signatures it’ll be on the november ballot

[00:20:19] now what can people uh do how do you get this money what do i do now simple you go to

[00:20:27] californiaschoolchoice.org make sure i know who you are i go on to give me your name

[00:20:32] i have a digital pre-petition that is uh a statement of support sign that

[00:20:38] statement of support because that helps me tell everybody in the state

[00:20:44] and we’re talking about the the big contributors especially that that need to come that there’s

[00:20:50] broad support for this the number three you can give me some luck all right

[00:20:55] so you can go on there you can make a donation make it a monthly donation two five ten twenty dollars a month

[00:21:03] hundred whatever you got right write a big check if you can but everybody

[00:21:08] who is uh uh who is condemned to a school should invest in their future especially

[00:21:14] those who are already in private schools invest in your future not only your

[00:21:20] financial future but that of the rest of the state because even if you’re happy with your

[00:21:26] circumstance we’ve got millions of kids coming out of this system

[00:21:31] that are not ready to do anything and we’re just creating a larger and larger dependent uh

[00:21:38] class that just cannot do anything you know it’s just

[00:21:44] absolutely outrageous and this this applies at uh to

[00:21:50] everyone and if you’re you’re if you’re uh christian oriented bear in mind that we

[00:21:56] have that we have a special obligation

[00:22:02] to the poor uh and to those who cannot speak effectively for themselves to take this

[00:22:08] action and make sure that we have a future because whether we like it or not their future is our future and that’s

[00:22:15] the way that it is when you have all these people circling around and pandering to these folks in a

[00:22:23] language that we don’t understand and they lie to people in spanish about us

[00:22:28] then lying lie about them to us in english that’s the game we have to end that game

[00:22:34] and and we can do all of this with basic old american principles that’s

[00:22:40] what’s important and uh and it’s going to lead to an incredible innovation in

[00:22:48] education because now the money will flow into it and private schools that maybe are not

[00:22:55] able to uh to do all the things for their students that they would like to they’ll have a

[00:23:01] little bit more money to work with um some schools you have for example

[00:23:07] some of the private schools uh you might have a lot of parents who might be able to come up with five

[00:23:14] thousand dollars but they can’t come up with ten right yeah or parents who

[00:23:20] go to a school that’s twenty thousand a year they might be able to come up with ten but it can’t be twenty well now here’s

[00:23:27] twelve five yeah and a lot of folks will would just put it you know they’ll save money

[00:23:33] because some of those like k through six those are the cheapest years to teach kids and uh you should be able to save a

[00:23:40] little bit of money for college yeah and uh and so forth but uh i know you have other questions go ahead

[00:23:47] yeah you know our our school gives away 500 000 to over 500 thousand dollars in scholarships every year

[00:23:52] i mean yes and and just to survive for a christian school to survive is very very difficult um because because of the fact that if

[00:24:00] you’re not serving a real rich community um it is very difficult people who are very affluent

[00:24:05] and so um this kind of thing makes a gigantic difference in the ability to serve the people that actually need to

[00:24:11] be served and to really be able to provide a high quality education uh that’s right you know a lot of people

[00:24:16] though michael alexander there’s a lot of people are saying things like well if you do this you’re going to take so much money out of the

[00:24:22] public schools that you’re going to make the public schools even worse than they already are and impossible [Laughter]

[00:24:29] what do you mean they’re going to go to 50 from 48. yeah there you go don’t play with my emotions here you

[00:24:35] know those clowns yeah you know i get that all the time oh you’re going to ruin public schools and

[00:24:41] i say hey look people you guys already did that right why do you think that is

[00:24:47] why do you think that the public schools have gotten so i heard that about one-third of the students in uh la county actually

[00:24:53] drop out of school something like one-third or oh it’s higher than that yeah uh lausd has a dropout rate

[00:25:01] of of of about 50 they only graduate about 50 percent of their kids

[00:25:08] and the other 50 uh are are barely functional right yeah you know so they’re not

[00:25:14] coming out of there ready ready for college you should talk with some of the people that run

[00:25:20] the city uh uh the community colleges yeah you know they don’t they used to

[00:25:26] put put the the new arrivals you know they’re 19 years old they’re adults now

[00:25:32] they should be back in grammar school except you can’t have adults mixed in with children right

[00:25:37] yeah yeah so so they take these these people yeah they’re they’re now 18

[00:25:44] they’re they’re adults they put him at the community colleges and and and over half of the entrants

[00:25:50] they had to put into remedial well the school teacher youngest got them said hey look you got

[00:25:55] a good talking about this remedial stuff you’re making us look bad right so i don’t know what they’re

[00:26:01] what they call it now so like all bureaucrats they change it you know the the problem

[00:26:08] is uh you know for a lot of folks here is that they think that the public

[00:26:15] so-called school system is in fact about schools well it’s not

[00:26:20] it’s about the people and the special interests who run them and they because of the way california

[00:26:27] law is structured 40 of all tax revenue is earmarked for the so-called school system

[00:26:33] now they don’t have to educate they’ve got no competition so they just keep expanding the

[00:26:39] enterprise charging more money and they get on tv and live they just

[00:26:44] lie yeah and and the people who know this best are not the suburban

[00:26:52] uh relatively affluent parents that might bring their children to you

[00:26:58] to educate them kevin the people who know this best are are the mothers and the fathers

[00:27:05] in the inner city schools they know that that system doesn’t care about them

[00:27:11] and you know it’s easy for them to conclude kevin that you and i don’t care about them either

[00:27:17] because from year to year to year these children and these families are condemned to that

[00:27:23] system which which is an outrage it’s a moral outrage

[00:27:28] the whole damn thing down there and then they come to think that you and i don’t care because they’re not getting along

[00:27:34] well we care but we haven’t found a way to influence that system the only way a school choice and this is

[00:27:41] our opportunity for us to go in to any neighborhood any zip code any church any organization

[00:27:49] any home and tell them we’re here to fix that problem because your children have a right to

[00:27:55] education you don’t have to vote for me you don’t have to worship at the same place i do

[00:28:01] you don’t even have to like me what you have to do is to vote for your kid yeah that’s what

[00:28:07] you got to do and lo and behold you know that’s the way most folks

[00:28:12] feel so all of this not you should talk with the black parents man are they on fire

[00:28:20] they are just nuts about the so-called sex ad and the complete failure to educate

[00:28:27] their children yeah so you know this is this is a total and complete outrage so

[00:28:34] they kick in their propaganda machine yeah uh and they help help fund it you know

[00:28:39] they’re probably gonna spend 200 million dollars to beat us here kevin they’re not going to win

[00:28:45] i’m going to make them spend all that money all right and you know they’ve got it they get the

[00:28:51] book publishers and all the rest of the special interests to come in here

[00:28:56] and claim that i’m ruining the schools right yeah right yeah i’ve been running them

[00:29:03] for 30 years if i ran on my fire oh yeah every last one well yeah i mean

[00:29:08] i’ve been i’ve been talking to a lot of a lot of the people on the radio recently uh who are

[00:29:14] working against what’s happening in the school system with sex education with uh

[00:29:20] crt the critical race theory and the historical revisionism all that stuff who are fighting that and

[00:29:26] um that’s how i even found out about what you were doing is because one of my guests mentioned uh what you’re trying to do in in 2022

[00:29:33] and um i think that’s that we need to get the word out about this um what what are your strategies here

[00:29:39] for networking and getting um more and more people in the know on this and reaching

[00:29:45] reaching out to both sides of the aisle you know republican and democrat to uh make them aware so that they’re

[00:29:50] not deceived by by uh the people on the left who want to shut this down to the teachers unions that would love to shut this down

[00:29:57] yeah great question and this brings us to the crux of what we’re doing

[00:30:02] school choice is a good idea now and it always has been what we have had is entrenched interest

[00:30:10] out there to oppose it by lying let me start by by examining for a

[00:30:16] moment why certain initiatives fail what happens there are a lot of good

[00:30:22] people in this state who come up with good ideas and they’ll gather some people around

[00:30:27] them they’ll get some money together and if it’s a good enough idea they’ll be able to go out and find some larger

[00:30:34] contributors who will help them get an initiative on the ballot

[00:30:40] but they spend all their time and all their money getting it on the ballot getting it qualified then

[00:30:46] they come down to may june july of election year

[00:30:52] they’re exhausted they’re broke nobody’s there to come now they’ve got

[00:30:57] to pass it and in 90 or 120 days

[00:31:02] they have to suddenly create a grassroots network because they don’t have 50 or

[00:31:09] 100 million dollars or 200 in cash to fight the teachers unions and

[00:31:14] the rest of the special interests and all the rest of the communists are going to come out here and oppose this

[00:31:20] all right so what we’ve done and this is hugely important what we’ve done is to create

[00:31:29] the structure of the grassroots organization now we dragged and dropped phase three

[00:31:35] to phase one and that’s what we’ve been doing in building so the way that we get this passed is

[00:31:42] that for example in your school out there what i need is a team leader who will recruit two or

[00:31:50] three other parents with them and they will be the people who are embedded

[00:31:55] in that school and their job will be to get as many parents as possible to sign

[00:32:02] my my statement of support on the on the system right now give a little bit this

[00:32:08] is not a this is not a funding pitch here per se but give me some of that little bit

[00:32:14] of money so i can go tell the big guys that my people are in they don’t have much but they’re in you

[00:32:20] know and they’re giving what they can each month on top of everything else do that and then stand by be because

[00:32:29] when that petition is approved by the attorney general then it’s going to be up on the internet

[00:32:35] we’ll have video instructions and everything else and now you go back to all those people

[00:32:41] that you recruited within that school and there you get their signatures on that petition the wet the wet

[00:32:48] signatures then you work together to volunteer to go out to supermarkets stand out churches i need a team inside

[00:32:56] of every school every parish every private school every organization uh you know

[00:33:04] every block zip code mailbox i need somebody in charge of that because what we’re up against folks and

[00:33:11] pay close attention what you what you think of as a public school system

[00:33:17] what you think of as teachers unions is nothing but a precinct operation

[00:33:22] and those 350 000 members of the california so-called teachers

[00:33:29] association each of them contributes 1 000 a year

[00:33:35] now even if you went to one of their schools and you can’t do multiplication

[00:33:41] whip out your obama phones and plug that number in there and that comes to 350 million dollars

[00:33:48] per year 700 yeah hello

[00:33:53] yes lord yeah uh 700 million every two years and they’ll spend it all and then some

[00:33:59] diabetes and those 350 000 uh members of the cta are spread out over

[00:34:06] 10 000 schools again whip out that obama phone clear the calculator and

[00:34:12] divide it and you come up with an average of 35 california teachers association union

[00:34:20] members in every school now those are precinct workers and they’re going to send stuff home in

[00:34:26] the go home bags right and they’re going to bad-mouth me they’re going to do everything this could be fun you know but

[00:34:33] you know they’re gonna run this down and how you know uh alexander wants to bundle you up and

[00:34:39] send you back to mexico right they’re gonna say every lie possible it’s racist don’t you know

[00:34:46] uh it’s gonna be hard to persuade parents but that means that i have to have

[00:34:51] parents out in the in the traffic circle the pickups i’ve got to have people in pta

[00:34:57] who know say hey look don’t let them tell you this stuff you know we’re going to get you 12 500

[00:35:03] each year but nino right and if they want to and if they want to keep going to the public schools it’s not that they

[00:35:09] can’t go if they want to put their money into that they can do that kevin to paraphrase a famous man

[00:35:16] if you like your public school

[00:35:22] that’s great right yeah yeah you don’t have to leave

[00:35:29] stay there right so what about so michael what about um what about teachers let’s say you know

[00:35:35] i’ve got a lot of friends that are teachers in public school and and uh you know and if we have this

[00:35:41] conversation what am i supposed to say to them just to help them understand that hey this is a good thing it’s not a bad thing

[00:35:48] uh tell them to go to work first of all yeah get back to work and earn your pay

[00:35:53] they’re not allowed to go they’re not allowed they’re not allowed to go back to work right well you got to teach teach on the

[00:35:59] internet tell them to drop out of the union no uh yeah here let let’s do some uh uh this can be hard

[00:36:07] uh for some of them but let’s just to make the example easy to understand let’s take the

[00:36:14] average class size uh throughout california it’s about 25.

[00:36:19] now what’s your class size there at your christian school about 25

[00:36:25] yeah about the average is probably somewhere around between 20 and 25. yeah depends on how many customers got

[00:36:32] the money to attend your school this month i know yeah but you with tuition you say okay we’ll hold it

[00:36:38] at and let’s further assume class that instead of 12

[00:36:43] 500 there’s only going to be 10 000 per student so that means that that

[00:36:49] classroom will potentially generate potentially 250

[00:36:54] 000 revenue each year now that’s for one teacher in a private school

[00:37:00] you don’t have all the rest of that overhead you’ve you you’ve got one teacher a school secretary

[00:37:05] maybe a principal or vice president you guys are lean and you’re mean and you’re good so now

[00:37:12] do you think that you can pay that a good teacher could make the same in a private school she can

[00:37:18] probably make more if she’s not good yeah and the idiots well you know hopefully they’ll they’ll go out on you

[00:37:24] know you’ll see them at home depot you’re waiting for a service truck to come by you know although

[00:37:30] they have bad terrible work habits so i don’t know if any contractor want to hire them but they can take their shots you know

[00:37:37] uh so so um also along those same lines you know

[00:37:42] how how quickly let’s say this passes in november of 2022 that this passes

[00:37:49] when does that go into effect how quickly would that go into effect on a stable basis yeah we’re looking at

[00:37:56] that it’ll take some time to get the paperwork in order and so forth but we’re probably looking

[00:38:01] at uh the following school year fall of 22. i mean uh yeah you know

[00:38:08] uh 2023 no uh yeah yeah follow 23 i’m sorry yeah

[00:38:14] you know it had passed at 22 uh you know they there’s some uh uh some systems that

[00:38:21] have to be set up you’d have to establish a criteria uh we’ll make sure they have to do it fast

[00:38:28] so that they’re online is this you know in a lot of states they’re doing this primarily for low-income um families so right

[00:38:36] you have to make less than a certain amount of money before you’re able to get that that uh credit um so

[00:38:43] would would this no it’s universal everybody goes to public school without

[00:38:49] paying tuition right now yeah okay so if you’re if you’re jay paul getty’s kid

[00:38:57] you can go down the local public school walk in everybody gets a public education

[00:39:04] we’re not changing that it’s universal what we’re doing is letting the money

[00:39:10] follow the child rather than the politicians

[00:39:15] and uh uh in the zip codes right we’re getting the kids out of that zip

[00:39:20] code that’s gonna be uh you know just uh phenomenal but we will not

[00:39:26] have uh qualifications here we believe uh that that it is

[00:39:32] un-american and it’s exactly the opposite of what we need we don’t need unequal treatment

[00:39:40] in the schools what we need is equal opportunity to quality education and that’s what

[00:39:46] we’re doing and i speak with a lot of black folks i speak a lot of latinos and so forth

[00:39:54] and so far nobody has said oh that’s a great program i like that you know i said but i don’t want any of

[00:40:01] that freedom i don’t want that twelve thousand five hundred i don’t want my child uh going to a to a school where he’s

[00:40:08] safe and getting a good education if the white man’s gonna get the same or the rich man’s gonna get

[00:40:14] no i haven’t anybody tell me that they don’t care all this class conflict and garbage

[00:40:22] is stuff i i i it just doesn’t exist uh do you know any black person that

[00:40:28] wants to kill you do you know any latino person uh you know they hate

[00:40:33] the great i don’t know any such people right but they keep it going in the press

[00:40:38] and the fact is is that when we meet each other at little league games uh and in our

[00:40:45] communities or in church right we don’t have those problems

[00:40:50] uh yeah you know that’s uh especially catholic churches i mean we got plenty of poor people same

[00:40:57] place we go to worship i don’t fear for my life when i go there this is nonsense and we have you know in

[00:41:04] everything that these people are out there saying is nothing but a fraud a hustle and a

[00:41:09] con and we just need to tell them no we need to take our children take our money and and go

[00:41:17] that’s what we have to the time is now yeah it is awesome there is no better time um based on

[00:41:24] what’s happened right now it’s like it’s like god has opened the door wide open here for us to take this opportunity to

[00:41:29] to make this happen and so i think it’s incredible what you’re doing and i’m i’m i i’ve been on board with this

[00:41:35] forever uh just trying to figure out a way uh to reach kids in the schools because i just feel like uh they’re

[00:41:40] they’re dying for a drop of water out there but um but uh so michael um for those of you

[00:41:47] listening my guess is michael alexander californiaschoolchoice.org and he’s got a ballot initiative here

[00:41:56] which is the educational freedom act giving parents and students the chance to go to whatever school they want they get a twelve thousand dollar five

[00:42:02] twelve thousand five hundred dollar credit uh per year and um they take that money and they can go wherever they want

[00:42:08] whether that’s charter school public school private school whatever the case and uh yeah and and i

[00:42:13] wanna i mean i wanna partner up with you here and do do whatever i can to support this because i think it’s incredible

[00:42:19] and i’m gonna make a flyer for it and everything and see if i can get it out of my own community but um so if people wanna connect with

[00:42:25] you and work with you and uh support you they go to californiaschoolchoice.org

[00:42:30] and you’re looking for people to kind of act as a kind of network leaders in different communities

[00:42:36] and to be able to partner up with you and then kind of quickly get the word out that’s correct we do okay but you know

[00:42:42] uh how much time do we have left no not much time here maybe five minutes yeah about five

[00:42:48] minutes okay then then i’ll sum up here uh yeah kevin i want to thank you first of all for

[00:42:54] having me here there’s one la last message that i really want to get across to people

[00:43:00] everybody’s busy in your lives uh and it’s easy to dismiss me and what i’m

[00:43:06] talking about here is one other thing that you have to do in a busy life but i want to remind everybody here that

[00:43:13] when you look around our country all of us probably listening to your cast

[00:43:18] broadcast here would probably subscribe to the notion that america governs

[00:43:25] itself and that government derives its right to govern from the consent of the

[00:43:32] government that means two things first of all the vote matters and number two anything that bad that

[00:43:39] happens in this country all this garbage that we’re looking out here kevin that’s on you that’s on me

[00:43:47] that’s on us as citizens we can’t say that citizens own this government and

[00:43:54] then walk away from responsibility now how do we walk away from responsibility

[00:43:59] you walk away from responsibility when you come up an issue this important and you don’t go to my website you don’t

[00:44:06] walk a precinct you don’t sign you just sit and complain that is unacceptable

[00:44:12] and because of that behavior our top problem here kevin is not school choice

[00:44:19] our top task is to restore citizenship restore a sense of ownership of our

[00:44:26] republic and the obligations that’s entailed we are unique and privileged in history

[00:44:32] this is our time this is our job it’s up to us to take this country back and

[00:44:38] we do that by first taking back our children their hearts their minds their souls yeah dare i say

[00:44:46] our money back from those who don’t believe in god don’t believe in america and don’t give

[00:44:52] a darn about your children or their future and i look forward to working with you

[00:44:57] kevin and anybody who listens to this broadcast you want to reach me personally go to

[00:45:02] the website or send an email to mike at californiaschoolchoice.org

[00:45:08] fantastic well thanks for those of you who listened in here this is a i can’t overstate how

[00:45:14] important this issue is i believe it is the key critical issue in our country today more than

[00:45:20] almost any other issue that we’re dealing with if we if we’re concerned about the future of the country and where it’s going to go

[00:45:25] um this is the issue uh and so uh please uh visit his website

[00:45:31] californiaschoolchoice.org get in touch with him get support him you can also get in touch with me because this is something i’m going to be um

[00:45:38] involved with until uh that day when it’s on the ballot so and and when we get it passed so

[00:45:44] um i hope that you will get involved and get charged up about it because it’s a difference maker and uh thank you

[00:45:50] for tuning in today uh michael alexander thanks so much for what you’re doing your passion and for being on the program today it’s

[00:45:56] a huge blessing so i appreciate it you’re welcome kevin god bless god bless you too have a great evening

[00:46:02] i hope your uh your next meeting goes fantastic here

[00:46:24] you