Hypocrisy? Chicago Teachers Union President Who Demonizes Private Schools Enrolls Her Son in Private School
The president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was busted for sending her son to a private school. That’s not usually something people would feel the need to hide, but when you have waged war against such schools, excuse us for calling out the hypocrisy.
Stacy Davis Gates’s son is now enrolled in a Catholic school. This is the same Davis Gates who has railed against school choice, vouchers, and everything except public school enrollment. She is on record as saying school choice is “the choice of racists.” She also called private schools “fascist” and “segregation academies.”
Concerning street cred on her public education-only, anti-school choice stance, she once said, “My children go to Chicago Public Schools. These are the things that legitimize my space within the coalition."
So does this mean that now that she has a child who does not go to Chicago Public Schools, she has no legitimacy and should not, therefore, be taken seriously? That sounds about right—to anyone but hypocrites.
When word got out that her son was now at one of those such “segregation academies,” people obviously called her out on it, but she provided no immediate response.
Eventually, she released a statement. According to that statement, she enrolled her son in one of those racist places for segregationists because—wait for it!—he had a dream to play soccer and no public school near her offered it. So in other words, she wanted more for her son and is willing to pay the reported $16,000-plus tuition so he can have it. Let’s keep in mind that many—most, I imagine—in the public school her son left to fulfill his dream could not afford that.
What kind of mother allows her son to attend a school she believes is the den of iniquity so he can play a sport—and the sport of soccer, at that? No offense to soccer lovers everywhere, but we don’t hear too much about soccer scholarships. In any case, she either is a hypocrite who does not believe all the shade she’s been throwing in her ongoing campaign to smear private education or she does believe it and is a complete sell-out.
When she finally faced the barrage of justifiable criticism and responded to demands for answers, she did so with a long-winded statement in which she revealed the soccer dream and continued to focus on race, stating, “We can all agree that options for Black students, their families and entire Black communities on this city's South and West Sides are limited. That is precisely why CTU members have struck, organized, and worked hard to change our city.”
She also said:
Here is the truth: If you are a Black family living in a Black community, high-quality neighborhood schools have been the dream, not the reality. Unlike some white counterparts on the North Side or in the suburbs, we aren't blessed with quality options blocks away from our home, neatly placed near a grocery store, doctor's office or a safe public park. Our schools are usually stranded in food and healthcare deserts.
I don’t doubt what she’s saying at all. But why not just come clean and say, “I want the very thing for my son that I’ve been speaking against for other mothers to have for their sons and daughters”?
Here’s another portion of her statement:
For my husband and me, it forced us to send our son, after years of attending a public school, to a private high school so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs, even as his two sisters remain in Chicago Public Schools.
She said she was forced to violate her own campaign against private schools. That’s interesting. She wasn’t forced. She made a choice, a choice about school, which, ironically, is the very thing she has demonized and does not want others to be able to make. And so, no, I do not fault her for removing her son from a failing school that does not allow him to achieve his best. In fact, I applaud her for it. I fault her for not recognizing that others deserve that same opportunity.
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