It's an old question

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Wrong question.

The question is which is more important: ensuring that a child receives an education or the public school system, itself.

A third response (They're both equally important.) isn't an option here in Florida thanks to the usual suspects. It doesn't matter to them whether public schools work or not. Maintaining the institution just as it is, is more important than the welfare of the children in it.

It's funny. These are the same people who harp endlessly about how the disadvantaged are used and abused by "the system," who are powerless because of it.

The schools their (fill in the victimhood designation de jour) constituents' children must attend are the pits and the kids stuck in them don't stand a chance. The parent (or parents) are helpless. Thay have no choice except to keep their children in these schools.

Just as a child's education is of minimal importance to them, in truth so is parental choice. It's not right, they say, for these parents — those who want their child to receive an education — to move their child by means of a voucher from a foundered school into one that they've chosen.

I'm not surprised that Florida's (partisan-hack) Supreme Court decided (5 - 2) that the state's voucher system is unconstitutional. I'm also not surprised by some of the statements made by those celebrating it, like this from Escambia School Board member Patty Hightower:

"[Vouchers are] an unfair way to distribute money."

Translation: The hell with the kids. My status and continued funding of my perks are more important.

Or this: [Bugmenot]

Sen. Tony Hill, who once participated in a sit-in in Bush's office to protest the governor's education policies, said Thursday's ruling promotes equality and fairness.

Gag me.

I wonder how much the NEA contributed to your campaign, Tony, or to the state's Democrat party that you receive support from?

I know there are good public school teachers. I also know there are piss-poor ones, too, who thanks to politics and unions, can't be gotten rid of.

Da Kid’s 6th grade English teacher was the last straw and the reason why Hubby and I -- both public school educated decades ago in Yankeeland -- finally gave up, yanked him out of public school and plunked his butt into private.

Da Kid's English teacher taught her classes ONLY in "street" english and couldn’t manage to write even a single note home to us that wasn’t filled with GLARING spelling and grammar errors. (Parent-teacher night was a real hoot when she used and abused big words trying to show parents how ejumicated she was.)

She’d been there for years and for all I know might still be.

Three months after we’d transferred Da Kid into a private school, I got a call from the public school we'd taken him out of asking why he wasn’t in school THAT DAY!

Hubby and I weren't and aren't rich, but we made a choice to get Da Kid the hell out of there and somehow managed to do it.

It wouldn't bother me at all to see some of the tax dollars I'm already paying diverted away from the political cesspool the public education system has become, if it helps another parent get their own kid out of it, too.

Not that those with vested interests in the public school system see it that way, of course.

I wonder where their kids go?

Later: If you've arrived here by way of Wizbang's Carnival of the Trackbacks, let me put on a fresh pot of coffee for you. It'll only take a second.