Dear editor:
First Citizen: Parents should be the sole arbitrators of how and where their children receive education.
The state should not only get out of the way of their decision making, but it should aid in diminishing barriers to entry for options that parents might want to pursue, such as through Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).
Second Citizen: Including even parents who are neglectful? Those who are bad parents?
First Citizen: Despite jumping to tragic circumstances, the first question raised is of valid concern.
To clarify, provided that we seek to maintain a robust and fair system to support children in such households and that they are not neglectful, parents should be the exclusive decision makers in the lives of their children, including their education.
The second question is perversely deceptive. Firstly, who determines what bad parenting is?
And, while such a question would result in a back-and-forth giving examples of subjective and actual good versus bad parenting traits, the most conclusive counter is this: a parent is vastly more likely to care for the well-being and success of their own child based on emotional and biological ties compared to even the most well-intentioned government worker.
Do some parents go about this in overbearing, or even misguided ways sometimes or even often? Sure.
But we can’t approach this from a partisan perspective; not all parents get it right and not all government officials, teachers, or administrators get it right. In the end, I opt to defer to the smallest and most crucial unit of society—families—as the decision makers for themselves.
Second Citizen: Let’s grant that most parents should be the chief decision makers in the lives of their children. Education Savings Accounts run counter to Wyoming’s Constitution, which prohibits public dollars going towards private and religious institutions.
First Citizen: To the point of having reservations regarding where public dollars end up, I ask: can EBT be used at private businesses? At religious food pantries?
Then, there is the case of Pell grants, which gives this precedence in education. Eligible students are granted money from the federal government and use it to attend their choice of educational institution. The money does not go directly to private or religious institutions, but to individuals.
Similarly, in the case of ESAs, taxpayer dollars go to the state department of education, which distributes it to applicants as private citizens.
Those citizens decide to use that funding for private and/or religious education means, so it is not as if the government itself is allocating taxpayer dollars in that way.
The money goes to citizens in an attempt to lower barriers to the ideal mode of education for them.
There is legal precedent that supports how ESAs use money, too. In Arizona, under similar scrutiny regarding use at private and religious schools, ESAs were upheld by the state’s supreme court since the funds went to families and not the schools themselves.
The West Virginia Supreme Court upheld ESAs from claims that they impede or harm public schools.
Sincerely,
Andrew Server, Cheyenne
