The Daily Signal - #540: Meet the Mom Behind D.C. School Choice Program

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Today we feature an interview our colleague Kelsey Bolar did with Virginia Walden Ford, a mom of three whose activism brought school choice to the kids of Washington, D.C. Now her story is being made into a major movie, “Miss Virginia,” which will be released Oct. 18. We also cover these stories: • The Education Department is fining Michigan State University $4.5 million over its handling of sexual misconduct. • The Labor Department reinstated a political appointee who had resigned over a sarcastic Facebook post that a reporter suggested was anti-Semitic. • Walgreens is now following the trend set by other big retail chains in asking customers to no longer open carry firearms in their stores. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, September 6th. I'm Jared Stetman. And I'm Kate Trinko. Today, we feature an interview with Virginia Walton Ford, a woman who faced racism herself integrating a school in Arkansas. She eventually had three children of her own, and her son's struggles in school inspired her to fight for school choice. She truly brought about change, getting the District of Columbia to have a school choice program that still is operating today. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. The Education Department announced a major fine for Michigan State University. on Thursday, following investigations of the sexual misconduct allegations and how they were handled against gymnastics coach Larry Nassar and his boss, William Stremple, who was a dean at the university. Michigan State will need to pay $4.5 million. Quote, what transpired at Michigan State was abhorrent and excusable and a total and complete failure to follow the law and protect students, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said in a statement. state will now pay for its failures and will be required to make meaningful changes to how it

handles Title IX cases moving forward. No future students should have to endure what too many did because concerns about Larry Nasser and William Strumpel were ignored. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reinstated political appointee Leif Olson, who had resigned over a Facebook post uncovered by a Bloomberg reporter. Bloomberg reporter Benjamin Penn portrayed Olson's Facebook posts as anti-Semitic. However, Penn left out parts of the Facebook exchange that labeled the post as sarcasm and a put-down of anti-Semites. The Labor Department said in a statement to the Daily Caller, quote, On Friday, August 30th, 2019, Senior Policy Advisor of the Wage in Our Division, Leif Olson, offered his resignation and the department accepted. Following a thorough re-examination of the available

information and upon reflection, the department has concluded that Olson has satisfactorily explained the toning content of his sarcastic social media post and will return to his position. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't seem excited for a possible U.S. Iran meeting, he is signaling he will not oppose it. According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu told reporters, quote, the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Rouhani, the Iranian leader, exists, and I don't tell the president who to meet. Nanyahu also said if the meeting does occur, Trump would bring, quote, a tougher and more sober approach, end quote, than presumably other past American leaders.

Walgreens is now following the trend set by other big retail chains in asking customers to no longer open carry firearms in their stores. Walmart and Kroger both announced this week that they are also asking customers to no longer open carry in their stores, with Walmart restricting some of ammunition sales. Walgreens said in a statement, quote, we are joining other retailers and asking our customers to no longer openly carry firearms into our stores other than authorized law enforcement officials. Next up, our interview with a mom who succeeded in bringing school choice to the district of Columbia. Heritage Explains is a weekly podcast that really gets into all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Think about it like going back to college. Hosts Michelle Cordero and

Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell us story. And they also bring in Heritage Foundation experts to help break down complex issues. For example, what's going on in Ukraine? Why do we need a space force? Will we actually ever get our social security benefits? The episodes are quick, about 10 to 15 minutes long, they bring you up to speed, and they're even entertaining. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. They're even now on YouTube. So today, we're going to play our interview that our colleague Kelsey Boller did with Virginia Walden Ford, a school choice activist who helped bring about school choice in Washington, D.C. Now, her story is being made into a major movie.

Here's part of the trailer. Ms. Walden, your son's situation is very serious. What up, James? You need a lesson, too? He's a good kid. He's suspended, effective immediately. Next time? It will not be a next time.

There were three of them coming for me next month. School or juvenile hall. You have got to choose. I will move heaven and earth for you to go to private school. You want to borrow $7,000 for school. I'm a go home. You're going to rob a bank. You just don't qualify.

My son can't wait. Come work for me. I'll hook you up. He needs change today. Not tomorrow, not next week, and definitely not eventually. We've been waiting. The movie, called Miss Virginia, will be out on October 18th. In the meantime, we're going to share this interview,

which first aired on problematic women between Kelsey and Virginia Walden Ford. In 2004, the first students began participating in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is a private school choice program serving low-income families in Washington, D.C. The program enables families whose incomes fall below a certain level to receive scholarship money to send their children to a private school of their choice. This year marks the program's 15th anniversary in the nation's capital, with more than 1,650 children currently using it. But despite this sounding like a program that both liberals and conservatives could get behind, the D.C. scholarship program has faced an uphill battle from opponents,

many of them on the left, arguing it takes much-needed funding away from already-earedes. struggling public schools. Virginia Walden Ford is a mother who for 15 years has been at the center of this heated debate. A single mother living in Washington, D.C., Virginia found herself feeling hopeless and helpless about her children's educational future back in 2004. Instead of accepting the status quo, however, she decided to do something about it. Virginia, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You have such an interesting story that, actually, actually starts many years before 2004 back when you were a child in Little Rock, Arkansas, as the daughter of two public school educators.

Let's start there. I was the daughter of two public school educators. My father was actually the assistant superintendent of the Little Rock School District, the first black. And my mother was a fourth grade teacher, the first black, one of four black teachers to integrate schools in Little Rock. So even then I was part of an advocacy family. When I got ready to go to high school,

I had gone to segregated schools up into that point with all my friends, and I knew my teachers and everybody was, you know, my buddy. And then all of a sudden I began the process of going into high school, and we were told that we had to go to Central High School, which 10 years prior had been the location of the Little Rock Nine and the president had to call him federal troops and all of that. And now they were going to send me there. And I was like, oh, no, I'm not going.

And I want to go to the all-black high school. And my dad told me, you have to go because you have to set the tone for your younger sisters. If you don't go and you don't do well, your younger sisters are the ones that will suffer. So you have to go. You have a responsibility. And that has stayed with me all my life. I went to Central. I did well.

And so my advocacy even started then. You know, I talked to other students about why they had to go using my dad's words. So once I got grown and I started having children myself, I was, I guess I was an active mother, but never did I think that I would have to fight for anybody. but my own babies, you know. My first two kids did well in school. They were driven academically with programs and mentors. They were doing all right. But my third child, William, was a child that everybody thought was destined for failure.

And they said that all the time. And he was the reason that I did this. He was the reason that I felt like I had to advocate on his people. behalf, we've learned as low-income parents or as single mothers or as working-class parents, we've learned that the advocates for our children are us. And that if we don't fight for our kids, others may not think they're worth fighting for or they won't think that we are willing to fight for them. And so that's kind of how I got to the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program organizing parents

and getting parents out was because of those kind of things. But it was Daddy's word. You have responsibility. I can't tell you how that rings in my ears all the time. There's this interesting thread that weaves throughout your entire life where when you were a child, the government was telling you what school you had to attend. In that case, it was segregated schools.

And your parents took it upon themselves to say, no, we are going to choose to go to a different school. Absolutely. And then when you grew up and were a parent yourself, you did the same thing for your children. I want to take a step back from this conversation because not everybody knows what we're talking about when we say school choice or scholarship program. So could you provide some perspective on that? In 2000, the District of Columbia, traditional public schools were not faring where.

kids were failing. I think they were in 46% failure rate. Members of Congress looked at that and said, we need to do something to help D.C. kids. So a proposal, a couple of times, actually, this was kind of a 10-year process. Several proposals providing scholarship help for low-income children in the District of Columbia was proposed, and several times it failed. And then in 2003, we went through another process of getting some legislation passed. And we organized parents to come speak for themselves on Capitol Hill and talk about what despair their children were in. And many members of Congress supported us and decided that this was certainly worth fighting for it.

So after a year-long fight, it actually passed the three-second. Initiative. It's the DC Three-Sector Initiative for School Choice, and it passed in November of 2003, and President George W. Bush, who was a big supporter of the parent group, signed it into law 15 years ago on January 23rd. And it was really exciting. And the program

actually started the next month in March of 2004. Well, certainly this program serves all types of students, specifically in Washington, D.C., a lot of the low-income students happen to be minorities. And, you know, given the history of this program and given the fact that those on the left so often stand for choice, you know, my body, my choice, those types of phrases you hear quite often, you know, if you don't know this issue well, you'd be surprised to hear that it is actually, liberals who are the biggest opponents of school choice programs. Why? Absolutely. You know, there's a part of me that thinks the reason they don't support us because they didn't think of it first, but that's just me.

But I don't know. You know, some of it stems back to when Brown versus Board of Education passed and a few years later, schools were trying to be desegregated. And in the 57, when the Lurachnau went in, some of the Southern schools, schools closed after four a year. They closed for a year. And white students were going to private schools that were started just because they didn't have a school to go to.

Black kids either didn't get educated or was sent away or something like that because it was Southern States. I think some of it is that emotional kind of thing where they started schools and their kids with schools and ours didn't, so we're not going to ever support this. I think it's emotional. I think it's, they're not thinking straight because usually if you sit down and you talk to liberals about what this really means,

you can actually change minds. I've done it a million times. But it's hard to, on a larger bracket when we're trying to get a bigger program passed in the state or a city or federal to get everybody on that pace. So, okay, that's my, kind of idealistic reason.

But people have been asking me that for years, and I promise you, I don't know. You know, I don't get it. Who would not want a child to be in a better environment? I just never have understood it. Eleanor Norton, Holmes Norton, who is the representative for D.C., has been an opponent of this program from day one. She won't talk about it. She won't think about it. We tried to meet with her.

She told us we were not being treated fairly, which I didn't get. And so I have never understood it. I think it's very sad because we have watched children do incredibly well in schools that their parents chose for them. And another myth to that is low-income parents can't choose school because that's not true. They do a better job than some people. that are more educated. And they came to me with a list of things they wanted for their children. It was beautiful and amazing.

So I wish I knew. I wish there was something I could say that would change the minds of those that oppose these kinds of programs. I know as a conservative it can be hard enough standing up for school choice programs. but I, you know, I am white, and I imagine as an African-American woman, it can be that much harder because certain people have certain ideas about how you're supposed to think and vote. So how does race play into this conversation about school choice? Well, to be perfectly honest, and it's hard for me to talk to some of my family members and friends about how I feel about these particular kinds of issues.

and not many issues that are conservative. But if people would think about it, a long time ago, Arkansas was a Republican state. My parents were Republicans, and they changed later on. But my point is they believed in the values of the Republican Party. They believed in conservative value. I do, too. So it's hard. I mean, I often say, you know, I'm a three-for.

I'm African-American, a woman, and a Republican. So it's hard. It's really hard. But in the fact, school choice, I fight for kids, you know, and they can't deny me that. Well, speaking of race, I feel that as a millennial who grew up in an era that didn't have systematic forms of racism in the law, on the books. I constantly have to remind myself that there are still living people like yourself who dealt with systematic forms of racism. And this conversation is so difficult to have these days. What is your advice specifically for millennials?

We have a lot of young millennial females who listen to this podcast. What's your advice for them for bridging these conversations and being able to have a productive, conversation about issues of race in today's world. Well, talk to women my age who are conservative. I mean, you'll find women. There are a lot more people that are conservative, just not saying it so you can seek out people. There are a number of people that I used to go to for advice, you know, when I was younger

and going through it. So I know it's got to be hard. But opening up the doors to a real conversation where people are really being honest about how they feel. It's important, as you notice, I love and am loved by people at Heritage because I've always been honest. I think I've been always honest about my feelings about all kinds of things. I learned that from women older than me who had already been through it. Because when you make choices that are not popular to everybody, then or to everybody in your little space,

then you have to learn how to bring others into that space, people that do support what you believe. But it is hard, you know. I mean, even myself talking to people, but I'm open. Do you understand? I'm open. I mean, if somebody says something, I don't get been out of shape or angry or upset.

I try to focus on what that person is saying and how that person needs to be helped to understand. You know, because I always assume when a person has a question, they want to answer, not a fight. You're also, I'm going to switch gears a little bit. You're going to be featured in an upcoming movie given this pretty crazy life you live. Tell us about that. Well, about eight years ago, I was approached by a film company to do a movie about the DC experience, which can't be told according to them if they don't tell about me. I'll second that. It's pretty nerve-wracking, you know.

I am not a person that craves to be on the front, you know. Actually, when I was working with parents here for the legislative fight, I made sure that. parents learned how to be in the front. And that's the role I like playing. I like teaching people and teaching them how to take the lead. So it's interesting. But anyway, they wrote a script. They wrote a number of scripts.

And then they finally wrote a script that I really thought was a positive script for our story. And our story is that parents and deceased the shoulder to shoulder and fought for their children, you know. But there's always got to be a leader that brings them to that, but everybody came to it together. So it's pretty amazing what they've done. It's a full-feature film. The Uso Adduva, who was crazy-eyed on Orange,

Orange is the New Black, is playing me. And she's really good. And that's pretty fascinating. Matthew Modine is playing kind of, the senator, or the member of the house, I believe. It's really good. It's pretty exciting.

It's pretty fun. Do you know the name yet or where it will be released? I've tried to change. The name is, of the movie is Miss Virginia. That's incredible. That gives our listeners an idea of the woman we're currently, we currently have the privilege of speaking with.

Well, this is a podcast called Problematical. women, our goal is to reach younger women, specifically, you know, women on the right. And I always like to end with the question of, do you identify as a feminist? Because, you know, when I interview women who lean right, we always get different and interesting answers. I did when I was younger. I'm an accountant by, I mean, that's what I did as a living. I'm an accountant.

I was usually one, the only woman in a group of men. And so I felt very strongly about letting them know that I couldn't be somebody to be toyed with. So I think I really did identify. I'm not sure if I was there that I was, but I think I did when I was younger. Now I just identify as a strong woman. And I think it gives so much more comfort to women who don't. don't even understand what a feminist is. I like being a strong woman, and I like encouraging other women to be strong and whatever they do

and making sure that young women know that there's strength in many things that you do, in parenting, in working, in many things that you do. So I don't know if I would consider myself. I'm older. I'm calmer. I think I'm sweeter. So I don't know if I do now. But I admired the women that came before me, and I admired those women that stood up and said,

I think as a person, I'm formed by all of those women, all of them. And so I have strong emotional feelings about feminist and feminism and that whole movement that I'm proud of. I love that. You identify as a strong woman, which you certainly are. Well, Miss Virginia, thank you so much for joining us today. I look forward to seeing this movie. We appreciate you taking the time. Oh, you're very welcome, Kelsey.

I love coming here and, you know, you're all of my other family here. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please see us a review or rating on iTunes to get. give us any feedback. The Daily Signal podcast is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Lauren Evans and Thalia Ramprasad. For more information, visitdailysignal.com.