Clay County State Representative Josh Hurlbert direct messaged me on Twitter last Thursday. A picture of six beers (no Bud Light) was an attention getter with the message. He wrote, “We have beer for tomorrow night’s event with DeAngelis at the Herzog Foundation. Does that mean you are coming?”
I was ecstatic. This meant that I have one more reader than I knew about. Apparently, Josh reads the column or at least has a clipping service or some poor intern he makes read it told him I wrote about school choice giant, Corey DeAngelis, speaking engagement at the Herzog Foundation.
I don’t know Josh personally. Exchanged a couple of emails over a prior column, but I’m beginning to like his style. I feel like he enjoys a little sarcasm tit for tat and I’m all for it.
I did not attend the event, despite his beer bait photo, the pasty beer drinking white guy quota appears to have been adequately filled without me attending.
The opposition to school choice had made some social media threats of filling up the place to disrupt the presentation but they failed miserably. I counted less than 10 people in the pictures I saw of people protesting the event from the ditches along Hwy. 169.
The Missouri school choice fight cavalry has become an odd clash. On one side you have the fringe Democrats who have trouble winning elections, mostly female, often rural and underfunded when you take the unions out of the equation. On the other side you have the “old money” types combined with a smattering of Reagan type conservative elected officials that are mostly white men and it just seems like an odd fight to me. Neither capable of moving the needle much in terms of a real shift in the public perception of education.
Until real life, non-political, urban and rural parents jump in this fray with old fashioned helicopter parent passion, it’s going to languish with no clear winners. Just another Democrat vs. Republican battle with everyone retreating to a corner after each round and with most people not paying attention.
Now that I know they have beer at the Herzog Foundation, I may start stopping by in the afternoons. I’m school choice all day long if you’re buying the beer. Heck, I’m old enough to probably catch a morning beer if that works better, somebody tweet me with what works.
Got a little worried about saying “tit for tat” in the first part of this column. Foley is a real stickler on decorum. Here’s the definition for those of you with your mind in life’s gutter: “the infliction of an injury or insult in return for one that one has suffered.”
We should be good. Carry on.
I joke about school choice, but I wish we had a consensus in this country. Public education has veered out of its lane and they won’t admit that. It has become an administratively heavy “employment” center that often has more to do with jobs and social services than actual education. Compliance with federal mandates has contributed much to this problem and the local aspect of education has been diminished because of the federal and state involvement. Until we can admit the mess we are in and restore true local control over education, I don’t see much in the way of a solution, school choice or not.
The last national political figure I saw to really advocate this was Ross Perot and he’s dead and Bill Clinton beat him by 20 million votes.
(Guy Speckman is only available through tit for tat responses)