Bill cunning into Great America, and of course what's happening in public education is
often a disgrace. It's made difficult anyway, but when large numbers of shall
I say, undocumented aliens show up in public schools, it could be a
crisis. There have been a few occasions when the Congress has held hearings on
the consequences of Biden's border chaos for k through twelve schools, but it's largely
a story that doesn't get a lot of media coverage because it doesn't fit the
left wing agenda, and therefore you have to look for outside sources to see
what's going on. Erica Sansey is one of the officials of Parents Defending Education.
I know it's happening here in Cincinnati, also happening around the world.
I can't imagine what it looks like in Houston or Austin. But of course
Erica has expertise when it comes to Washington, Washington, DC, and Erica
Sanzy welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And Erica, can you tell
the American people just in general? Before there was an influx of literally hundreds
of thousands of additional students, many poorly educated, into our public school system.
Weren't the public schools under stress anyway? Yes, I mean this is
just adding insult to injury. The public schools have been struggling. Even pre
pandemic, we had very very low proficiency rates in reading and math. Since
the pandemic, we've seen the scores plummet in those areas, and so schools
are having a hard time with what they already have on their plates, and
so to burden them with an influx of new students, most of whom do
not speak the language here, and many of whom have had no formal schooling
in the past. So it's not just that you're bringing in new students to
schools, you're bringing in very high need students. And these school districts really
just cannot manage this. And I look at some of these stories given up
about thousands. In New York City, there's about fifty thousand additional students going
to public schools and a population of nearly one million public school kids. You
got fifty thousand, that's five percent, but that five percent puts them over
the top. Also in Washington, d C. There's something called language acquiestion
division. Explain what English second language. Let's say you're a twelve year old,
just show up in a public school in Washington, d C. Or
Cincinnati or Chicago, and you have no education. You can barely understand and
speak Spanish, which phonetically is easy for some in Central America but difficult for
others. So what are the particular needs of any child that shows up deserving
a public education? But let's face it, the school system can't accept them,
And so it kind of walks through what occurs when a kid shows up
at the front desk says, here, I am educate me. What happens,
Well, the school cannot turn students away, so really they've got to
figure out how they're going to navigate this. And what we did is we
looked at emails that were going back and forth, you know, with between
officials in districts, so that we could get a sense of like how hard
of a time they were having. And again, you're not going to get
them out of the microphone saying this is impossible. But in their emails,
what we see is it's as basic as trying to figure out space. They
don't have the physical space, so they're trying to figure out where they're going
to put students you see a lot of the you know, very compassionate people
feeling concerned that the school that the child is assigned to is very far away
from the shelter that's been provided for them. And then we see a lot
of talk about how they don't have the staff, they don't have staff who
can communicate with these students, most of whom boot speak Spanish, but certainly
not all, and so that's become just another major drain on the system.
And the other thing is that English as a second language, or what they
call English Language learners, those students usually are students where they know English but
it's not spoken in their home. But to have students coming in who have
no English at all, I mean, that's just obviously puts them in a
category of a very high need student. And again, meeting the needs of
one or two is challenging. Meeting the needs of a massive influx, where
suddenly a school district is dealing with one hundred and fifty students in this category
it is just again really really difficult. And this is coming at a time
that all of the esser money, so all the COVID release money that school's
got that is ending as of September, that money is gone, and so
school districts were already trying to write, size and recalibrate their budgets as they
need to and as they knew they were going to need to. Unfortunately,
some didn't make good choices about how to spend that money. But to be
again burdening them with this influx of students, it's it's a totally unfair burden
that the school districts have been asked to carry, and that in the case
of the NEA, the largest teachers union, they've come out against the i'd
an administration's plan to shut the border down or at least, you know,
decrease this number of people coming in that they are so committed to this ideology
of open borders they've now thrown their own members under the bus, saying,
we don't care how hard it is for you, this border should stay open.
It's always difficult, but can you imagine a ten year old girl showing
up from Lithuania or Afghanistan or Nicaragua and have little or no English language skills.
They sit in a class and do they test in do they say,
okay, you're ten years old. There's supposed to be what in about the
fourth or fifth grade. You're ten years old, but you have no educational
foundation or achievement, and then you don't speak the language. Someone shows up
at the front desk. Okay, here's your schedule. The first class is
down the hallway in room one. Ten go into that classroom and sit there,
and they have no ability to understand what's being said, and they have
no foundation of the first four to five years, which allows one the building
points to become more academically disciplined. So what happens to the ten year old
who can't speak of the English is our Do schools have to assign a mate
with them who understands both dialects or both two or three different languages to communicate?
How does that work? I mean, in a perfect world, they'd
be able to assign someone to them, but those people don't exist. The
school district doesn't have the staff for this, and so what ends up happening.
And I've actually seen this back when I worked in schools. Lots of
times kids just have their whole day wasted because they are because they have been
enrolled in an institution or facility that cannot meet their needs. Now you can
get lucky and you can have. It could be that the school has somebody
who who knows the language is great with working with newly arrived migrant students.
Like you can see progress, but everything has to align for that to happen,
and that's usually in very small numbers. The problem right now is that
places like DC Springfield, Massachusetts, which is tak Kansas, another district in
Wisconsin. I mean, these places are not used to having to deal with
this number one and they're just completely overwhelmed. And again they're not getting you
know, there isn't really much attention being paid to the fact that these schools
are being asked to manage a burden that is unsustainable. I look at some
of these stories and that what happens the educational opportunity may I use the term
regular kids. If you're a regular fourth grader in Washington d C. Public
schools, I can't imagine the quality of education you might receive. But nonetheless,
it doesn't assist to have classes disrupted with large numbers of other fourth graders
that are not educationally appropriate, don't know the culture, don't know how to
behave, and can't speak the language, and the teachers have to more or
less take care of student body that she doesn't speak a dialect out of a
f or Central America, and the kid sits there with no hope of learning.
What impact does that have on the kids who've been there for three or
four years, they're in the third or fourth grade. Here comes ten kids
from Southern Asia Afghanistan that have no idea what you're talking about, don't speak
the dialect. So what is it a babysitting service? Well, how does
it look? I mean again, it's hard enough to meet all the needs
of all students in the classroom because they're often at very different levels. Right,
So teachers already dealing with the fact that they've got students who have very
different levels of proficiency. That is a massive challenge. So then when you
bring in new challenges and again, these children didn't do anything wrong, right,
and they have a right to be enrolled in the school according to the
law. Here, the problem is these schools are not set up and equipped
to set them up for success. So what ends up happening is it's almost
it's hard for anybody to really get what they need because the needs are so
disparate. And this is you know again, I just feel like the schools
are already reeling from the pandemic and trying to recover from that, and this
just adds another massive challenge that from a compassionate angle of course, right the
school districts wanted you the best they can buy these kids. But the realistic,
you know, situation, or the truth about what's going on is like
they don't have what they need to be able to do it. And of
course the leads on because what you're reporting, Erica Sansei of parents defending education
is happening every day in every public school, whether in Minnesota or Maine or
California. There's something like two million children have come in the past five years.
The official numbers eight million total. And of the eight million, there's
about two million children who are legally entitled to a quality public education dispersed all
over the country, and the school districts are not set up happening. Whenever
there's an action, there's an opposite and direct reaction to what's going on.
About seventeen or eighteen states now have educational vouchers. We have in Ohio where
if you're dissatisfied with your public school, you can take a voucher that's works
between eight and twelve thousand dollars to a private school or to a Catholic school
or some other monastery school outside the system and parents. There have been tens
of thousands in the state of Ohio that have left the public school system,
leaving behind even a worse situation because if you're a parent in Washington, DC,
or Wichita, or Chicago or Cincinnati, and you have a voucher available
of putting your kid's hands, the voucher goes with the kid and you can
get a quality education outside of the Chicago public schools which are in total chaos,
complete destruction. You're going to leave and then what do you leave behind?
Yeah, I mean the reality is, in my opinion, every single
family, regardless of their income, deserves to have options when it comes to
where they're going to educate their children. And to your point, you know
there's people who are if you're in a failing system and you have an escape
hatch, most of the time you're going to take it. So what's the
solution, Erica? Instead of cursing the darkness, what's the solution of this
terrible problem which is producing kids coming out at eighteen years old who have difficulty
reading their diploma. They were never failed because it is always socially promoted throughout
urban America. You never fail, and you get done, and you basically
went through about fourteen years of whatever in the public school system, and you
come out and you have no quality education at all. What happens? How
do you solve the problem? Well, the social promotion is not only in
urban America, though we've never seen social promotion in suburban America. I think
that, honestly, part of it is people have to get brutally honest about
what's really going on. I mean, one problem is that nobody wants to
tell the truth about what's really going on. So the first thing is is
to and part of that is because there is a lot of intimidation around people
wanting to speak freely about these topics, right, So teachers that are really
really struggling all with these issues, they're not likely to speak out about this
in any sort of public way. The other thing is that is that I
mean, again, I was a teacher for a lot of years, and
I was a member of the NEA and two states, and I'm telling you,
like, the unions are a massive villain in this. They never talk
about student learning, student outcomes. They don't talk about, you know,
reading and maths proficiency. They are hyper political organizations now, and so,
for example, that's why we don't even see them being supportive in terms of
helping with this immigration, this influx of students, because their ideology is such
that they want the borders wide open and they don't really care about the impact
that that's having on their own members. No, teachers are leaving in droves,
they can't can't take it anymore. And lastly, if after November or
the same philosophy remains in charge, and we have the next four to twelve
years of open borders, whether it's whether it's Biden or Kamala Harris or Gavin
Newsom wherever, it might be, all interchangeable left wing drill bits. If
that policy continues the next four to twelve years, what's the state of public
education all over the country after twelve more years of this? I mean,
I have this. I have concerns about the state of it now currently.
And so if we do not get our arms around this and begin making you
know, hard choices, but hard choices that are good for students and families
and teachers, we're going to be in trouble. Teachers will leave, counselors
will leave, Education will become double and triple and price. Citizens don't want
to vote additional levies to support the schools that aren't functional. You've got to
build brand new building. Schools have become also now welcome wagons. They've become
language centers, They've become nursing centers and medical centers. They've become psychological service
centers. They've become feeding stations. All these things in the past were handled
within a family or a community, and families and communities don't exist anymore.
And I don't see a way out of this until we stop what's in other
words, before you start about drain draining the swamp, stop the inflow.
And we can't do that until we stop this happening of literally two million kids
have entered America in the past four years, two million dispersed all over the
country. And if that accelerates these days, the same public education is done.
And I don't know what happens to our great and use to our magnificent
cities. You know, America, for a long time we had magnificent American
cities, majestic American cities, and all of them are being destroyed in one
way or another because of crime and lawlessness and lack of faith, lack of
family. And it's not lack of funding, because Washington DC public school kids
get about twenty two thousand dollars a year each from the Congress, and they
want more money, and they want more money because of the failure of the
board and border policies. But all right, Erica Sanzi, go ahead,
please, Finnishop, I was just going to say, most of that money
never makes it to kids, and it never makes it a classroom, so
you know, obviously they're terrible stewards of the money. And the last thing
I would say is that if we're going to consider schools to be social service
institutions, right, you know, we're going to provide you with all the
services that you need, then we need to stop calling them schools, right
because schools are not meant to be places that provide every single need for a
family. They're meant to be institutions of learning. Now the goal is higher
learning or secondary learning. The goal is to come here and get the basics
and then many at the age of eighteen, I love the idea of getting
an electrician, getting a plumb. I love that some go on to institutions
of hire indoctrination at the Ivy League, and that's even worse. But I
can't imagine public education. I don't care what city or state you're in.
If these policies continue, it'll it'll collapse. And the collapse. I think
it's collapsed right now because I can't imagine comparing the senior high school or eighth
grade proficiency rates now till like fifty years ago, it's not even close.
There is none, and they're getting worse, and no one's addressing the real
problem, which is out the southern border. It's not money, and it's
as teachers' unions dominate and they fire superintendents all the time. Like in Cincinnati,
we had a pretty good one named Ironetta Wright, and she had a
vote after about a year and a half trying to change things in Cincinnati,
which is a terrible school district. The six unions got together voted a censure,
no vote confidence, and the school board fired the superintendent and paid off
about three hundred thousand dollars to get her out the door. And she wanted
to make significant changes, and the six unions in Cincinnati did not want it
to happen, and we're left and it's awful. The unions do not like
people who come in to disrupt the status quo, so it is very common
for unions to go after makers, and what we need are change makers.
So that is again why I say again the rank and file members of the
unions are not well represented by their leaders, and those organizations are nothing but
political organizations. Now, they do not represent their members well at all,
and you know, they are a big problem. And that is why you'll
see like a place like Florida is really taking off academically. They're you know,
they've they've moved up to the rankings. They think they're now first at
least in some categories, whereas other states like where I live, Rhode Island,
where a high spending, low performing state, and that is not only
because of the power of the union, but is definitely related to that.
All right, Erica Sansey, we got to go parents defending education keep working.
It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. And Erica,
once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank
you, thank you, Erica, thank you, thanks for having me.
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