So you have kids trapped in failing public schools? You’re out of luck, according to Jill Underly, the teachers union-backed candidate for state Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Unless, of course, you can afford to send your kids to private schools. Poor families be damned – they can stay in public schools while Underly gets to exercise school choice for her family.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s resident political gossip columnist Dan Bice is reporting Underly, who is running a campaign hostile to charter and choice schools, sent her kids to a private school.
“Her campaign has confirmed that she chose to send her kids to St. James Catholic School in downtown Madison during the 2013-’14 and 2014-’15 terms rather than Aldo Leopold Elementary, a low-performing neighborhood school on the city’s southwest side,” Bice reported. “Underly’s son and daughter then switched to the Pecatonica School District when she became its superintendent in 2015.”
Private schools: Good enough for me, too good for thee.
Underly is actually campaigning on the premise that lower-income families should be happy to be in a school that wasn’t good enough for her children. Underly wants to remove the same educational options for lower-income parents that she herself used because she could afford it with her taxpayer-funded salary.
Underly is practicing the type of hypocrisy that is chasing California Governor Gavin Newsome from office. What’s worse, real school children will suffer from her policies, and it’s clear from the actions in her personal life that Underly understands what her policies will mean for children from disadvantaged families.
But the good news for Underly, the teachers unions will ignore her hypocrisy and continue writing the checks to support her candidacy. It’s not about the kids for them or even the character of the candidate they’re backing. It’s about hanging onto the Department of Public Instruction.
