Sunday, March 2, 2008

Is Margaret Donnelly standing up for your kids?

I’ve been wondering about Rep. Margaret Donnelly’s run for AG lately. It seems to me that in the media at least, she piggybacks her opinions off of Jeff Harris’ campaign. If I were Jeff Harris, I wouldn’t like that, but then again, being in a gang is pretty cool.

In that article, Margaret Donnelly has sided with Harris in being staunchly anti-school choice, because that’s just “not what Democrats do”.

That attitude is sad and tired in my book, and in the book of the many parents across Missouri who have special needs children and are asking for the help they would receive through HB 1886, that Margaret Donnelly has come out against, calling those who support school choice “anti-public schools”.

I believe that this kind of political smear, Democrat-or-die has no place in today’s education reform efforts, and I believe that Margaret Donnelly is wrong to politicize an effort to help autistic and special needs kids in Missouri get access to the type of education they need.

On her website she has her views on a range of issues, but a few points caught my eye. She talks about costs of services falling to economically strapped Missourians. That’s something facing many special needs families trying to get the services their child needs to succeed—yet Donnelly is against that type of help for those types of families.

I am quite incensed that she and Harris keep telling Missourians that more money is their priority and answer to the myriad of problems facing public schools and the precious children inside of them—Missourians can see that’s not true. We pay more and more every year for education that is going down the tubes.

What can be so horrible about giving parents—who pay for public schools in their area that often cannot serve their child—a scholarship to help them pay for the extreme costs of educating a special needs child? That’s a question I’d like these Attorney General candidates to answer. If you’d like to ask her, just pass these and other questions on to Margaret.Donnelly@house.mo.gov.

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