This afternoon, right in the DeVos family’s stomping ground of Grand Rapids, MDP continued its series of Back to School week press events highlighting Tudor Dixon’s disastrous education plans. State Representative Rachel Hood and education leaders gathered just outside DeVos Place to discuss the dangerous impacts of Dixon’s wrong-for-Michigan agenda on public education.
Read excerpts below highlighting how DeVos sellout Dixon plans to gut public education as we know it – harming not only students, but parents and educators as well.
State Representative Rachel Hood (HD-76):
“Next week, students across Kent County will be heading back to the classroom, including my own two kids, so the value of accessible education isn’t lost on me. That’s why I’m so appalled by Tudor Dixon’s plan to rip millions of dollars away from the students who need it most, and instead give it to high-tuition schools and private institutions.
“[…] As Tudor vies for the most powerful seat in the state, Betsy Devos is pulling her strings to create a dangerous education plan that wouldn’t work for a majority of Michigan students.
“[…] No parent should have to worry about the types of resources their kids may or may not have in the classrooms. No parents who rely on a free public education for their kids should have to wonder if the place they send them every day for eight months of the year has the funds to stay afloat.
“[…] While Republicans like Tudor Dixon have continued to attack public education, Democrats are laser-focused on continuing to invest in it because it’s what parents, teachers, and students need. The disdain Dixon and her special interest-backer Betsy Devos have for Michigan families who can’t afford private options is apparent and come November, voters will make it known that their agenda has no room in the Great Lakes State when they reject them at the ballot box.”
Pamela Pugh, VP of MI State Board of Education:
“Labor Day in Michigan marks the beginning of the school year for our children. The smell of fall and seeing the first day of school photos of children brings a sense of joy, peace, normalcy.
But this year in this season – someone once called it silly season – while we should be focused on the learning of children in safe, healthy, nurturing environments, there is the stark reality that Michigan’s GOP has reached a new low. Where the GOP’s agenda is one that targets and exploits our children and parents and undermines our educators. This agenda is not about our children. It is about Republicans using our children’s education as a platform to get media attention and to propagate their national plan that centers on hate and purposeful misinformation.
[…] Just last week Tudor Dixon even introduced Virginia’s governor and touted him as someone who used or exploited education issues to pave the way to the governor’s office as if this was a good thing.
Michigan voters are parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, educators, and all of us who care about our children’s future. Michigan voters know that a Dixon and Hernandez administration is simply a new face for an old scheme masterminded by Betsy DeVos to destroy and dismantle our children’s education system.”
Blake Mazurek, public school educator:
“I am a proud public education professional with nearly 30 years as a classroom teacher. Over the course of my career, I have witnessed and felt the disastrous policies of the Republican party under the leadership of John Engler, Rick Synder and Betsy DeVos – and now, we are facing the candidacy of one of the most extreme gubernatorial hopefuls in that of Tudor Dixon.
“Public education has been under assault by some of the most destructive special interest groups for decades and Tudor Dixon plans to turn these attacks up to 11. […] Under Betsy DeVos’s watchful eye, Dixon has pledged to exhaust every avenue to achieve her crusade to decimate public schools. She supports rewriting Michigan’s constitution to implement a dangerous voucher scheme that could direct taxpayer dollars up to $500 million, with some estimates at $1 Billion in five years, from public schools to private schools.
“[…] Every single educator, in every school, district and community across the nation firmly believes that parents are a critical partner in the education of their children. We have been clamoring for parental involvement for decades and embrace it. Unfortunately, the efforts of Tudor Dixon’s allies, and by extension, herself, have created a crisis, preying on fear and uncertainty, which has established an atmosphere of stress, discouragement and frustration among many in the education profession.
“[…] Governor Whitmer has, for four years in a row, made the largest investment in K-12 education in Michigan history – without raising taxes! She has secured the highest per-pupil state investment in Michigan history at $9,150 for every student, in every district. These achievements have real world impacts on our students, education professionals and communities.”
