Help DC Families: Tell Congress
to Vote YES on Opportunity Scholarship Program
For Immediate Release: March 29, 2011
For more information contact:
Felice Green, Director of Communications
202
429-2236/ Felice@baeo.org
BAEO ISSUES URGENT CALL TO ACTION TO SUPPORT
PASSAGE OF
OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Organization Expresses Outrage to NAACP
Opposition
WASHINGTON, DC - The Black
Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) today
issued an urgent call
to action to people across the country
to support passage of H.R. 471, the Scholarships
for Opportunities and Results Act. If
adopted, this law would help expand the current
D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP),
which helps thousands of low-income minority
families in Washington, D.C., send their children
to private schools.
"On Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives
is scheduled to vote on the Scholarships for
Opportunities and Results Act. This
law can benefit thousands of low-income minority
families in the Washington, D.C. who desperately
need new and better high quality educational
options for their children," said BAEO
President Kenneth Campbell. "We
are issuing an urgent
call to people across the country to contact
their Congressional
representatives and let them know the
critical importance of supporting this bill."
BAEO also expressed outrage about the NAACP's
opposition to this program and similar programs
that help low-income families rise up out
of the ashes of failing public schools. "The
fact that the NAACP opposes a program that
gives options to low-income minority children
is inexplicable," said BAEO Chair Kevin
P. Chavous. "Their call to action is
based on lies and distortions about the program."
In its call to action, the NAACP states that
it opposes expansion because "the 5 year
pilot program in D.C. was, by all accounts,
a failure; neither the majority of D.C. residents
nor their democratically elected representatives
want the program; and due to our underlying
opposition to school vouchers."
Mr. Chavous responded, "Nothing could
be further from the truth."
- Nearly 9,000 low-income families have
applied to participate in the program since
its inception in 2003.
- Four separate polls conducted between
2007 and 2011 clearly show that D.C. residents
support parental choice, and a February
2011 Lester and Associates poll showed that
74 percent support reauthorization of the
OSP.
- The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program
was created during the Williams administration
by former Mayor Anthony Williams and Councilman
Kevin P. Chavous.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., a Senior Advisor
for Strategic Alliances for BAEO and former
Executive Director and CEO of the NAACP urged
the organization to take a second look at
the program anew to get a better understanding
of how it benefits those families that the
NAACP represents. "Currently, middle-
and upper-class District parents bypass public
schools for private schools," said Dr.
Chavis. "Why? Because they
want the best education for their children,
and because they possess the capital to buy
homes in neighborhoods with good schools or
to pay their way out of public education altogether.
We should not live in an America where being
able to choose where your children are educated
is an exclusive right only for the wealthy.
BAEO unequivocally supports providing these
same options for low-income families, and
I urge officials at the NAACP to look at this
program from that perspective," said
Dr. Chavis.
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About BAEO
BAEO is a national, non-profit, membership
organization whose mission is to increase
access to high-quality educational options
for Black children by actively supporting
parental choice policies and programs that
empower low-income and working-class Black
families.
BAEO was founded in 2000 by Howard Fuller,
Deborah McGriff, Virginia Walden-Ford, Philadelphia
State Rep. Dwight Evans, Kenneth Campbell,
and several other prominent Black educators,
elected officials and civil rights activists.
For more information on BAEO visit www.baeo.org.
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