Parents Appeal to Fellow Alabamians to Continue School Choice (opinion)

Publisher’s Note: The following is an open letter from parents of Alabama students currently benefiting from the Alabama Accountability Act.

Dear fellow Alabamians,

It is amazing the difference a year or two can make.

Our children are recipients of a scholarship through the Alabama Accountability Act.

Each of our stories is different, but in many respects, they’re the same. For one reason or another, the public schools our children were zoned to attend simply were not working for them. We needed another option.

But each of us had the same problem: we didn’t have the financial resources that others have to simply pick up and move our children to a different environment.

You see, some of us were working two or three jobs just to pay rent and make sure our children had food to eat. Some of us lost our jobs or became disabled and are unable to work.

Please don’t mistake our circumstances to mean that we do not understand the need for our children to get a quality education. If anything, it heightens that understanding. Each of us wants our children to have opportunities that we never had. And all that starts with an education – an education that our children were not receiving at their previous public school.

That is why we applied for a scholarship through the Alabama Accountability Act. When we found out that they would be awarded these scholarships, we could have never guessed the impact it would have in their lives.

Our children are thriving in their new schools. It used to be difficult getting them out of bed in the morning to go to their old school. Now, it is hard to get them to come home! They are learning at a pace that we never could have imagined two short years ago. Most importantly, they are excited about the future. They never talked about college until they started going to their new school.

None of this is anyone’s fault – our circumstances, our child’s educational needs or even the things that were going on in our zoned public school that made us search for other options. But not supporting Senate Bill 123, a bill that will ensure that our children can continue to receive a scholarship that will allow them to stay in a school that is working for them, is unacceptable. That is why we decided we had to write this letter.

We would love to talk with every reader we can, and every legislator we can, to tell you face-to-face about the changes we have seen in our children. But more than that, we would like to hear how legislators can justify not supporting our children— effectively saying it’ ok to send them back to the schools that didn’t work for them, where they were being bullied, or ignored, or told they wouldn’t amount to anything.

I hope you will join us in advocating for our children, but also the more than four thousand other children who are currently receiving scholarships. All of these children were in similar situations to our children, stuck in schools that were failing them, where they were not receiving the education they deserve.

We are counting on you. But more importantly, our children are counting on you.

Sincerely,

Brooke Smith
Mobile, AL
Parent of a 10th grader

Nikesha Royster
Birmingham, AL
Parent of a 12th grader

Janice Houston
Huntsville, AL
Parent of 9th & 11th graders

Wendy and Rodney Birditt
LaFayette, AL
Parent of 3rd, 10th, & 12th graders
 
Mary Coleman
Bessemer, AL
Parent of a 9th grader

Dalphine Wilson
Montgomery, AL
Parent of 3rd & 6th graders