A Florida Angel Mom is urging black Americans to stand with President Donald Trump, whose school choice initiatives offer low-income black families an opportunity to change the trajectory from poverty to success.
Kiyan Michael is an Angel Parent of the late Brandon Randolph Michael, who was killed when a twice-deported illegal alien hit his car. She is now a member of the Black Voices for Trump advisory board.
In a column at the SunSentinel, Michael, who was born and raised in Florida, wrote that school choice programs, such as those Republicans in the state have been putting into effect since the early 2000s, have been a successful way to pull low-income children out of failing public schools.
Moreover, black Democrats have been overwhelmingly supportive of school choice, though most party leaders and 2020 Democrat presidential candidates are not.
Michael points to one national poll, commissioned by the American Federation for Children, advocates for school choice, and conducted by Beck Research, a Democratic polling firm, that found 67 percent of voters support school choice, including 73 percent of Latinos, 67 percent of blacks, and 68 percent of whites.
Another poll released in August by Education Next found black Democrats approve of targeted vouchers, universal vouchers, and charter schools at 70 percent, 64 percent, and 55 percent, respectively, and Hispanic Democrats approve at 67 percent, 60 percent, and 47 percent.
Yet a third poll commissioned by school choice proponents Democrats for Education Reform, and conducted by the Benenson Strategy Group, found 81 percent of Democrat primary voters, including 89 percent of black Democrat primary voters, support a proposal to “expand access to more choices and options within the public-school system,” including charter schools, which are funded with taxpayer dollars but operated by private boards.
Despite these overwhelming numbers in support of school choice in its many forms, Michael observed that “do-nothing Democrats still call the policy racist because they’d rather that public school teachers win with lifetime employment while black children lose with a lifetime of underperformance and missed dreams.”
Michael also noted that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) enjoyed “strong performance among black women in his 2018 election, because these women “know how important programs such as the scholarship tax credit are to helping their children thrive.”
In January, DeSantis announced an executive order to eliminate the Obama-era Common Core Standards and has also taken action to expand the school choice voucher program. Michael said the expansion will allow “18,000 low-income students in failing public schools to attend private schools instead.”
In 2001, Florida Republicans developed the Scholarship Tax Credit program, which enabled 784,000 low-income families to send their children to private schools.
Michael added:
These are the sorts of initiatives that will continue to empower African Americans for generations, and that’s something we should all celebrate. It’s one of the many reasons I’m so proud to be part of the Black Voices for Trump movement. We’re going to spend the next 13 months spreading the message of “Promises Made, Promises Kept” to the black community.
“If we want to keep our access to opportunity, we cannot rely on big government,” she asserted. “We must raise our voices and stand with President Trump.”
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