Who Targets Forks Township with Mysterious Robo Calls?

Were you among the Forks families who received robo calls or emails from “FreedomWorks” in early June telling you to call Rep. Marcia Hahn and demand she support Gov. Tom Corbett’s School Voucher bill? 

Did you wonder who FreedomWorks is or who paid for these calls?  Did you know who Marcia Hahn is and that she doesn’t represent Forks Township?  Would you actually favor cutting more state money from our public schools to pay for vouchers?  

            It turns out FreedomWorks is a Tea Party group based in Washington, D.C., associated with former Texas Republican Congressman and corporate lobbyist, Dick Armey.  FreedomWorks is bank-rolled by undisclosed, secret corporate interests, including big tobacco, according to the Center for Media and Democracy website.  FreedomWorks opposes smoke-free workplaces and cigarette taxes.  Dick Armey also emphatically wants to end Social Security, as we know it.  FreedomWorks’ interest in school vouchers appears to be a new wrinkle, but there’s no way of knowing who paid for the robo calls.

            Governor Corbett’s voucher bill remains stalled in the General Assembly even as he decimated Pennsylvania public school funding in the last state budget.  This resulted in teacher layoffs, larger classes, cancelled programs and the Governor’s sinking approval rating of 34%. 

            Many citizens on principle oppose public tax dollars being used for religious school vouchers as a violation of church/state separation.  What is not clear is how Tom Corbett’s school vouchers would dove-tail with Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s new voucher program should he be elected in November?  Romney’s May 2012 White Paper, “Restoring the Promise of American Education:  A Chance for Every Child,” gives poor students and those with disabilities the right to attend any public or charter school in their state. 

            Romney’s proposal would “force – yes, force – suburban districts to accept city students, a step that the Supreme Court refused to take back in 1974,” according to University of Virginia Law School Professor James E. Ryan.  Romney’s plan targets the “real source of educational inequality in the country:  school district boundaries,” Ryan wrote recently in the New York Times.  Romney’s plan says:  “Require states to adopt open enrollment policies for students.”  His K-12 “Promoting Choice & Innovation” plan reads:  “students must be allowed to move to a new school, and students must bring funding with them so that new schools can afford to serve them.” 

Is this the voucher plan FreedomWorks, Governor Corbett and Mitt Romney have in mind for Forks schools and public schools across this country?  If so, how would that work?  If not, why not?

            One thing we learned from FreedomWorks is that they don’t know Marcia Hahn is not our State Representative.  Still, their robo calls and emails did open up the question of whose responsibility it is to help students in failing schools.  And has our actual State Representative Joe Emrick supported vouchers which will cut even deeper into Pennsylvania public school budgets already slashed by nearly $1 billion?