Students deserve school choice

Monopoly. In business, this word has become synonymous with greed, exploitation, and corruption. Why then do we readily accept monopoly control over our children’s education?

We are quick to throw blame for poor school performance on the teachers or the parents or even the students themselves, yet the real villain is an education system with no accountability and no competition. This was made exceedingly clear by the documentary film “The Cartel,” shown last week across the country by the non-partisan Americans for Prosperity and right here in Lake County in partnership with the Lake County Tea Party.

I was surprised to learn that teacher salaries make up a small percentage of the overall spending in a school district. The real waste is found in the overhead spending that the administrators and teachers unions running our public schools have exploited for years.

This cartel has wasted millions of dollars through favoritism and nepotism. Administrators make six figure incomes and look forward to lavish retirement pensions. Even the worst of the administrators walk away with sweetheart severance packages as a reward for incompetence.

Thanks to union protections, there is no accountability for performance. Barely 50 percent of students in Lake County are performing at or above standardized test standards.

We can keep pouring money into the failed monopoly of public schools or we can find a better option, and one of those potential solutions that deserves our support is school choice, as competition is the only reliable, proven way to boost school performance.

The last thing I want for students in my community is to endure poor quality of education and God forbid another teachers strike like I went through as a high school student at Round Lake (1994-1995).

Our students deserve better, my 7-month-old daughter deserves better.

Rene Hernandez Jr.

Round Lake