School Daze (or, Where Are the Vouchers For the Rest of Us?)

Sources familiar with the decision said that Emanuel’s son and two daughters will be enrolled in the private and prestigious University of Chicago Lab School in Hyde Park.

I'm shocked.  Okay, no I'm not.  I'm disgusted.

The mayor realizes the risk that people might say he doesn’t practice what he preaches by sending his own children to private school while overhauling the city’s public schools.

“They’ll have to make that judgment and I’ll have to live with the judgment I have as a father and a husband,” Emanuel said.

And the public censurewill be coming . . . never.  At least not in the mainstream media.

“Over the years, the boundary between private and public … constantly gets eroded, erased, knocked down; and unless Amy and I are vigilant about it, there’s nothing that’s gonnna – not meanly – nothing’s gonna stop you, because rules are different. And, in fact, I don’t think any of us really know anymore,” Emanuel added. “So I have to be vigilant about the wall that protects my children so they have a natural both childhood and now adolescence. And that, to me, is something I thought about and, therefore, that’s why we’re gonna be strong because, in fact, I don’t think you could tell me today where the wall is, where you stop.”

I am trying to figure out what the hell he even means by that gibberish.  Becaise rules are different?  Meaning one set of standards apply to Rahm and the rest apply to us, in that he can advocate for public schools and deny vouchers for those of us who wish to send our kids to parochial schools, rather than send them to overcrowded and underperforming public schools - all the while his children attend a tony little "institution?"  I would be less disgusted at his hypocrisy if he chose a religious school.

I have to be vigilant about the wall that protects my children.  Are you conceding, Rahm, that your children are not safe in Chicago public schools but ours should go and be subject to risk when teachers cannot control the students?

And what disgusts me most is that no one - with the exception of perhaps FOX news and the conservative blogosphere - will call him out on this.  Because it is business as usual when politicians tell us we must do A while they do B.