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Wealthy special interests want to sell off Montana's public schools. With your help, we can stop them.
Did you know that some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country want to strip Montana's public schools for parts and sell them to the highest bidder? It's true. Even worse, did you know they have support in Montana?
What "school choice" advocates won't tell you
"School choice" is the term that came out of focus groups funded by wealthy special interests that want to dismantle public education across America and in Montana. What "school choice" really means is "using public dollars to fund for-profit private schools." These private schools mean big checks to CEOs, but millions of dollars (actually, a billion dollars) in wasted tax money.
The Facts:
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The "school choice" movement has been around for decades, trying to expand its reach school district state by state.
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Decades of studies have demonstrated that vouchers do not improve educational outcomes.
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Private voucher schools do not have the same obligations as public schools under federal law to protect students from harassment and discrimination.
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Accountability is virtually non-existent in many private charter school programs.
Don't be fooled.
“School choice” is a catch-all phrase that covers a variety of efforts to privatize public education.
The vast majority of Montanans and Americans oppose school privatization, but some politicians are more interested in padding their own pockets and their donors' pockets than they are in listening to the people.
"SCHOOL CHOICE" ADVOCATES ARE
TARGETING MONTANA
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All the way back in 2013, Mike Dennison reported the following:
"... in recent years, the [Montana Family Foundation] has spearheaded the school-choice movement in Montana, lobbying the issue at the Legislature, organizing school-choice conferences and throwing its political support behind candidates that will vote for school choice.
The Montana Family Foundation also gets assistance and counsel from national groups like the Friedman Foundation and the Institute for Justice, well-financed organizations promoting and defending school choice across the nation.
Jeff Laszloffy, president of the Montana Family Foundation, says he got involved in the issue several years ago when he was approached by Greg Gianforte, the then-CEO and founder of RightNow Technologies Inc., a software development firm in Bozeman.
Gianforte, who engineered the 2012 sale of RightNow to software giant Oracle Corp. for more than $1.8 billion, is a financial supporter of the Family Foundation, and his wife, Susan, is the chair of the nonprofit organization’s board.
Gianforte also chairs the board of Petra Academy, a private K-12 school in Bozeman that offers a “classical and Christian” education, and he and his wife have given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Republican political candidates and the Republican Party in Montana."
We are fighting back!
