Morning Bell: Don’t Do to Health Care What President Obama Did to DC School Children
Conn Carroll /
Latasha Bennett is a 37 year-old single mother of two very intelligent children: her son Nico and daughter Nia. Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Nico attends the Naylor Road Private School and “he is excelling.” Earlier this year, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) sponsored an amendment that would have stripped Nico of his scholarship and relegated him to a public school that Mrs. Bennett told a Senate hearing this week was unacceptable, disorderly, and unsafe.
After a rally to save the Opportunity Scholarship Program last week, President Barack Obama stepped in and said he would fight to preserve the program for existing scholarship students. So Nico’s education is safe. But what about Nia’s education? Mrs. Bennett informed the committee:
I applied for Nia to get a D.C. Opportunity Scholarship so that she could attend Naylor Road for the 09-10 school year. I was initially told that she was eligible for a scholarship, I was so elated. Then along came a retraction letter, and I was devastated and angry. I want Nia to have the same opportunity to excel as well as her older brother.