CV NEWS FEED // CNN hostess Abby Phillip called out the head of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) over the revelation that she sends her son to a private Catholic school.
“The head of [CTU] is facing intense backlash after it was revealed that her eldest son was enrolled in a private Catholic school,” Phillip said at the top of her segment.
“Now, the reason that this is at all controversial for some people is because Stacy Davis Gates has championed the city’s public school system while consistently voicing strong opposition to private education,” the journalist continued.
She proceeded to juxtapose Davis Gates’ past remarks and current actions. “Last year, she underscored her position on the issue, saying, ‘I can’t advocate on behalf of public education without it taking root in my own household.’”
Phillip then called the union boss on as her next guest. “We wanted to have you on so you can help explain what happened here,” she said. “You’ve likened, in the past, private schools of today to ‘segregation academies’ of the Jim Crow South. Why then send your child to a private school?”
“I didn’t speak out against private schools,” Davis Gates claimed. “I spoke out against school choice. School choice and private schools are two different entities.”
“I think at the end of the day, people are asking here about whether the rhetoric matches your actions,” Phillip said. “What do you say to them?”
Davis Gates answered:
I would say that if we understand the desegregation of schools post Brown v. the Board of Education, we also understand that school districts in the South, in particular, closed down entire school districts, offered money to families, white families, so they could get accepted into private schools.
That is, in fact, the origin of school choice in America, and I know that the right wing wants to obscure that in the same way they want to tell us that slavery was a job training program.
“One of the issues here,” Phillip replied, “is something you yourself raised.”
Phillip referred to a letter Davis Gates wrote to CTU members in an attempt to defend her controversial decision. The teacher’s union head wrote in that letter: “Our critics want you to believe that ‘school choice’ is a black-and-white issue that lacks nuance and hard choices for people like us – Black families, especially when you are parenting a black boy in America.”
Phillip followed up: “You wrote that to explain why you chose to take your child out of public school for a sports program at a private school.”
“The question I think your critics are asking is why not afford that nuance to the families who might live in the South Side of Chicago and in other major cities, and they want the same choice that you were able to afford to give to your child,” Phillips added.
The CTU boss deflected her criticism over her oldest child’s school by stating that her youngest two children still attend public schools.
The second thing is that over 90% of my neighbors in my zip code send their children into schools outside of our zip code, outside of our neighborhood. And this is an issue that Black Chicagoans, Black families in Chicagoans [sic], deal with on a very regular basis.
So, when we talk about choice, Abby, what we’re talking about is a decision between Frosted Flakes and Cheerios. But in Chicago, and especially in Black neighborhoods, it’s a decision with zero and zero, and that’s not a choice. That’s quite frankly an ultimatum.
“I totally understand the point that you are making,” Phillip replied. “But I do wonder, do you regret your own rhetoric?”
“Regret rhetoric?” Davis Gates asked. “What I have said are facts.”
The union leader then repeatedly interrupted Phillip as she attempted to ask her a followup question.
“What I’m trying to ask you is, do you think your rhetoric, at some point, went too far when you are making a choice – because perhaps I assume you can afford to do that – that a lot of Chicago parents don’t because they can’t afford it?” the CNN anchor asked.
“And proponents of school choice say that the state should have a role in helping those families who can’t afford it make the same choice that you did for your family,” Phillip added.
Davis Gates continued to deflect, claiming that “school choice in this country has been anchored to a very racist and angry right wing.”
Prominent school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, P.h.D, called Phillip’s interview with Davis Gates “8 minutes of pure gold.”
“The union president should RESIGN in disgrace after this interview,” he added. “Great work DESTROYING Stacy Davis Gates, @abbydphillip.”
As CatholicVote reported earlier this week, Davis Gates initially defended her decision to send her son to a Catholic school with a similar answer to the one she gave on CNN.
“It was a very difficult decision for us because there is not a lot to offer black youth who are entering high school,” she told Chicago’s National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate:
In many of our schools on the South Side and the West Side, the course offerings are very marginal and limited. Then the other thing, and it was a very strong priority, was his ability to participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities, which quite frankly, don’t exist in many of the schools, high schools in particular.
Again from CatholicVote:
The fervent school choice opponent called the news report on her son attending a private school “doxing,” “violent,” and “unacceptable.”
“We live in a time with extremist political rhetoric, and it has led to violence,” Davis Gates said. “My children, my family should not have to endure this.”
“It needs to be rejected and decried by every institutional leader,” she added.
Read more: 8 Politicians Who Attacked School Choice But Went To Private School Themselves (Or Sent Their Kids)
