Matthew Brown |
What message is a governor sending to the public with an appointment like this?
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has tapped someone to your state’s Board of Education who never attended public schools, publicly declared that his children never will either, and actively supported a successful effort to defeat a vote on a school tax in a divisive campaign in his home county?
Bentley, a Republican, named Matthew Brown, a 28-year-old design engineer at the Baldwin County Highway Department, to the Alabama State Board of Education. Brown graduated in 2007 from Pensacola Christian College and attended Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, graduating in 2011.
Bentley hasn’t been what you’d call a friend to public schools, given his support for tax credits, vouchers and charter schools. This year he signed into law legislation that amended the 2013 Alabama Accountability Act and that diverts up to $30 million a year from the Education Trust Fund for “opportunity scholarships” (vouchers). He also recently signed a law allowing charter schools to open in Alabama and giving a new state commission the right to overturn a local school district’s rejection of specific charter applications.
So it looks like Alabama is going to challenge Kansas and Texas for the most screwed up state education system in the country.
Bold move Alabama, if successful perhaps someday students can read about your efforts to undermine their education in textbooks.
Wait, what am I saying? If successful future students will have to have the textbooks read to them by somebody who went to school in another state.
Republican, dumbing down future voters in order to stay in office since....well since forever.