Congressman John Moolenaar joins She Thinks to talk about the benefits of educational freedom and the intersection of parental rights and school choice. He also addresses the opportunities and challenges state and district leaders are facing as they spend the $190 billion in emergency education funding provided by the federal government. The congressman recently introduced a House resolution recognizing National School Choice Week, an annual celebration of opportunity in education.

Representative Moolenaar represents the residents of Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District. He is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Education Innovation and Opportunity, which is also known as the Congressional School Choice Caucus.

Congressman Moolenaar has worked as a chemist and business development director, and as a school administrator. He has also served in the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate. Congressman Moolenaar was born and raised in Midland, where he now lives with his wife, Amy, and together they have raised six children.


TRANSCRIPT

Ginny Gentles:

Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m Ginny Gentles, your guest and an Independent Women’s Forum senior fellow. On today’s episode, Congressman John Moolenaar joins us to talk about the benefits of educational freedom, how states and school districts are spending the $190 billion they received in federal emergency funding for education, and the intersection of parental rights and school choice.

But before we bring him on, a little bit more about the Congressman. Representative Moolenaar represents the residents of Michigan’s fourth Congressional district. He’s a member of the House Appropriations Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Education, Innovation and Opportunity, which is also known as a Congressional School Choice Caucus.

Congressman Moolenaar has worked as a chemist and a business development director, as well as a school administrator. He served in the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate. Congressman Moolenaar was born and raised in Midland where he now lives with his wife, Amy, and together, they have raised six children. Congressman Moolenaar, welcome to She Thinks and happy National School Choice Week.

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Well, thank you, Ginny. It’s great to be with you today and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and your listeners.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, I’m thankful that you’re here this week. You introduced a National School Choice Week resolution in the United States House of Representatives this year. When announcing the resolution, you said parents are looking for schools that provide the environment and curriculum that is best for their children.

The last two years in particular have shown how important it is for parents to be involved in their children education and I’m proud to stand with them in supporting the rights of parents and school choice for America’s students. So let’s start there. Tell us about the connection that you’re seeing between parental rights and school choice.

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Well, I think these last two years have really shown us the importance of parents being involved in their children’s education and having these opportunities to make choices that are best for their children. And I was a school administrator, as you pointed out. I always believed that parents were the primary educators of their children and the schools are the resource that helps enable that to happen.

And I think now more than ever, parents are taking a leadership role and saying, what is best for my child and how can I pursue that? And school choice is really the most important thing we can do, educational freedom, to help establish that throughout the country.

Ginny Gentles:

Definitely agree on that. How do you define school choice? I know some people think that school choice might just mean pulling the kids out and sending them to private school. But National School Choice week is a celebration of a broader definition of school choice.

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Really, there are a variety of options. Today we have in classroom learning, there’s virtual learning. There are charter schools, there are traditional public schools. There’s our private schools, people homeschool. It’s really looking at each child and saying, what is the best way to have this child reach their full potential? And parents are in the best position to know that and schools should be resource that can help enable that to happen.

Ginny Gentles:

So have you observed support grow for school choice over the last two years? I know we’ve seen polls that have indicated there’s growing support across party lines even parents from all kinds of different backgrounds. Is this something in conversations with your constituents and what you’re hearing from other members of Congress that you’re observing as well?

Rep. John Moolenaar:

I do. I sense there’s tremendous energy behind this. And as parents have, first of all, being online, seeing what their children are learning, that is a way to engage that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s like being in the classroom and you actually see what’s happening. And so I think more and more parents are engaged, understanding what resources are available. Technology has made it so much more possible for parents to identify areas and the best way that their students learn. So I do think there’s a lot of energy behind this and a real opportunity to move the ball forward.

Ginny Gentles:

So members of Congress like you, like many of your colleagues, are listening to parents as they’re expressing frustration about what they’ve seen as they’ve looked over their kids’ shoulders while their kids have been home for remote instruction. And I believe that you all have probably been watching some of those viral videos and other videos of parents expressing their frustration of what they’ve seen, and expressing their frustration about how long schools were closed in some parts of the country.

And as a result, you all have introduced a parents’ Bill of Rights. So it includes important acknowledgements of a power imbalance that exists between parents and bureaucrats and unions and politicians who defend the K12 education system. So for example, there happened to be a politician in the state where I lived, who suggested that parents shouldn’t have a say in their kids’ education and we saw what happened after that. I live in Virginia, by the way.

So this parents’ Bill of Rights says that parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, and that parents have a right to be heard. So these are good goals, but the Bill of Rights does not go that next step and then suggest that parents should have educational freedom or that they should have school choice. So what if the system doesn’t respond to this federal Bill of Rights or similar ones being introduced at the state level. Shouldn’t parents be empowered with education freedom at that point?

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Absolutely. And some of this we can certainly advocate for this at the federal level, strongly support and encourage school choice. And that’s why we introduce the school choice resolution. At the same time, a lot of the leadership is going to need to happen at the state level because ultimately, states really are in the lead role in education. And so it’s going to be important to work with legislatures as well as governors to emphasize the importance of school choice.

But you’re right. I think when you consider that parents have had a front row seat to their children’s education, to see what is good about that and what’s good about what’s happening in the schools as well as what is not. And one example comes to mind where they were doing exercises in privilege. And considering that if you grew up in a military family, you somehow were privileged.

In my view, people who grew up in military families are making a tremendous sacrifice as a family and ought to be honored rather than ostracized. And so a lot of the divisive things that are happening should not be happening and parents have a role of stepping up and holding school districts accountable.

Ginny Gentles:

I think you make an important point that a lot of what happens in education happens at the state and local level. And a lot of what’s happening in school choice policy is happening at the state level. So thankfully, close to 20 states expanded school choice programs that were in existence or introduced new school choice programs last year. They are calling 2021, the year of school choice.

I think here at IWF, we’re hopeful that 2022 will be the year of the parent and those school choice programs at the state level, as well as parental rights bills, leading to curriculum transparency and other things that really empower parents will happen again, at the state level. There are some things that you get done at the federal level on behalf school choice and be on behalf of empowering parents.

You are a proponent for are charter schools. And I recall watching a house appropriation subcommittee hearing in which you made a very clear case for protecting funding for the Federal Charter School Program. So tell us about your support for charter schools and CSP funding.

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Well, charter schools are an innovation that allow parents and communities to really shape children’s education. They’re public schools, which is, often people say that’s private schools, but charter schools are public schools. And it’s an innovation that offers more choices, opportunities for families. And I’ve always believed that parental involvement is one of the key criteria that helps a student succeed.

You look at all the other factors and they’re important, but parental involvement is right there at the top. And so anytime you can have parents engaged in the children’s education, supporting the school, being involved, to me, that’s really positive. And that was one of the things we saw with charter schools. And it’s one innovation. There are many ways, innovative ways, to help a child learn, but that’s one that really brings families into the classroom and working together with educators to provide what is best for a child.

Ginny Gentles:

Right, and that Federal Charter School Program provides startup funding for education entrepreneurs who are looking to create schools in their communities that can be responsive to parents and flexible and innovative and respond to the needs of the children as you mentioned. So thank you for your support for the Federal Charter School Program.

It’s a growing-over-the-years kind of program, but small when you compare it to the whole federal budget for K12 education. I think it’s roughly $70 billion right now for K12 education when you don’t count emergency spending. From your vantage point as an appropriator, do you see these funds being invested wisely? Do you think that there are any opportunities for getting some of these federal funds directly into the hands of parents?

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Well, I think I always support the funding following the child that really give of families the power to choose where they want to send their child. And to me that we ought to be growing in that area. Obviously that’s a negotiation that will happen in Congress, as well as the state level. States are the laboratories of democracy and that’s where a lot of the innovation is going to occur.

I think a lot of states are going to have ballot initiatives that try and promote more school choice, more opportunities for parents to select what is best for their child. Because what we’re talking about here is really helping young people reach their full potential. And we ought all be on the same page working towards that, not simply trying to defend a status quo system. And I hope that educators, parents, different leaders in communities will come together around this concept and school choice is a big part of that.

Ginny Gentles:

Absolutely. I think with, again, the increase in the support for school choice across party lines from parents of all kinds of backgrounds, legislators are hearing this increased demand for a more responsive system and for more innovation. And so we did have that great success at the state level in 2021 with the expansion of school choice programs and state legislators have been introducing all kinds of school choice bills in preparation for 2022.

So good things do await in those laboratories of democracy, as you called them. Fortunately, some governors have been using the emergency federal education dollars that were sent down to the state level for innovation and to support school choice. But let’s pause for a minute and acknowledge that over $190 billion have been sent to states and school districts for emergency K12 funding since the pandemic began in March, 2020.

Some governors have used their funding to create some small school choice programs and other governors, like Governor Doug Ducey have used additional emergency funding outside of the K12 funding to create school choice programs. He used a state and local funding pot from ARP, American Rescue Plan federal bill. So those laboratories of democracy are in action, even using these federal funds, but a lot of these federal funds and again, it’s $190 billion on top of the regular funding, we’re not getting a sense that they’re being spent very wisely. Do you have any concerns about that? Do you have any words of advice for states and school districts on what they should be doing with the federal funds?

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Well, absolutely. And as you point out, in the first year, I think $6 billion of that “emergency funding” was used for educational purposes. It may increase some in the next year, in the mid-20s. So this is going to stretch out over a period of years. The idea was to keep children safe in the schools and healthy as well as provide resources so that could make sure that there were no gaps in the education of their children.

And clearly those funds were not used the way they were intended and that was one of the concerns we had about the American Rescue Plan is, when you spend trillions of dollars and just shovel it out the door, there’s going to be waste, going to be inefficiencies, and clearly that’s happened in the area of education.

As you point out though, there are opportunities now because of that funding for governors, state legislators, to be innovative on how to think of changes in technology and changes in policy to improve opportunities for children and families, and hopefully that will occur on the state level, but you’re right, in terms of accountability, there was very little with the American Rescue Plan.

Ginny Gentles:

Well, hopefully parents can have access to information on how those funds are being spent. That certainly was built into the law as you all passed it and parents’ voices will be heard on that front as well as some of these others that we’ve been talking about. As we wrap up, I just want to acknowledge that more than a dozen school choice bills have been introduced this Congress and we know that none of them will go anywhere given the majority’s opposition to school choice. If, when Republicans win the House and our Senate, do you think that they will make school choice a governing priority?

Rep. John Moolenaar:

I hope so. I think there are areas, obviously Washington DC, where we have federal authority and can kind of move the ball forward in that area. We can also… I’m on the appropriations committee and one of the key roles of appropriators is to hold the administration accountable.

The education secretary for instance, will have to come before our subcommittee and answer questions about how money is spent? What policies? Why did the school board’s association target parents and want the FBI to be tracking parents coming to school board meetings? It’s ridiculous and there needs to be accountability for that.

So we’ll have a role. I do anticipate our leadership in the house really holding people accountable for funding decisions as well as accountability for improvements in education. But you’re right, we’ll still be working with a Democratic president who will oppose many of these efforts and so it’ll take time, but I’m optimistic that we can really shine a light on what’s working and what isn’t working and help again, move the ball forward for school choice in America.

Ginny Gentles:

Wonderful. Well, Representative John Moolenaar from the great State of Michigan. Again, happy National School Choice Week and thank you for joining us on She Thinks today.

Rep. John Moolenaar:

Thank you very much, Ginny. Great to be with you.

Ginny Gentles:

From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thank you for watching and listening.