Parental choice is the only certain way to raise standards and counter left- wing values in the classroom. MCPP has a plan to make this happen in Mississippi.
Mississippi is already surrounded on three sides by states that have school choice. Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana have all now passed legislation to give families control over their child’s share of the education budget. However, perennial efforts to achieve something similar in Mississippi through Education Savings Accounts, or ESA's, have failed. Each time a universal ESA proposal has been attempted the legislation dies. We would love to see a universal program of publicly funded ESA's in Mississippi, which families could use to pay for school, but I believe the chances of such legislation passing anytime soon are slim.
That’s why MCPP is pursuing a different three step strategy to achieve universal school choice in our state:
- Step One – An individual budget for every student: During the last legislative session, MCPP spearheaded efforts to secure a school-funding formula in order that every public school student now has a personalized education budget.
We did so knowing that once each student has a personalized budget, it becomes much easier to argue that they should then be allowed to take their budget to a school of their choice. We have achieved this.
- Step Two – Public-to-public school choice: Thanks to a bill (HB 1341) passed in the last legislative session, military families, including those in the National Guard, are able to send their children to a traditional public school of their choice—if it has capacity.
We are openly pushing for legislation in the 2025 session to allow each student to take their personal budget to a public school of their choice, giving every family in Mississippi the right that military families enjoy. Responsible conservative policy means allowing school boards to have the final say over capacity and giving strong safeguards to school so that they do not have to take students with a history of disciplinary problems.
- Step 3 – Parental Choice Tax Credit: Tens of thousands of families in our state choose not to send their children to public school, either because they homeschool or they send their children to private school. We believe they should be able to claim a refundable income tax credit to help them with expenses, like tuition and fees.
We have a carefully costed plan for a Parental Choice Tax Credit that would achieve this, building on the tax credit system we already have. Interestingly, the Republicans in Washington, D.C., have indicated that they might pass a similar tax credit federally. These three steps would ensure universal school choice in our state—and give families in Mississippi the choices that families now have in neighboring states. The good news is that Mississippi is already halfway to making this happen!
Morton Blackwell, the great conservative activist, likes to say that “In politics nothing moves unless it’s pushed”. MCPP is happy to push – and to push hard …. even if it upsets one or two anti-school choice activists. It’s what we exist to do.
We are open about our goal and our strategy for achieving school choice because we know that sunlight is the best disinfectant. There’s no need for mystery and opaque maneuverings. Nor will we shy away from engaging directly those that might like to stop parental choice by stealth. If school choice is opposed by lawmakers that sent their own kids to private school, we won’t hesitate to ensure that Mississippi knows.
Over the course of the coming months as we head into the 2025 legislative session, I will be sure to update you on progress – and I’ll be sure to inform you who supports and who opposes parental choice! This is a fight we can win!
For as long as anyone can remember, the media didn’t just report politics. They shaped it. News anchors decided what was newsworthy, often ignoring stories that did not fit their narrative. Newspaper columnists fed us opinions. Politicians, to be successful, found they needed to cultivate the media in order to get a fair hearing. Conservatives were demonized. When digital media first emerged twenty years ago, I wrote a book about how this might change. Rather than being spoon-fed our opinions by an Ivy League elite, we might see a democratization of opinion forming.
Tragically, big tech spent most of the past decade colluding with government and the old media to clamp down on the digital revolution. Algorithms were programmed to suppress ‘wrong’ opinions. Twitter banned people for saying there are only two genders. They even took down the account of a sitting US President. Facebook closed the accounts of people who questioned the effectiveness of Covid lockdowns. Rather than dispersing knowledge, for a while it looked as if bad actors would be able to use digital tech to centralize control, China-style.
Then Elon Musk bought Twitter/X – and fired the leftist activists that had been censoring it. This is perhaps the most significant political event in decades, even if few yet realize it. Twitter/X is now the number one news source in most Western countries and growing rapidly. Able to host video and live broadcasts, Twitter/X is forcing other dishonest digital platforms to change their ways, or lose audience share. YouTube no longer feels so hostile to conservative views.
We saw the immediate impact of this during the recent Presidential election. The legacy media and corrupt digital platforms could not suppress and misrepresent the way they used to. Attempts to distort what Trump or JD Vance had or had not said no longer worked. Instead of relying on brazenly partisan news anchors to cross question candidates, candidates could go on long form shows, like Joe Rogan, and set out in detail their stance. Fifty million people watched Trump on Rogan alone. For decades, politicians have been able to get away with speaking in meaningless soundbites. Talking in soundbites no longer pays when you are doing deep dive interviews on a podcast.
Team Trump understood this. Long form podcasts were a key part of their election strategy. Kamala never engaged to the same extent and came second.
Here at MCPP, we like to think we have been ahead of the curve on this. While we don’t have the resources of a Rogan or Patrick Bet David, we do produce a weekly video and podcast in our humble studio, which gets tens of thousands of views a month. So far this year, what MCPP has posted online has been seen by MILLIONS (YouTube 200,000 plus, Twitter 22 million) – and that doesn’t include content we produce hosted by other platforms, like PragerU and others.
The counter reformation by the tech elite has failed. As Elon Musk says, we are the media now. Opinion forming is being democratized. Conservative think tanks have an unprecedented opportunity to win the battle of ideas. 2025 is going to be awesome!
What do you most like about your job? For me, it is being invited to speak about the work the Mississippi Center for Public Policy (MCPP) is doing to try to improve our state. Typically, I get a couple of invitations each month to talk at Rotary Clubs, schools or the Kiwanis. Just the other week, I received one such invitation from the North Jackson Rotary Club.
As invited to, I talked about some of our policy goals, such as school choice, deregulation and tax reform. Ever sensitive to the fact that good folk have different opinions about things, I meticulously avoided saying anything even remotely partisan. Rotary Club lunches are enjoyable precisely because they are committed to building goodwill and understanding.
As I sat down after speaking, however, up popped Luther Munford, someone I had only met on my way into the event. Mr. Munford proceeded to attack school choice – and at times I almost felt, me - at length, all under the guise of asking a question. Fair enough, I thought. Free speech and all that, although Mr. Munford did not sound very big on goodwill. In fact, he sounded borderline rude.
I thought no more of the incident until I read Mr. Munford’s recent newspaper article in which he appears to have continued the attack he started at the North Jackson Rotary Club. Curiously, for an article purporting to be about school choice in Mississippi, he launched his article with an attack on Brexit. Aware as he is of my role as one of the founders of the official Brexit campaign back in my native Britain, Mr. Munford perhaps thinks that by attacking the way 45 million Brits voted he is somehow getting at me. Whatever.
Once Mr. Munford gets around to attacking school choice, rather than me, he makes a series of erroneous assumptions that deserve a rebuttal.
Mr. Munford says school choice is unpopular. This is just not true. Polls show that more than 7 in 10 Mississippi voters, including a majority of Democrats, want school choice. Mr. Munford seems especially vexed by the idea that parents given the choice might want their children to attend a religious school. Assuming I have understood him correctly (his syntax is a little garbled) school choice would mean that “the problem of funding truly racists religious beliefs becomes even greater”.
Any suggestion that Mississippi private schools are full of “racist religious beliefs” will no doubt come as a surprise to anyone that attends or teaches at one. Mr. Munford then attacks private schools on the basis that “no one knows how well Mississippi private schools are doing because they are not subject to any form of public accountability”.
Again, plain wrong. Private schools are hyper accountable to fee paying parents. It is the public school accountability system that is failing, giving A grades to school districts where many kids can’t read properly.
Mr. Munford then proceeds to attack school choice on the basis that it would take money out of the public sector. Allowing each public school student to take their base share of state funds (about $6,600) to a public school of their choice (assuming the public school has capacity) would not impoverish the public sector. It would reallocate the money, forcing failing schools and underperforming districts to raise their game.
Our plan for a Mississippi Parents’ Tax Credit for those that choose not to take their place at a public school, because they prefer to home school or go private, would be capped at $150 million. It is not draining money from public schools but supporting families that are currently paying twice.
What I find hardest to understand about Luther Munford’s attack on school choice is that he sent his own children to one of the most expensive private schools in our state, St Andrew’s.
Luther Munford is on record as saying he “believes strongly in public education”. But not strongly enough to send his own kids to public school.
Mr. Munford attacks putting money into private religious schools because of the risk of “racist religious beliefs”. I presume there were no such beliefs at St Andrew’s Episcopal School when his own kids went there? He attacks private schools for not being accountable. When he was a parent at St Andrew’s was there not sufficient accountability to him as a parent?
Perhaps if one were to ask why, as an advocate of public education, Mr. Munford did not take the opportunity to send his own kids to, say, Murrah High School, he might have an explanation as to why his family circumstances were different. Anti school choice activists need to recognize that every family’s circumstances are different. That’s why families need to be able to make choices about their children’s education that currently only people like Mr. Munford are able to make.
Sending a child to St Andrew’s today costs about $20,000 a year. We should all support parents’ 100 percent if they are blessed enough to be able to send their children to such an awesome school. But we should at the same time help local families that cannot afford that to allocate their $6,600 of state funding to a school they can get into. To do anything else could be called hypocrisy.
Donald Trump is the most pro-school choice President in history. “As president”, he has said, “I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child”. “If we can put a man on the moon and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America”.
Unfortunately, Mississippi has made little progress towards school choice due to a tiny handful of anti-school choice Republicans. Even though three of our surrounding states, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana, now have school choice, we still don’t. The biggest obstacle to the education reforms we need is the current Senate Leader, Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann. He has taken every opportunity to thwart efforts to achieve more parent power.
Initially, Mr. Hosemann took to claiming that school choice would be unconstitutional. This is an erroneous argument, as a carefully prepared legal briefing note we circulated shows. Having conceded that there is, indeed, no constitutional barrier to school choice, our Lieutenant Governor began to search for alternative excuses. Schools might not have the capacity, seems to be his latest one.
That is why the draft bill we worked on ensures school boards get the final say as to their capacity. No one is forcing them to take more kids. Another excuse crumbles….. One by one the arguments invoked by anti-school choice Republicans to justify their inertia have been dismantled. But it still appears that the will to give Mississippi families the parent power they have in our neighboring states just isn’t there.
Why is a Republican Lieutenant Governor in a conservative state teaming up with progressive activist groups, like the Parents’ Campaign, and briefing leftist media outlets like Mississippi Today to thwart reform? Mr. Hosemann, I gather, has indicated he is flat out opposed to a tax credit. This means Mr. Hosemann is very likely to be on a collision course with the next President, whose team, I understand, is literally finalizing plans for a federal tax credit right now. Will Mr. Hosemann continue to oppose a tax credit?
Mr. Trump has made it clear he will abolish the federal Department of Education. Trump does not intend to dismantle power in DC only to see it handed over to local bureaucrats in Jackson. He would like to see parents have control over their child’s education. If a handful of local Republicans continue to kill off school choice (“It died in committee”, is likely to be their next excuse), I suspect that the conspicuous absence of invitations to Mar-a-Lago may become the least of their worries.
In a fight between anti school choice Republicans and Team Trump, I imagine Trump will win. He’d certainly have support from the local conservative base who have voted conservative for years but not always got a great deal to show for it. Perhaps part of the problem is that one or two of our anti school choice Republicans have an unfortunate habit of never wanting to engage with anyone with different ideas to their own. That can become a problem if you don’t actually have very many ideas of your own. I’m not sure that a policy on four semesters a year, or cell phone usage in schools, quite cuts it ….
Those that get endorsed by Trump to run in 2027 will, I imagine, be Republicans that actually support the new President’s agenda in the coming months, particularly the 2025 session. There’s still time to get on board with school choice in Mississippi.
What a result! Trump has bounced back to win the White House, gaining a majority of the popular vote for the Republicans for the first time in 20 years. The Republicans also won the Senate and held the House, meaning that they have a mandate, and the means to deliver it, in a way they have not had for a generation.
If the incoming administration is going to turn America around, they urgently need to get to grips with the three existential challenges the US faces, namely soaring debt, mass immigration and a debilitating lack of & self-belief.
Every hundred days the US national debt is rising by $1,000,000,000,000. US national debt is already relatively higher than it was at the end of the Second World War – and this year, we will pay more on the interest to service the national debt than we do on defense. As Elon Musk, now one of Trump’s inner circle, says, unless this changes, debt will destroy America the way it did other great powers.
Trump needs to take an axe, the way Argentina’s President Milei has, and close many of the 400 federal agencies, starting with the Departments of Education. Certain welfare programs need to go, too.
When Musk bought Twitter / X, he fired 80 percent of the staff, and output rose. Let’s hope he is allowed to do something similar to the federal bureaucracy. Musk, who recently complained that it takes him longer to get permission to launch a rocket than it takes his team to build it, understands how red tape is stifling America. Dramatically removing red tape, and legally sanctioning federal agencies that overreach their actual mandates, would raise economic growth.
Faster growth and reduced federal spending would, in time, close the deficit. Over the past four years, 10 million immigrants have entered America – me being one of them. But the number entering illegally has soared. Set aside the unfairness of allowing in people that don’t abide by the rules the rest of us are required to follow, it is not a good idea for America to accept large numbers of people from culturally incompatible countries. See Europe for details.
As a new arrival, I constantly marvel at how fortunate I am to live in America. But it bothers me that many Americans don’t see how awesome their country is.
Too many Americans – especially young Americans – have been taught to despise their own country by smart-stupid liberals in the education system who think that self-loathing is a mark of sophistication, when in reality it betrays a lack of it. The ‘woke’ insanity in the classroom needs to stop.
Trump has already indicated he will abolish federal Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs on day one. He will be President as America celebrates her 250th birthday on July 4th, 2026. Trump needs to ensure it becomes a celebration of all that is good and admirable about this country, and not a woke-fest.
The only certain way to take back control of the education system from smart-stupid liberals is through school choice.
In many states like our own Mississippi, a coalition of liberal activists, like the so-called Parents’ Campaign, and anti-school choice Republicans, such as Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann, have come together to block school choice.
Trump has made it clear he intends to address this, and Trump has indicated he will push for a federal law to give families school choice through a tax credit.
Trump is the most pro school choice President in the history of America, and I doubt Team Trump will take kindly to any anti school choice Republicans who carry on opposing public to public school choice and tax credits. State legislation on school choice in the 2025 session is likely to be closely watched by Team Trump.
Any anti school choice Republicans from Mississippi going to Mar-a-Lago to try to solicit Trump endorsements are likely to be disappointed. Their future trips are as likely to be as unsuccessful in that regard as their previous ones. Like last time, I very much doubt President Trump will offer anti school choice wannabes so much as a photo opportunity if they continue to oppose public to public school choice.
If you live in Mississippi, you will shortly have a Republican President in the White House, and a Republican Congress and Supreme Court in Washington DC. You, of course, already live in a state run by a Republican Governor, under a Republican-run legislature. If we can’t deliver conservative policy now, then when?
Now is the time for Mississippi – and America – to use this opportunity and place the country on an authentically conservative path.
Trump or Kamala? We’ll know who’s won in just a few days.
Whoever is elected the next President, we can count on the fact that supporters of the losing candidate won’t take it well. So polarized is our politics, supporters of the defeated candidate may despair. Trump or Kamala, there’s going to be an outbreak of doomerism in the days that follow. Many may wallow in pessimism. Some might even sound like they are willing Bad Things on America merely to vindicate their own political preferences. Don’t.
Whatever happens, Americans should avoid catastrophizing about the outcome. Life in this country has been getting better over the past few decades, despite rather than because of some of the politicians America has had.
Steve Pinker, the cognitive scientist, reminds us of this with a series of graphs he produced, showing how life has improved in America since the early 1970s. Output has shot up 321% since 1970, and the population increased by 63%. America’s industrial output today is approximately twice what it was in 1980. It's nearly three times what it was when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. So much for the myth of American “de-industrialization”. Life expectancy is also up. Homicide, too, is down.
Over the past five decades, poverty in America has plummeted. Among those officially classified as “poor”, 99 percent live now in homes that have electricity, water and a fridge. 95 percent have a television. 88 percent have a phone. 71 percent own a car. And 70 percent have air conditioning.
In the early 1970s, many Americans simply didn’t have many of these things. In the late 1970s, to buy a 14-inch television, the average American earning the average wage would have needed to work 70 hours to earn enough. Today, a vastly better TV can be purchased for the equivalent of 4 hours of work.
The first cell phones in the early 1980s retailed for almost $4,000 - or over $10,000 in today’s prices. They needed re-charging after 30 minutes. Today, almost every American can afford a far better cell phone for a fraction of the cost.
America has 50 states, and thanks to Article 10 of the Constitution, those powers not “specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved to those respective states, or to the people at large”. Perhaps it is time to abide by that Amendment?
Stay true to America’s Founding Principles, and America will, I hope, continue to prosper whoever lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If the question of who lives in the White House for the next four years is overshadowing everything across the country, maybe it’s time to listen to the former Texas Governor, Rick Perry, who once suggested that we ought to make Washington as inconsequential as possible.
“All political lives end in failure” observed the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. His did. So, too, will Joe Biden’s.
Forced out after four years, it is difficult to think of a single significant achievement by the Biden administration. Biden’s legacy will be higher national debt and a more divided America. But is it really the case that political lives always end in failure?
Watching the recent movie about Ronald Reagan, it was obvious that after two terms in office, the Gipper’s accomplishments clearly outweighed any defeats. Reagan’s legacy was a buoyant economy, stronger America and the defeat of Soviet communism.
If Biden’s legacy is of extreme failure, and Reagan’s of remarkable success, many politicians don’t seem to leave much of a legacy at all, good or bad. Like footprints on a beach at low tide, tomorrow it will be as though they were never there at all.
Many politicians fail to leave much of a legacy for the simple reason that they hold office but have little idea what to do with it. That’s not, of course, what they tell themselves in the early days. In the afterglow of their election victory, surrounded by staffers, and praised by smooth-tongued lobbyists, political leaders busy themselves with the business of government.
Yet often the urgent squeezes out the important. Once in office, they end up playing the role of Senator, Congressman, or state Governor, like an actor in a movie handed their lines by someone else.
Rather than implementing a blueprint that matters, they are distracted by the trivial. Instead of delivering difficult messages, they delude themselves that another press conference about blah blah is vital.
Rare is the type of politician who can make the political weather, rather than respond to it. Many politicians fail to leave a legacy because they fool themselves that they are responsible for things that would have happened anyhow. Or they imagine that they will be fondly remembered for things that happened on their watch.
How many Mississippians remember who was governor when the Nissan factory came to Mississippi? How many credit whoever happened to be in office? Any politician in our state wanting to leave a real legacy needs to address those things that have kept our state 50th out of 50 for too long.
First is education. Mississippi needs a wholesale reform of education, with school choice and parent power. With so many surrounding states implementing universal school choice, change is possible. The first wave of Mississippi leaders to actually come out and lead on this will be seen to deliver historic changes for the better.
Second is the state economy. Mississippi’s economy continues to be weighed down by a relatively high tax burden and red tape. Despite cutting the state income tax, Mississippi families and businesses still pay more than in surrounding states. Certificate of Need laws hold back the healthcare economy in our state. State leaders that lead on lower taxes and deregulation would stand out nationally and historically.
These are the issues that will define the future of our state. Our state leaders will be defined by if and how they address them. State leaders that address these issues will leave a giant legacy. Those that don’t, won't be a household name in their own home.
We are now less than two weeks away from the Presidential election – and Trump seems to have momentum. In the all-important states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, Trump looks ahead of Kamala. By a whisker.
From a policy perspective, what might a Trump victory on November 5th mean? A Trump win would be bad news for the administrative state. Talking to one of Trump’s policy people a couple of months ago, they suggested to me that in his first term Trump had been too trusting of officialdom. The 45th President had underestimated the extent to which the bureaucratic machine in Washington would try to frustrate his policy goals.
I doubt that in a second term Team Trump would let that happen again. If Trump wins, I expect to see parts of the administrative state dismantled. Rumors suggest that Elon Musk would be asked to form an efficiency task force. With a ballooning national debt, perhaps Musk could reengineer government to reduce its size and costs, while improving its effectiveness? Trump has explicitly committed to eliminating the federal Department of Education. Speaking on “Fox & Friends”, Trump reiterated the point, saying that he wanted to get “education out of Washington”. In response to a question from a student, Trump said school choice “is one of the biggest things on my platform”.
Trump went on to point out that the US currently spends more on education than many other Western countries, about $16,000 per student per year. Unlike some in Mississippi, Trump did not pretend that there had been some sort of education ‘miracle’. Indeed, Trump emphasized that the education system produces poor results, despite all the money lavished upon it.
Honesty about the true state of education is the essential first step if there is to be significant reform. In conservative Mississippi, we have somehow ended up with a new Education Superintendent, Lance Evans, that is anti-parent power. The other week, Evans went out of his way to attack school choice.
How odd that in a Republican-run state we should have such an anti-school choice Education Superintendent at the moment when Trump looks likely to win the White House. Did the Republican leaders of our state not know Evans was anti school choice before he was appointed? Or did they know the man they were about to appoint was anti parent power, but go ahead all the same?
A Trump victory will surely flush out the anti-school choice Republicans in states like Mississippi who have done little to advance parent power. It is not enough to pay lip service to school choice, yet somehow allow anti school choice officials to take the helm at the Department for Education. Nor is it acceptable to say you want school choice, when we have only a handful of Charter Schools because those appointed to oversee the Authorized Board seem happy to say “no” to new schools.
This kind of politics has all the integrity of WorldCom accounting. A Trump win on November 5th could have the effect of an audit. Time could soon be up for anti-school choice “conservatives” in states like ours.
Local mom, Amanda Kibble, is celebrating an important win for her family, and for school choice.
Earlier this year, Governor Tate Reeves signed HB 1341 into law. This new law gives military families in Mississippi the right to transfer their children to any traditional public school around the state, assuming that the receiving school has capacity. Early indications suggest this is extremely popular, with lots of military families using school choice to switch schools.
Amanda, and her family, found out the hard way that the law might not apply to those who serve their country in the National Guard. There was a real risk that Amanda’s son might lose his place at his preferred school.
That’s when Amanda approached MCPP, and we took up her case. MCPP has a long history of fighting for school choice, and our legal arm, the Mississippi Justice Institute has successfully litigated in defense of school choice.
I am delighted that Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, has now issued an opinion that the new school choice law for military families also applies, at least in part, to those in the National Guard. Three cheers for the AG!
If military families now have public-to-public school choice, why shouldn’t everybody? That is exactly what our “Move Up, Mississippi!” campaign aims to achieve.
This week’s win for school choice makes it all the more disappointing that the new State Superintendent for Education, Lance Evans, took a sideswipe at school choice recently.
Speaking at a lunch in Jackson, Evans criticized school choice, suggesting that if a single dollar of public money went into private schools, those private schools should be subjected to the regulatory oversight that public schools are subject to.
Those that oppose school choice, and indeed I suspect Mr. Evans, know full well that extending state oversight across the private school sector would be untenable – which is why they suggest it. But it is not the clever argument against school choice that they might imagine.
Giving every family in our state the right to choose a public school, as military families are now able to do, would not transfer public dollars into private schools.
Amanda Kibble and those military families that now have school choice are not taking money out of public schools. Does Lance Evans oppose their right to choose a school for their child?
MCPP proposes that under a separate program, families that attend private schools, or who home school, could get a tax credit reflecting the fact that they are already paying for a place at a public school that they are not taking.
Evans attack on parent power was not the worst of it. More disappointing was the plodding presentation that preceded it about how amazing education is in our state.
Evans trumpeted the fact that about a third of districts were rated D or F in 2016. Now only a handful are rated D or F. This, he implied, was evidence of progress, rather than a reflection of a broken accountability system.
When officials invoke the broken grading system as evidence of improvement, it is not just the credibility to the grading we should question.
How bizarre, that in a solidly Republican-run state, we have somehow ended up with an anti-school choice official in charge? Are the nine-member State Board of Education aware of Evans’ anti-school choice position? Are the various state leaders that appointed those members of the Board?
Since 2000, the number of students in America has increased by 5 percent. The number of teachers by around 10 percent. The number of education administrators, however, has shot up by 95 percent.
No wonder the education bureaucrats don’t want mom and dad to have control over where their child’s share of the education budget goes. They might start to demand that it goes into the classroom.
Lance Evans talked about making private schools accountable. Private schools already are accountable to every fee-paying parent. The issue is how to ensure that public schools are made similarly accountable, too.
We need to give every family in our state the public-to-public school choice that military families now have.
