Jackson Jambalaya

“Sometimes people come up with what they believe to be a good idea and later learn, to their sorrow, that they are mistaken.” You mean like socialism? How a liberal elitist can send his children to private schools yet condemn others to lesser opportunities comes straight from either the darkest of hearts or the most myopic of visions. Given the racist and religious dogwhistles in his blather of a response, it’s a coin toss to know where he truly lies.

Such a little catfight this has turned into.

This, alone, is reason enough.


"There is little to commend the argument recently made in these pages by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy that parents should be free to segregate their children into a private school of the parents’ choice because public school test scores, which have gotten significantly better, are not good enough, and private schools are doing “fine.” "

I have wondered why we should listen to a carpet bagger Brit's advice.

I assure you that no thinking person living in a county with good schools situated next to a county with terrible schools thinks "school choice" is a good idea.

This author needs to familiarize himself with the myth of neutrality. Just because a school is called "public" and claims to be "neutral" in terms of religion does not mean that it does not push religious beliefs on students. Secularism is just as much a religious belief as Christianity. There is a reason why homeschooling has increased 373% in the last 6 years.

I’ll leave the brexit argument to those whom understand how tariffs work. But when it comes to school choice here’s how it works.

For folks spending twenty grand for high school education, their $6600 is vacation money. For those wishing to get their kids into a private school, the low cost schools (say $9,000/year) just got cheap and they better be ready to expand. For poor folk, well all the best public schools are already full and those parents have their $6600 too. So there’s no change.

Summary, rich folks get a vacation, upper middle class folks have more to brag about. For everybody else life’s the same. It’s just another government giveaway to rich folks, this one being more obvious than most.

Mr. Munford and his liberal ivy tower friends know what is better for your kids than you do. Do as they say.

Do as they say.

And in Mumford's case not as he sometimes does and did!

Mumford said, "...Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire who in the past has invested in for-profit child care."

Funny how Mr. Mumford overlooked that Betsy DeVos is a former Secretary of Education. I wonder how many other whopper facts that Mumford overlooks.

The guy is an elitist snob who remain insulated from the consequences of his flawed ideology.

A. I'm not buying his parallel with Brexit.
B. Biden trotted out Nobel Prize winning economists who said Bidenomics wasn't inflationary. So color me unimpressed.
C. I remember the words of Louis Rukeyser, "Economist have successfully predicted twelve of the last two recessions."

Mumford said, "Public support should go to schools with a curriculum the public chooses, and not to schools that spout off-beat doctrines as gospel truth."

Just who is this public that is choosing? An unelected Superintendent? An unelected school board? How does the public choose? Do tell.

I believe that my tax money should follow my child regardless of whether that's to a better public or private school. Mumford can keep his dumbass in JPS district. And send his grandkids there as well.

9:20 said, "Given the racist and religious dogwhistles in his blather of a response, it’s a coin toss to know where he truly lies."

A coin toss? 9:20 is much too kind.

I'll tell you how we can allow choice and increase funding to public schools. Invite Elon and Vivek to come to Mississippi after they finish is Washington. Lay off about 50,000 state employees and a lot of problems will be solved, including increased salaries for the really competent state employees.

How about public school parents pay for public schools and private school parents pay for private schools and not both public and private schools? Not both. You pay for what you use.

Mr. Mumford provides an open window into the heart of state control of our lives so government can limit people. He places the institution over the person's needs, as he said essentially, "The Center’s argument... flunks math. Schools are funded in part based on...attendance. Taking students out of public schools...does nothing to reduce the overhead costs of running the school". First, who cares if they have to reduce the size of the administration! Secondly, he doesn't understand that in the MS proposals, the existing city schools would actually have more money per student since the fixed property taxes dedicated to schools would be divided by less students and the state federal funding would be the nearly the same per student. This would enable the same type of competition we have between State of MS UMMC, Private River Oaks, and that dastardly religious Baptist hospital, who all receive public and private monies and compete accordingly. In WI, the city districts funded the accounts, but the MS proposals would be limited to state funds only.

Luther means well but when people cannot safely place their kids in a teaching public school…something has to happen. Public schools in Mississippi have squandered hundreds of million of dollars and left us with kids who cannot read or write and teachers who cannot teach. Giving public money to private schools may sound awful to those 65 and up given our racist past….but it seems this generation thinks they can be better people. We are going to find out I bet.

I ran into a public school that couldn't/wouldn't help nor did it seem they wanted to. Threw up more roadblocks than a small MS town on a Friday night. I got more help out of a local private school in months than I did out of the public school for years. I feel my tax payments were wasted and the amount that I paid toward operating the local public would have been better spent elsewhere.

As of now I see this so-called “school choice” as a can of worms and do not support it.

But Americans do not need to hear how Brexit was bad for a country with wig wearing dip s___ts that are jailing its citizens because Brits are anti-free speech. Great Britain is a country that still believes in royalty, a king, a queen, princes and princesses. So, Brexit, if a negative, might be the least of Great Britain’s problems. 400k dead American soldiers are the only reason Brits aren’t speaking German today, so Americans do not need an elitist lecture on Brexit, a subject that has absolutely nothing at all to do with school choice here in America.

10:08 AM, your argument is utter HS. A lot of hard working folks that aren’t rich or even upper middle class make huge sacrifices by spending their hard earned dollars for private schools, while at the same time paying public school taxes, FOREVER. If you can’t do the math, you might consider getting “educated.”

"the same type of competition we have between State of MS UMMC, Private River Oaks, and that dastardly religious Baptist hospital, who all receive public and private monies and compete accordingly."

Of the three, only UMMC is charged with operating a medical school (and other health-related school) so that future specialists are trained from the benefit of all Mississippians. The practicing physicians of all three mentioned hospitals are a separate issue.

The liberal allegiance to the Government is truly mind blowing. A liberal who rejects the public school choice for his own kids lectures the rest of us to pay up and tough it out because government run schools should be the only option for the less fortunate who cannot afford to pay government school taxes and private school tuition. Luther can afford it but he doesn’t care if your kids are stuck in an unsafe and inadequate public school. And, why would a public school that loses students because of choice still have the same overhead as before? Because liberals love the bureaucracy and can’t fathom a corresponding reduction in overhead costs as the student population decreases. That is the biggest tell of all: we may lose students from our government run schools, but we’ll be damned if we are going to correspondingly cut the bureaucracy, you racist fanatic!

In response regarding the " lecture on Brexit, a subject that has absolutely nothing at all to do with school choice"; for those who do not know the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy is Douglas Carswell. He was a big force in politics pushing Britain to leave the European Union, aka Brexit. Although many British citizens wanted to re-voteand change the outcome, they could not go back and largely regret their choice. Ever wonder why someone of Mr. Carswell's background ended up in Mississippi? Educate yourself on who you are listening to. I know nothing about Mr. Munford except that he wrote a convincing rebuttal. If he chooses private schools and has the money to pay the tuition, good for him. You don't have to send your children to public schools to appreciate what they do for the community as a whole.

Yeah, "rejected everywhere." Except for neighboring Arkansas, where it has been a raging success, and Republicans who championed it easily won re-election this year.

We have a choice: we can either educate children, or incarcerate them when they turn 18.

Juvenile illiteracy and juvenile crime are very strongly correlated.

For what happened in Arkansas re-read 10:08’s comment.

December 10, 2024 at 4:23 PM
>If he chooses private schools and has the money to pay the tuition, good for him. You don't have to send your children to public schools to appreciate what they do for the community as a whole.
I agree with 12:53's comment. Private school parents should have to pay twice.

4:23 PM, you might want to “educate yourself” on the fact that we don’t give a s__t about Brexit. Brexit is irrelevant to the school choice issue in America. With or without Brexit, Great Britain is no longer great; Great Britain a joke. Furthermore, many of us do not need to “listen” to anybody regarding the school’s issue, because we’ve lived it.

White liberals, the one’s Malcom X warned us about, are hypocrites. PRIVATE SCHOOLS, living behind protective gates, or even much worse, living in the Republican controlled burbs; while the poor children, many of which are minorities, suffer the consequences of failed Democrat policies, and the Democrats love of chaos and crime.

Nothing wrong with Brexit. If we had any sense, we'd try to set up a free trade agreement with UK. Once the vote was taken, both parties conspired and worked together to delay implementation as much as possible.

We need to do a "Brexit" with the UN. Get the UN out of the US and the US out of the UN. It's a corrupt den of thieves.

You're right on point. The whole Brexit beef is mis-direction to impugn Carswell and a typical Democrat ploy to derail the arguments about deplorable under-performing public schools, especially JPS, they can not refute. GB was in the EU for something like 47 years and the Tories botched the disengagement but somehow all of that is relevant here in Mississippi?

.....and the reason some people should never become parents.

You really don’t know what you are talking about re Brexit. Economists and analysts at Cambridge Econometrics found that, by 2035, the UK is anticipated to have three million fewer jobs, 32% lower investment, 5% lower exports and 16% lower imports, than it would have had been. The report states that the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 due to leaving EU. That is not good.

7:26 AM, “economists” huh? Here in the states a leftist Democrat that checked herself into a psychiatric hospital then later a psychiatric facility is an “advice columnist” at a major American magazine. Let that sink in. Economics fruit cake Robert Reich has a degree in economics from Oxford University. Can’t make that up.

It’s pretty clear we really need to start doing studies and writing reports on those doing the studies and writing the reports. Regardless, many of Britain’s so-called leaders are like Canada’s Trudeau, an enemy of its people. Therefore, Britain has many, many problems that have nothing to do with Brexit. Any of this mentioned in the “report?”

But, this Brexit discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with school choice here in America is just a distraction TACTIC to take the spot light off of Luther Munford’s typical white liberal Democrat hypocrisy - “expensive private schools for Luther, while poor minorities deal with the s___y schools.” Malcom X warned us about people like Luther.

@7:26 AM, Link?

9:33 is right. The whole Brexit is "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
All this proves is that Luther is a disingenuous elitist, or at least he so aspires.

If school choice vouchers pass, don't be surprised when every single private school's tuition goes up by...check's notes...exactly $6,600

It is MuNford, not MuMford!!!

You can sort of maneuver the system and get away with supporting public schools in Jackson if you live in the right zip code - UNTIL. Until they get in middle school. Then even the true believers run for the hills and either move or shell out $$$. Elected officials in the legislature, media and even public education advocacy folks that live in Jackson send their kids to private schools at that point. Or move.