Why Bobby Jindal for VP Would be a Mistake for Mitt Romney

Impact

So many people believe that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is a shoe-in as former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential choice in this year’s presidential election, but I’m going against the status quo on this one. I don’t believe that Jindal should be the VP nominee because he is so out of touch with real Americans and he doesn’t seem to truly care about the education of all Louisiana children. 

Recently, Jindal vetoed a bill that could have provided private funding to improve troubled public schools. What logical person says "no" to improving education? Bobby Jindal does. When someone is in a political position, I feel that they should be able to relate to the citizens that they are serving in hopes of creating a better life for them. If you haven’t noticed, the vast majority of Americans are in the lower to middle classes. We work long hours at low to mediocre paying jobs in order to provide for ourselves and our families. We often stress over finances because we’re barely living paycheck to paycheck only by God’s grace. How can someone who’s never struggled or someone who has blocked that part of their life our possibly know what I’m going through?

The education plan that Jindal wants to implement will use public dollars to fund private and parochial vouchers. Whenever a child is given a full tuition voucher to one of 120 Louisiana private schools, that child’s local public school will lose a portion of state funding. They say it costs less to educate a child at a private school than at public school, but I feel that’s just a scapegoat to do our kids wrong. What about the students and teachers who are left at the local public schools? Obviously all the children won’t be going to private school, so what happens to their education? Do we provide them with a less than adequate education? 

I agree with Democratic Louisiana State Representative Katrina Jackson,author of HB1106 that was vetoed, when she said that the bill is the one bill that encourages funding of public education. I’m baffled by the fact that our governor wants to take state money away from public schools and then vetoes a bill that would allows private funding to pick up the slack that he created. This demonstrates that Bobby Jindal has no care or concern for Louisiana’s public school system. Instead of attempting to fix the public education issue, he’s just trying to move all the kids to private school. He hasn't fixed anything, but instead just put a cute cartoon band-aid over it. It’s painfully obvious that the problem is still present. Jindal is even being sued by the Louisiana Federation of Teachers to fight the constitutionality of the education package.

Every day, kids are encouraged to stay in school and get an education, but lawmakers are making that harder and harder for them to do. They say that their improving schools, but speaking as a former student of the Louisiana school system and a parent of a student within the Louisiana public school system I can tell you that they’re only hurting our children. We’ve gone from being concerned about the kids’ well-being to worrying about test scores and rankings. The curriculum is so jacked up and the students know it. When don’t give kids a reason to learn or make it interesting for them to learn, they’re not going to be concerned about learning. If children are properly educated in elementary and secondary schools, there’s a better chance that they’ll achieve success in life.