How Opportunity Scholarships Help My Family

By Paula J. Yost, author of Tumbleweeds: How to be an Advocate for Your Children and Yourself in a Failing System

I told myself I was just going to stay out of this, but I’m simply not going to be able to do it. I’m going to give you guys my whole heart on this one.

I really should be the poster child for school choice.

I want to start off with a few facts.

I attended a private school K through 12th. It was a religious school, and I learned a lot of things there that were probably very harmful from a religious perspective. I also learned a lot of things there that were absolutely wonderful, and I had experienced teachers who had retired from public school. Overall, I think my private school experience was a mixed bag, and I think I probably would’ve done just as well at Mount Pleasant High School, but we will never know for sure because that is not the experience that I had. I went into motherhood very much wanting to do public school.

My husband attended private school for middle school only. He won a scholarship to attend a boarding school called Tallulah Falls. To this day, he cites his experience at that boarding school as being some of the best educational preparation he ever had. It is fair to know that my husband is absolutely brilliant and graduated from NC State with a degree in biochemistry with almost a perfect GPA. He still credits his time in private school with why. Like me, he was initially open to public school for the obvious financial reasons. He is now a healthcare provider.

Then we had Pratley. Complete bilateral cleft lip and palate. Testable IQ over 120 when he was four years old. Pratley had one basic need from public school: Speech Therapy.

As a child born with a pre-existing medical condition, a.k.a. a total lack of a roof in his mouth at birth and half of his nose missing, this is absolutely common sense.

Further, he has an internationally famous plastic surgeon who has done nothing his whole life but work on children like Pratley, who said he needed Speech Therapy four times a week for 30 minutes a session.

I wrote about everything that went wrong in my book, Tumbleweeds, which all of you were welcome to read.

The short summary is that at no point were we ever given what the doctor told us our child needed. We were given about half of it, and even then, it was not individual. I had to pay privately for the speech that Pratley actually needed from the time he was three years old until he was eight years old. I’m thankful to God every day that I had the money to do it because if I had not, my child would’ve had a lifelong speech impediment. We did the work young, so we’re not doing it now.

My experience with the public school was as follows: they did not understand what my child needed. They did not care what my child needed. They were not willing to listen to me to figure it out. They were totally incompetent. They should not be called professionals. Quite frankly, I’m pretty confident that my four-year-old had a higher IQ than anyone else in his Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting. His IQ needed to be nurtured as the gift that it is.

We chose a private school because of all of that. I work 10 times harder than I probably would have because I had to in order to be able to fund it.

Additionally, craniofacially different children really do need to be in a stable environment with kids whom they know and who know them. It stops them from developing lifelong self-esteem problems when their brains are too young and immature to process what is going on. Our local public school is so overcrowded that there is no way they would be able to police issues like this. Pratley’s private school is not going to have this problem.

Peter and I interviewed six private schools before landing on the perfect one. I have never once looked back.

I am thankful every single day for the opportunity scholarship.

Here are a few of the comments I would like to make as far as the opposition to it is concerned:

I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on Speech Therapy that my child’s doctor told me he needed because the public school system would not give it to me.

I have had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on private school because the public school system would not give Pratley the services that he needed, or the stability that he needed.

I do not dispute that I am a wealthy citizen. I have also spent more money than I get back in opportunities, scholarships, and payments to the North Carolina Department of Revenue annually. That does not include what I have had to pay to the IRS.

Last, I have one job, and that is to be the best mother that I can be.

Part of being the best mother I can be is selecting an appropriate educational environment for my children. I’m thankful every single day for the private school that they attend, and I don’t think anyone in their right mind would send their children to public school when an option for specialized private school is available.

I’m not willing to sit here and have some sort of nostalgia for public school when they are absolutely failing children like Pratley every single day.

When it comes to this issue, I am a one-issue voter. My child has a constitutional right to an appropriate education, and I don’t think he was getting it so I got it for him. Quite frankly, the state legislature should reimburse me for the fact that I’ve had to do that because I didn’t get what he needed in the first place.

I understand all the arguments about why these scholarships shouldn't exist because I went to a private school, where I understand those concerns, but at the end of the day, it’s my job now as a mother to pick the best school for my kid. I have done that, and I’m thankful every day for the extra money that I have received and will continue to receive to take care of my child’s education.