Fetterman: $35K private schools for we, public schools for thee?

AP Photo/Marc Levy

So much for John Fetterman’s crudité argument. The Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania has had a lot of fun poking GOP opponent Mehmet Oz for his wealth and disconnect from the working classes of the Keystone State. At the same time, Fetterman has opposed school choice for those same hoi polloi — but sent his own kids to tony private schools, the Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross reports this morning:

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Pennsylvania Senate hopeful John Fetterman (D.) opposes vouchers that let children in failing public school districts attend private and charter schools. But the progressive champion, who lives in one of Pennsylvania’s worst performing school districts, sends his kids to an elite prep school.

Fetterman’s kids attend the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, where parents pay up to $34,250 for a “dynamic” learning environment and an “innovative” approach to teaching. They would otherwise go to schools in Woodland Hills School District, where graduation rates are far below the state average. The local elementary school that serves Fetterman’s town of Braddock is in the bottom 15 percent of the state in academic performance. Fetterman and his wife Gisele have sent at least one of their three kids to Winchester Thurston for the past seven years. A 2018 news article mentioned that Fetterman sends his kids to a private school in Pittsburgh, though the school was not identified. Gisele Fetterman has been a “WT parent” since at least 2015. Last year, Winchester Thurston praised Gisele, a “WT Mom,” for her help on an art project.

Yeah … nothing says down with the struggle like a collectivist sending his kids to private schools while extolling public-school monopolies. Fetterman wouldn’t be the first such progressive hypocrite in this position, but he might be the only one running ads painting himself as a downscale working-class scrub at the same time.

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And for that matter, a particularly snobby working-class scrub who doesn’t want the great unwashed showing up at his kid’s school with a voucher in hand. Ross also notes that Fetterman’s egalitarian diversity arguments might come into question here as well:

While sending his kids to Pennsylvania’s 11th best private school, Fetterman has publicly opposed vouchers that parents in poor-performing districts like his own could use to send their kids to private and charter schools. In 2018, he told an organization founded by Bernie Sanders supporters he opposed vouchers for families in Philadelphia on the grounds that they “[take] money away from public schools” and give it to private and charter schools. Roughly one-third of Philadelphia school kids go to charter schools because of the city’s dismal public school system.

Fetterman’s children will likely benefit academically from attending Winchester Thurston, though they will be deprived of the racial diversity Fetterman claims to embrace. Woodland Hills is 62 percent black and 25 percent white. Just 36 percent of Winchester Thurston’s students are minorities, though the school has a fully staffed “equity and inclusion” office.

All of this makes Fetterman’s “crudité” campaign attacks look a little like projection. So too does this tweet from Fetterman in May, which Ross discovered for his report. At that time, Fetterman certainly implied that his children were in public school and not super-exclusive private schools:

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If they want a public-school education in American history for their kids, then why aren’t the Fettermans’ kids in public school? Is it because public schools in Pennsylvania underperform — and that Fetterman didn’t do much about it as a public-officeholder in Pennsylvania? Voters in the Keystone State may care about that issue a lot more than they care about “veggie trays,” especially with this level of rank hypocrisy in the mix.

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