The Obama Girls Keep it Private

In the wake of Barack Obama's election as the 44th president of the United States a few weeks ago, there has been much speculation as to what decisions he would make during his first weeks as the President-elect. Whether it be policy, who to appoint to his cabinet and various other posts, making peace with his political rivals, helping to avert the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression or the sheer history of an African-American being elected to the highest office in the land, much is on the plate and on the mind of our next president. However, the ramifications of the most recent decision made within the Obama brain trust still reverberate around Washington, DC.

Malia and Sasha Obama have chosen Sidwell Friends School.

Now that you have picked your jaw up off of the floor, let me say that this was not exactly a shocker given that the Obamas were considering 3 schools in DC for their daughters, all of them private. Malia and Sasha are currently attending a private school, University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, in Chicago. Sidwell Friends (picture below), a Quaker-run institution established in 1883 that is regarded as the Harvard of Washington prep schools, has educated the children of Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. The grandchildren of Vice President-elect Joe Biden go to Sidwell as do the children of two of Obama's advisers, attorney general nominee Eric Holder and foreign policy expert Susan Rice.

Pretty exclusive stuff, right? But of course, the added prestige of having the president's children at your school can make a drooling idiot of even the most jaded elitist. The rich can always get richer. “No matter what the ideology of the president who is elected or what his party is, the privileged people in Washington always want to get a little more privileged,” said Michael Kazin, a historian of American politics at Georgetown University in an article published November 14th in the New York Times. “It’s clear that many parents who send their kids to these schools would want the Obamas to go there,” he said. “They want their particular niche of the community to be enhanced.”

As an educator with a private school background who is currently working in a California charter school and has also taught in the Chicago Public School system, I followed this story with great interest, as I feel the Obama decision is a mini-referendum on the state of our public schools in urban areas such as Washington, DC. Not since Jimmy Carter sent his daughter, Amy (pictured left with her cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang) to Stevens Elementary School and Hardy Middle School has a sitting president chosen public over private. While the Mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty, lobbied the Obamas in vain on behalf of the public schools, the reality is that Mr. Fenty himself sends his children to a private school. So his pitch is just another example of "Do as I say, not as I do."

Though it was paid mere lip service during the 2008 presidential campaign compared to bigger issues such as the economy, energy policy and health care, public education was in fact discussed by Obama and Senator McCain...at the very end of one debate I should add. Their discussion centered primarily on the pros and cons of vouchers, which I am personally against as they serve to encourage parents to abandon stuggling public schools for other public or private institutions instead of rolling up their sleeves and making them all better. As a teacher I believe strongly in the need for a robust public school system and an overhaul of the underfunded "No Child Left Behind" mandate left behind by the Bush administration.

Hopefully, despite Obama the father's choice of private school for his daughters, Mr. Obama the president can bring real change to our public education system. It is certainly needed.