After reading Lindsey Prather’s quotes to the Wilmington Star-News (“Prather represents Western North Carolina House District 115”), I  was surprised at how out of touch her views were with the people she represents here in Western North Carolina.  

Representative Prather’s views expressed to the people of Wilmington on May 9th instead align with the view that the state (and not the parent) should be responsible for what children learn.

This was very clear in her stance on opportunity scholarships. Prather’s ally (Gov. Roy Cooper) calls opportunity scholarships “school vouchers” in the same article.

Prather made it abundantly clear that she opposes opportunity scholarships and has supported numerous amendments to stop them.

These scholarships allow middle- and lower-income parents the means to send their children to schools which align with their personal beliefs and which focus on educational fundamentals, not political correctness or agendas of special-interest groups. 

Prather’s tone portrays opportunity scholarships as some sort of unsupervised rogue giveaway to advance elitism. She seems to miss the point that supervising children’s upbringing is the primary responsibility of the parent — not the state.  

In reality, “school vouchers” (as she and Governor Cooper call them) help middle- and lower-income families gain equal access to a quality education of their own choosing and retain and exercise their own individual beliefs. 

Opportunity scholarships empower parents who could not otherwise send their children to schools that align with their beliefs. They give them the ability to choose a school that reflects their own views on education, life and the role of the individual in society.

They give that parent back the money they have already involuntarily paid in taxes — without forcing the parent to send their child to a “public school,” which does not align with their views.  

A point that was missed by Prather seems to be that parents are concerned that the public schools are distracted from their primary task and aren’t doing their job. Public schools will have little incentive to address those legitimate concerns, if they have an effective monopoly. Opportunity scholarships break that monopoly.

Prather is identified in the article as “a former public school teacher.” She now works for UNCA, which has been reported in the press recently as taking drastic measures to deal with what any business would view as “failing.”  It isn’t surprising that she opposes steps by the General Assembly to increase competition in the education system.   

Is supporting the failing system by helping maintain the public school monopoly a good thing? Prather seems to think so. 

Perhaps a scholarship that increases parental control and allows taxpayers to use their tax dollars to shop for a better outcome than the state-sponsored monopoly on education is a good idea.

But this is an issue where Prather (who is employed by the educational system) is so vested that she can’t see the forest for the trees. Parents should rightly be offended when “educators” tell parents the state knows best what is best for your child.   

Perhaps such blindness in our educators is the cause of parental skepticism in our public schools. One might even conclude that “educator’” blindness to parent’s rights and concerns reflects true elitism.