Exceeding our goal this year, more than 152 participants attended - including 83 elected officials and staff of elected officials - from Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin just to name a few.
The purpose of this seminar is to bring together Black elected officials from across the country who believe that poor and working class parents should be given a choice and children a chance at academic excellence.
Our seminar supporters include the Alliance for School Choice, Democrats for Education Reform, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Daniels Fund, John Kirkley, the Program on Educational Policy & Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University, and the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
One of the objectives of the first three BSLI Seminar on Education Policy and Parental Choice for black elected Democrats was to identify the most commonly cited "barriers" between black politicians and their support for parental choice legislation. While individual elected officials from various parts of the country sometimes identified specific obstacles which were unique to their own experience, some clear patterns nonetheless emerged.
The most common responses � pulled together from spirited discussions and note-taking � are outlined in Doing the Right Thing: Top 10 Barriers to Supporting Parental Choice.