Photo: AP
Many poor parents are forced to send their children to failing schools with dangerous problems. Parents like Tonya McDowell. The 34-year-old, who was homeless when she was charged with felony larceny last year, said she wanted the best education possible for the boy.
As Onan Coca writes, Ms. McDowell is no saint. She was also convicted of selling drugs and has had other run-ins with the law, but that’s not really the point.
Ms. McDowell will now spend the next five years in prison for “stealing” about $15K in “free” services from the city of Norwalk, CT. How one steals “free” services is still up for debate. What is not up for debate is the ridiculous punishment for attempting to get her child the best education she could.
Ms. McDowell and her son were homeless at the time of her arrest, but her last address had been in Bridgeport, CT. Authorities say she fraudulently listed the home of her child’s sitter as her own to enroll her son in the Norwalk, CT elementary school that he attended. Ms. McDowell says that she was living in Norwalk on a part-time basis because they were using the town’s homeless shelter as a residence.
Stories like this one seem to fly in the face of liberal’s cries of “fighting poverty”. School choice would allow poor families like Ms. McDowell’s to enroll in the best schools they can find access to. However, liberals fight to keep these families in failing schools, which simply perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
No matter the reason, the prosecution of Ms. McDowell for trying to give her son a better education is a complete miscarriage of justice and a waste of taxpayer dollars. The good people of Connecticut likely spent more prosecuting her for her “crime” than they did in educating her son. Now her son will be without his mom for at least the next five years, all because she wanted him to have a chance to get out of poverty.
