I am about to quit my job because I can't stand my boss' POV on this anymore.

I just started my lovely daughter in public kindergarten. She acts like I am letting her visit with prison inmates. I feel todo anything otherwise is a huge social hindrance. I went to public schools myself. And new people who went to all the other types of schools (Delaware is small). None of our differences are really academic.

She insists that private schooling is the only way to turn your kids into world leaders, and I want to ask her how all that debt she accrued panned out in producing her kids: the event planner, the rug salesman and the restaurant manager. Nothing wrong with any of those jobs...I'm just sayin'.

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And finally and most importantly, it's the Obamas' decision to make.

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Back in high school I took 12 AP classes and earned the AP State Scholar award. I earned a partial merit scholarship to the University of North Carolina, the first public university in the US. My college education cost about $30,000 plus the one thousand it cost for my AP exams, and I spent a year in Spain. I now speak fluent Spanish and will be going to graduate school for translation next year.

Right now I work at a private university as a tutor, and I know how little it matters from which school you came. I even tutor a girl who went to Sidwell Friends. I know more about grammar than she ever will, and I learned nearly all of it from my dedicated seventh grade teacher. I learned every tense in the English language and the subjunctive mood when I was 12 years old, and I have yet to meet one other person who did as extensive a study of grammar that I did. I was the only person who could conjugate verbs in my ninth grade honors English class.

I don't doubt that this girl's private schooling was a valuable experience, but I don't think that just because you have the money to throw around you can automatically improve your educational opportunities. My education since kindergarten has been bilingual, and it was all subsidized by taxes. The main problem is that any money that could be dedicated to public education is often siphoned off because if a school "fails," then surely it is the school's fault. Dedicated students with dedicated teachers and a good administration backing them can do wonders for any child's educational experience. If we continue to underpay our teachers, then we have no one to thank but ourselves for the demise of public education. It's not a living wage for the job that follows you everywhere with work that does not end.

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I'm a firm believer in public school. But their's two sides to every coin.

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If DC schools are anything like the public schools close to downtown LA, they won't have the means necessary to keep the girls safe and the classroom atmosphere conducive to learning.

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That said, DC schools are shitty because we tie school funding to local property taxes. It violates the intention of free and equal public education when rich children get good public schools with good college prep and poor children are stuck with a lesser education.

Honestly, Obama probably isn't going to do anything to change the way this works, and I don't think it's a totally bad thing to draw attention to the issue by hitching it onto the attention drawn to the first family.

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Ummm. No. Just because I am fighting for something I know is right does not make that right my preference.

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