In one of the most contentious cabinet position nominations of the Trump administration, the Senate voted 50-50 Tuesday to confirm Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Vice President Mike Pence cast the first tie-breaking vote ever for a cabinet position, in favor of DeVos. The last time a vice president had cast a tie-breaking vote was in 2008 by Dick Cheney.
Local education leaders said they were not surprised that DeVos was confirmed, but they were still disappointed.
Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer, Monroe County school board member and Indiana Coalition for Public Education of Monroe County chairperson, said that Pence’s historical tie-breaking vote was a slap in the face. Pence was largely in favor of voucher programs and charter schools while he was governor of Indiana.
She said she thinks the narrative on public schools has been taken over by those in favor of privatization to say this is about giving parents a choice of where to send their children.
“We need to help people remember that public schools are here for a democracy,” she said. “We want an educated citizenry.”
Fuentes-Rohwer said that some of the proposed legislation in the Indiana General Assembly is already reflective of privatizing education, such as placing voucher approval into bills that fund pre-school education.
The Indiana Coalition for Public Education of Monroe County and the state chapter will be host to a celebration of public education Feb. 20 at the Indiana Statehouse.
Paul Farmer, a science teacher at Bloomington High School North and president of the Monroe County teacher’s union, also expressed disappointment in DeVos’ confirmation.
“It’s just a shame that we now have a leader that doesn’t believe in public education,” Farmer said.
Farmer said he has not talked to his students about DeVos and voucher programs and does not know if other teachers have. But he said he believes it would be difficult for students to grasp the gravity of how this affects public education.
“It’s not about do you like charters, do you like vouchers, do you like public schools — this is much bigger than that,” he said.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, voted in favor of DeVos’ confirmation. Young, who was reportedly a swing vote on the confirmation, received $48,600 in campaign contributions from the DeVos family. DeVos’ husband, who once lost a race to be governor of Michigan, and family own Amway, a company selling beauty, health and home products.
During her confirmation hearings, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, asked DeVos if she thought she would have been appointed as secretary of education if her family had not donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates. DeVos said she believed she would have.
Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, voted against DeVos’s confirmation, with the 47 other Democrats in the Senate. Neither Donnelly’s nor Young’s offices were available for comment.
“From the beginning, we made it clear our commitment to success will hinge on the local and national partnerships we create,” Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick said in a statement released after the hearing. “We therefore welcome the new U.S. Secretary of Education to the table as we ensure Indiana’s voice is heard at the federal level. Our state, our students and our educators will be represented well.”
Gov. Eric Holcomb expressed similar support. He called DeVos a dedicated champion of student achievement in a statement released Tuesday.
Fuentes-Rohwer said the fight for public education will be difficult, but the mobilization of the public against DeVos was a sign for resistance in the future.
“What we can do right now is to continue to keep the public engaged and hope that they will join us and feel angry enough to pay close attention, because this movement to privatize education has been a plan in action for a long time now and has been funded in large by Betsy DeVos,” she said.
For Farmer, the only thing the DeVos opposition can do is keep working.
“We have to work with it now, because whether you like it or not, she’s there,” he said.
