Attorney Krista Latta from Ahlers & Cooney Law Firm represented the West Des Moines School District at Thursday’s Iowa Board of Education meeting regarding the pornographic book “Gender Queer” being kept in a district school library.
Latta defended the district’s decision to keep the book in the library despite the fact Google says it contains adult sexual content and Facebook says it violates its community standards on sexual activity.
In doing so, Latta made an argument for school choice.
She was talking about the power that should reside with the local school board and noted that if individual families or parents don’t like those decisions, they should just find another school to attend.
“If there’s dissatisfaction, if someone’s not happy, the remedy is at the ballot box,” she said. “I think if there’s dissatisfaction or someone’s unhappy to a certain degree, they can, um, you know, make another choice then, you know, about whether or not that’s a school that they want to attend.”
The question then is what about parents who might not have the means of a 16-year attorney to just leave a school and go to that “other choice?”
If they’re not happy with a decision made by the district, staying in the same district doesn’t really make sense. This means they’d either have to go to a school that isn’t near their house, go to a private school or uproot and move altogether.
Two of those options don’t work for many families.
Latta acknowledged in her arguments there is a justifiable reason and an actual need for school choice in Iowa. She even used the word herself — “choice.”
But right now, due to Democrat opposition and enough RINO resistance to Education Savings Accounts, many Iowa families have no choice.
