Krystal Barnett has seen the impact of school choice both in her own education and in the success her son has achieved. Krystal was a transfer student herself, and her son was lucky enough to get a rare scholarship to a private school in her North St. Louis community.
“My son is a senior and has gotten into six of the seven colleges he applied for because of the opportunity he had for school choice,” she said, adding that she started a non-profit, Bridge 2 Hope, to make sure that more kids had the same opportunities. “Some schools have been failing their students for over 40 years, so this is not a pandemic issue, this is a quality issue and that is why school choice is so important.”
She said her work with Bridge 2 Hope had underlined the desire of parents, especially in communities of color, to have better educational options for their children.
“It is very important that we don’t allow our children to be trapped in those spaces where they can’t be free, where they can’t learn,” she said. “That leads them to prison and death. Not educating our kids is death. If you care about kids and not semantics, not charter versus public and all the other things people argue about, then you will join with us and work with us to give our kids the things they need to thrive.
“We are counting on our elected leaders to not just hear the uprising of parents and what we are saying about our kids, but to join with us in our fight for school choice,” she added.