Gov. Christie on proposed changes to the Opportunity Scholarship Act (transcribed from NJN video):

I’ll be happy to look at any recommended changes to legislation that folks have made. But I will not capitulate and be a participator in a capitulation which results in urban children and their families being denied an education because members of the State Assembly want to capitulate to the teachers’ union. That’s what this is. The delay in this is capitulation to the teachers’ union because what they stand for is putting money in their own pockets and they can not say that this is for the kids…

No achievement for these children and no freedom for their families. Why? Because of their zip codes. If the Education Law Center wants to sue over something, they should sue over that. That’s the obscenity of our public school system in our urban areas and it disgusts me…This is a moral question. This is a civil rights question.

Each one of those members of the Legislature who doesn’t support real opportunity and hope for those children should have to answer to why they deny civil rights for those children and families in order to placate a public sector union that has as its credo, “Me First, Everyone Else Second.”