A lousy school system for thee, but not for me: Why should I ever be surprised that's the tack California Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking?
According to multiple reports, the Golden State's chief executive and all-but-declared 2028 Democratic presidential candidate is moving his official residence to exclusive Marin County in the Bay Area, out of the deep-blue state's capital of Sacramento.
Why, you ask?
It's not just the "rolling hills and redwood groves ... across the bay from San Francisco," as Politico poetically described Marin County.
Nope. Newsom and his wife want their kids in better schools, and what better place than "an exclusive pocket of Northern California" where the price that comes with the natural beauty keeps the exclusive schools in and the riffraff out?
The couple's four children "will stay with extended family and enroll in school for the fall semester, according to two people familiar with their plans," Politico reported Tuesday.
News of the move to the exclusive private school had begun to circulate in Sacramento in "recent days," the outlet reported, which is why Politico sought to confirm the move with the governor's office on Monday.
“To ensure continuity in their children’s education, the family will split their time between Sacramento and Marin heading into the coming academic year,” Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon said.
While both the governor and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, grew up in Marin County, neither is looking to purchase or rent a home in Marin.
"Leaving Sacramento will allow the Newsoms to start their eldest of four -- a rising high school freshman -- at a new school rather than having to weigh a potentially disruptive transfer when Newsom’s term is up in January 2027, two of the people said," Politico reported.
Yes, because I'm sure the Newsoms will keep them there if the couple relocates to the nation's capital, as they've no doubt planned.
According to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, the eldest daughter expects to start school in the Bay Area suburb of Ross, where the median price of a home is $1.6 million and the average household earns $250,000.
It's worth noting that the Sacramento City Unified School District has a minority enrollment of 80 percent, and 47.8 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged, according to U.S. News and World Report data. Middle school students have a 31 percent score in math proficiency and 38 percent score in reading proficiency. The student-teacher ratio was 23:1.
Across the Ross Elementary district, the same source noted, only 14.9 percent of students were minorities and 1 percent of students were economically disadvantaged. Math proficiency across the district was 80 percent, and reading proficiency was at 85 percent. Student-teacher ratio was 14:1.
And that's just the public schools, which of course the Newsom kids won't be attending, going to an exclusive private academy instead -- although the contrast in the two is worth comparing.
But, of course, this is all about continuity for the Newsom kids. Please don't assume otherwise.
You'd think after the sturm und drang of COVID-19 hypocrisy from the governor's office in California, Newsom would have learned his lesson.
He got dragged through the mud for draconian masking and seating policies at restaurants only to be photographed maskless at a party at a Michelin-starred Napa Valley eatery.
He extended the state's COVID-19 emergency declaration just before he jetted off to Mexico for Thanksgiving in 2021, which isn't exactly something you do when you've re-declared a pandemic emergency for everyone else.
I'll give this much to Gavin Newsom: He has a mulish ability to never learn from his blatant hypocrisies.
By positioning himself as one of the 2028 frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, he's tacitly saying his California is a model America can follow. And his California is so messed up that he has to move his kids out of the state's capital so they can get the education he wants for them.
Given that, I can only hope that Newsom will come out as the first Democratic presidential candidate to be a strong advocate for school choice and parental rights. It only seems fair, no?
