SC's Palmetto Promise Getting Boost from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Center for Education Reform (CER), headquartered in Washington, DC, has publicly posted its support for Palmetto Promise Institute, an organization founded by former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint. On the CER’s state organizations chart, Palmetto Promise Institute is listed as one of two organizations CER promotes in South Carolina.
Listed on the CER’s website is a list of donors which are their “longest-running and most prolific givers.” Located in the column is the name, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The fact that Jim DeMint’s “conservative” Palmetto Promise is getting some help from a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation organization out of Washington, DC, should raise some eyebrows. It should come as no surprise as Palmetto Promise recently came under fire for supporting the Health Czar bill pushed by the World Health Organization’s Boston Consulting Group.
Spartanburg Christian Action Network, an organization based in Spartanburg, SC, and led by Amanda Hovis, has an entire webpage devoted to warning South Carolinians about the “School Choice” bill that Palmetto Promise is pushing. The “School Choice” bill, S. 62, recently passed the senate and its main sponsor was Senator Greg Hembree.
Senator Hembree sits on a Globalist committee called the South Carolina Advisory Committee for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Our article titled As The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition Melts Down While Defending USAID, Let's Be Aware Of South Carolina's Dark Ties explains how members of the committee are working under many of the Deep State’s members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
When it came to commenting on Senator Hembree’s “School Choice” bill, Palmetto Promise CEO, Wendy Damron, stated, “We are grateful to the South Carolina Senate for its recent passage of S.62, a bill by Education Chairman Greg Hembree that aims to restore school choice in South Carolina following the SC Supreme Court’s Eidson decision that left thousands of SC families with their promised scholarships ripped away.”
It’s interesting that Damron mentioned the Eidson decision as just a few years ago the CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates-funded CER, Jeanne Allen, co-wrote an opinion piece for The Hill titled Burying the bigotry of South Carolina’s Blaine amendment.
At United Patriots Alliance, we agree that the Blaine amendment involved bigotry but why is it that the Bill & Melinda Gates funded-CER views the Blaine amendment as such an obstacle? South Carolina’s Blaine amendment came from the time period of Reconstruction (1865-1877) as a way to stop immigrant Catholics from getting public funds for private schooling. Immigrant Catholics were known for providing private schooling for their children and the Protestant Southerners were mostly sending their children to public schools. The South Carolina Blaine amendment gave protestant Southerners a constitutional law that prohibited immigrant Catholics from taking money from the state government funds that they were using to fund Protestant public schools. Ironically today, the Blaine amendment is stopping the Bill & Melinda Gates funded-CER from getting an opportunity to indoctrinate thousands of South Carolina school children through “School Choice”.
Spartanburg Christian Action Network’s leader, Amanda Hovis makes the following points in regards to S. 62:
takes money from the SC Education Lottery, instead of state tax revenues, to pay for the voucher or scholarship programs.
DOES NOT include home education students.
Pays for tuition and fees for a non-profit (vs. independent) education provider AND for ANY (including public) online education service provider OR course.
Pays transportation cost for student transfers to a public school outside of their district.
Pays for textbooks, curriculum, instructional materials and tutoring by ANY (public or private) education service provider.
Pays for other, undefined contracted teaching services or education classes approved by the SC Department of Education.
Pays for approved contracted services from a public school district, or a public charter school including individual classes, after school tutoring services, transportation, or fees or costs associated with participation in extracurricular activities.
If you are a South Carolina citizen, we recommend that you take action now by calling your South Carolina State Representative and letting him/her know that they should vote against S. 62. Share this article with him/her so that they better understand the dangers of the bill.
It should be noted that although former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint has portrayed himself as being conservative, he was not a strict constitutionalist while serving in Congress. He earned a dismal lifetime Freedom Index Score of 67% which indicates he was very disloyal to the U.S. Constitution. His voting record on the Freedom Index can be viewed by clicking here.
For a better understanding of the dangers of school choice, we recommend that you watch Alaina Moore’s interview with Alex Newman.
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Thank you for highlighting this. When real conservatives find out Bill Gates and UNESCO are some of the most powerful backers of "school choice" (tax funding to control private and home education), there's going to be a LOT of explaining to do by the lawmakers jumping on this bandwagon. Bill Gates is synonymous with Common Core, Covid tyranny, etc. He literally signed a deal with UNESCO (UN education agency) to globalize education in 2004.
📍Rumor has it S.62, the government-funded (& controlled) school choice bill, is coming up for a Senate vote.
Watch 👀 closely. A YES vote means your Senator and Rep support MORE government, MORE education regulations, and a heavier tax burden.
And Homeschoolers, please don’t assume you won’t be part of this mess.
And if anyone wants to ask me more about this, I welcome it. From ConservaTruth ( Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BSUEojTsr/?mibextid=wwXIfr
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Government-funded School Choice forces parents into limited, revocable options, puts golden handcuffs on member schools, and, most importantly, allows the government to define the very nature of education.
It’s critical to understand that even if the Department of Education (DOE) is potentially dismantled, that does not mean the federal government will no longer exert control over state education systems.
Federal funding still flows back into states through other agencies such as the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Defense—much of it earmarked for education-related programs.
As a result, states are still required to align their education standards and assessments with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This law effectively sets the baseline for what states must comply with in order to receive federal funds.
This is where the danger lies: when government-regulated “school choice” legislation—such as s62 - is passed or if our legislators considers passing Jeff Davis bill S50 , it creates a direct pipeline for federal oversight into private schools and even homeschools. To accept public funds, even indirectly, those institutions must adhere to the same federally aligned standards outlined in ESSA.
This is the real and pressing threat: the illusion of educational freedom under “school choice” can lead to increased federal control over all forms of education, not just public schools.