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Elias Coop-Gonzalez on Public Education and School Choice · Café Berlin

• speaker-1: Yeah. Hello, good afternoon. Welcome to Kaffee Berlin, a podcast brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. I'm Lila Nora Kish, I'm a Senior Fellow for International Affairs and Academic Integrity, and this is my co-host, Ian Oxnavet, who is a senior fellow for security studies and international affairs. Today we are going to talk about school choice and public education in West Virginia, and I let Ian to introduce our guest today. speaker-2: Thank you, Leela, for the intro. So our guest today is Delegate Elias Kup Gonzalez, who represents District 67 in West Virginia's House of Delegates. He serves part of Pendleton and Randolph counties and is on the Committee for Education, Higher Education, and Public Education. Let's bring in our guest. speaker-1: Alias, welcome to Cafe Berlin. It's good to have you today. speaker-0: Thanks for having speaker-1: First question to you is about your work in the House of Delegates in West Virginia. what is the most important issue families face when it comes to public education and your district? speaker-0: Mm-hmm. That's a good question. it's a little bit specific, obviously, to West Virginia, but it's a a problem that I've also noted in other states, even states that are growing. But it's the issue with consolidation of public schools, particularly in rural areas. So obviously in big cities where you have a public school, they enjoy the benefits of having proximity to a lot of things. they can achieve economies of scale and so they can run more efficiently because they're they're bigger. So now that the public education system is suffering just because they have a lot of competition, whether it's through private education, completely independent homeschooling, like no no school choice funds or anything like that. Or if you have a school choice program program like an ESA, this is resulting in a lot of these public education systems Starting to consolidate the schools and they're starting with the rural ones. The big issue with that is it's kind of an interesting political divide because you have the rural areas that are traditionally more conservative and want more accountability in the public education system, and don't traditionally align with their values, they're the ones that are kind of fighting for public education. Like they they want to have that presence in their community. and then you have the the people more in the cities that are actually fighting for consolidating. and quote unquote, trying to run more efficiently. And so in in my district in particular, there's a bigger town called Elkins. That's the seat, that's where I live in. About thirty minutes away they have a small school called Harmon. And this is a school that has all grades, so one one through twelve. And it it's kind of interesting because I've actually visited the school and I've talked to a lot of the people that help run it. And I think that dollar for dollar, the way that they run the operation, is better than a pu you know, a bigger public school. But like I said, because the bigger schools have economies of scale, they can get away with doing more waste and still have you know, better looking numbers on the books. But I've I've also seen this problem in other states. like I mentioned, there's there's states that are growing that also have this issue. I had a friend of mine that I hadn't spoken to in years reach out to me and and ask about this issue in particular coming from Texas. Texas is like booming. It's it's I think more people are moving to Texas than than anywhere else right now. And so that's been the biggest challenge. I've tried to tackle this issue from a few different directions. thankfully I was able to change the legal code in West Virginia, I think to give people a little you know, some some more options. But that's that's the main thing in my district and I think it's it's also an issue in a lot of other places. speaker-1: Do do you want to elaborate on this change that you brought, this legislative change? speaker-0: Mm. Yeah, so when when we were faced with the the closure of this particular school, obviously the people in the community were were very distraught and they wanted to just find a way to continue funding it. But obviously it it it didn't really make sense. Now from the the county perspective, at least the the numbers that they published, they had numbers from one of the schools in the city in Elkins and I think they claim that a s a student that goes into one of the bigger schools only costs them about eight thousand. And then a student that goes to this school, the the Harmon School, it's about thirty minutes away, just very rural. it costs about sixteen thousand, which is twice the state average. And so obviously like you you can't justify doing that anymore. And I think the the The way that I I looked at it is you could probably save the school, but it it wouldn't have it it couldn't be a public school anymore. because you know, have a lot of requirements to to be a public school and there are a lot of fixed costs. You know, there's there's a floor that you have to meet. you know, even if you don't have a a lot of students. So what I wanted to do is change into a a public charter school. West Virginia has a public charter school program. we've actually been pioneers in the education system. I can't say we too much, like if I was there at the beginning, but s State Senator Patricia Rucker, she's one of my big mentors in the legislature. She was the first legislator in America to pass a state wide school choice bill. So I looked into the state charter school program and I found ways to streamlight streamline the application process. So if if this school essentially was shut down. There would be a a building that is vacated. And then after that, the community would have the option of putting together a board of at least five people and these people could constitute a board they could incorporate. And I think in the West Virginia law currently, or it's it's something that they w that some legislators want to put in is a requirement that if a public school building is vacated that a public charter school that's incorporated has right of first refusal. And so they can choose to buy the building first before the public school system can sell it to anyone else. And the main reason that exists is just to stop the public education system from trying to stamp out competition. Obviously they're gonna try and they're gonna try knock down the walls and and turn it into like like a logging business. I d I don't know. but specifically what I did is I think the the application process takes about a year to do and it's a year prior to w when the academic year starts. So the academic year starts August, you have to put in application the previous August. I introduced a bill to give an extension six months forward, which would have given this community the ability to save the school. Unfortunately, I don't they're not utilizing the the legislation that I passed for But it's something that's still there and i it's in the law. So this is this is a a situation that's happening in other parts of the state and I'm sure that it can be taken advantage of at some point. speaker-2: So I think the COVID era marked the beginning of a of a new sort of tumultuous period in education in general. I think the shift to remote learning during that era sort of put a spotlight on the condition of education in general in the in the US and probably in West Virginia as well. but it seems like there's a number of macroeconomic headwinds. we see this question of what is the role of AI in education. there's this new push towards the trades after K twelve. You have politicization in universities and K twelve with teachers unions. you have in the curricula issues with gender ideology, you know, identity politics, and now this sort of renewed effort to restore civic nationalism and merit. How is West Virginia handling these issues? 'Cause you mentioned the sort of the economics of just f school funding a little bit, but that's only like one part of this rapidly changing landscape and challenges that education seems to be facing. speaker-0: Yeah, definitely. COVID COVID was a catalyst for all kinds of things. I mean, not just education, but definitely education. You know, 'cause people were actually I mean, the the classroom was brought to the parents when they were actually listening to the teachers talk about stuff and they could see, in in most cases, like really extreme left wing bias. And my personal opinion is that one of the reasons why homeschooling just was supercharged is not just because they saw the the craziness that was coming through, the the laptop screen. But the kids were already home. And so, you know, a lot of parents are, you know, rightly just concluded, hey, rather than send you back to that place where that person is, why don't you just like shut the computer off and then I'll just start teaching you here. I think, you know, maybe maybe it's a silver lining of COVID, or or school choice programs passed at the state level or a silver lining of COVID. Because I I don't know if I can honestly say that they would have passed unless something seismic like that happened. I mean West Virginia is a good example of a a place where unions traditionally have just had a lot of influence. So obviously in education, but also in the coal industry or you know other other industries. but our state senator State Senator Patricia Rucker, our our education champion, she was able to get it through I think it was a session before I was in. so this would have been yeah, right like right after COVID, like twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two. And so I think people were more open to it at that time. And the teachers unions, they they slipped, right? I I don't think they ever thought that something like that could actually pass. And so that's that's one of my theories of why it's so hard to pass school choice now, whereas like you saw West Virginia do it, and then all of a sudden like half a dozen states like just rapid fire. They did school choice programs. And then now we're back to how it was before. But the teachers' unions, like, they kind of dropped the ball and now they're they're becoming organized again and they're stopping these efforts. I think I think Wyoming, I think they finally passed it, but for a couple of years like it was it was crazy 'cause there's like a really conservative state for some reason they couldn't pass school choice like year after year. Yeah. speaker-1: Could you tell us a little bit about the Hope Scholarship? speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so Hope Scholarship, that's the legislation that I specifically mentioned. It came from Senator Rucker. she pioneered that with Alec, American Legislative Exchange Council. And so the technical term is NESA education savings account. And so basically what you have is you create a new fund separate from the the public education funding and the budget. for this program that allocates what the state portion would be for a kid. So in West Virginia, it hovers around like five thousand, give or take, you know, a couple hundred. Some years it might be forty nine or fifty three. And so Patricia passed that I think most of the the issues that we had at the beginning have been resolved. 'Cause obviously this is not something that had been done before. So they had to find ways to stop fraud, things like that. I think Patricia's solution was to have a provision in there that requires auditing, kind of like in in the same way that I think she said it was Medicare. So they choose like, you know, one percent of people and then they audit them. And hopefully that's you know, just using like inductive reasoning, right? That's representative of of the whole, right? Because Part of the school funding formula at the federal level requires attendance. at first, students were required to attend public school for a certain amount of days. I think was like 45, because the po the public schools were were mad that, you know, they didn't get their funding. But these students, they wanted to leave, you know, they'd go to school for 45 days, get out. The public school system, you know, they were I guess appeased a little bit, right? 'Cause they got the funding for that kid because they met that that arbitrary threshold of forty five days and then they could go. but now, I think I think we're done with the forty five day rule. And it it has been opened to all students in West Virginia. so yeah, it's been a a success. There there have been some road bump road bumps along the way, but it's been a success. speaker-1: How does this relate to the SOAR Act, the sustaining opportunities for academics in rural schools? I believe it's your it's your legislative baby, if I can call it this way. Could you tell us about this act and how does it relate to the broader educational initiatives you are working on? speaker-0: Yeah. That one relates more to to public charter schools. And I I will confess that is actually Patricia Rucker's bill that she asked me to introduce in the House. So unlike in education, like in the legislative world, it's okay to plagiarize. So, you know, if see a good bill that's in another state or that a legislator has in a different chamber, like you know, you can you can copy that and and pass it. Of course, you should always give, you know, credit to to whoever made it. but that I if I remember correctly, that that bill was designed to give more financial incentives to failing like local public schools to become charter schools. And so there were provisions in there about having a certain amount of benefits depending on how far away you were from a a population center. So if you were close by to a high, you know, high population area, wouldn't get as many benefits. But if you were more in a a rural area, you would qualify for more of the the startup. And we were hoping that if if we were able to pass that, that could be something you know we could use to actually put charter schools in rural community. That seems to be the avenue that we should try and take. just cut them off from the state system. Obviously they're still gonna be receiving state money and there's still gonna be basic guidelines like you can't launder money and things like that. But all the accountability, hiring, firing, accounting, that would be done just at the the board level, which would be just for the charter school board. speaker-2: So, you know, school choice sounds amazing in principle. you know, I've I've seen some of the movement towards this in California, where I'm located, and you hear about it in other states. But it's a solution to some problems, but it it creates other problems. So for example, what happens when you have a huge overwhelming demand for a relatively small number of schools? You would think that it would overcome problems like the teachers' unions, et cetera, but you know, going back to some of the non economic issues. the teachers' unions have such a monopoly on just the profession in general. how do you get around that when, yeah, you may go to a better performing school, but you're still gonna be stuck with the same ideological slop, I guess you could say. And the the other problem is how do you deal with the the influx of people? 'Cause and I bring this up because in other countries, the way that they determine who gets into certain schools is entrance and exit exams. It's not just your location. It's actually, do you qualify? And they have, these huge batteries of exams that determine, what what you go to. And I I I used to live in Turkey and actually saw this up close. And these were high school kids who, this was not a an or a metropolitan area, but a pr a fairly, you know, industrial sort of working class Turkish area. And these high school students not only spoke English, but also German and were able to sketch like engine parts, you know, but you know, from memory. It was actually pretty damn impressive. So how do you how do you manage this overwhelming demand for a small number of spots and at the same time overcome the monopoly it seems on the teaching profession that the crazy has seems to have gotten a hold of? speaker-0: Yeah. I'm actually not as worried about the demand as much, especially since education technology is is booming right now and there's so many different ways that you could educate a kid now. I think the main issue would be, with all these new alternatives, there there does have y you have to have some accountability, right? if you just let people go wherever they want to, and it's just kinda like the Wild West, then you could have bad actors, right? That are just, wanting to set up an institution to, funnel money. That's that's not very common to the government. speaker-2: Yeah. Rent seeking. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, you could have something like that. So as far as the the demand, I'm not too concerned about that. I I think that there's gonna be plenty of you know people coming in to to fill that void. I I don't want to sound too much like like I'm economist or something, but it's you know like the the market will take care of it, right? I think one a a pressing issue that I will highlight to you guys and I've highlighted to some of my colleagues now that I'm retiring from the legislature, and I I feel like I can say this more comfortably because I'm retiring from the legislature. So you guys will not get the political answer. This is just how it is. But school choice programs like West Virginia's or in any other state, they are created in a separate part of the budget than public education funds. Right. That's that's just how it's been. It's basically I think it would be almost p politically impossible to try and and tie it to education funding. So let's say you were a homeschool family and you had one kid and you wanted them to opt into the system, they got five thousand dollars. That's not five thousand dollars, it's coming out of the public education budget. It's coming out from a separate fund created in the budget. And so what you have is because the public education system just grows you know year after year it grows little by little just like pretty much any other you know part of government is that it's growing here on this side and then you have the school choice program which is a separate part of the budget and they're both growing at the same time, right? And nobody really has the the political will to make cuts to the public education system or to the school choice programs. Now obviously my my biases are more with the with with school choice, right? So I think it it would just be better to allocate her money there. But again, like it's it's not like the the way that it's framed, right? Which is like the money follows the student. The money goes to the student, but it doesn't really follow the student. The money still goes to the public education system, right? It's it's not actually cut down. You just created a new fund for school choice. So I'm glad the students have that choice. but there actually isn't really competition just yet. I mean, just just strictly on an on an enrollment basis that is. But when it comes to like funding, there actually isn't competition. So at some point, state legislatures are going to have to make a cup decision, right? Are you gonna cut one against the other? Are you gonna have to like you know cut both? I'm not sure. speaker-1: What does West Virginia do for those young folks who are not on the college pass? speaker-0: Mhm. I think we there's a lot of things that we don't do well. and I'm happy to talk about those too. But I think we we we do a pretty good job of giving people options that are aside from just like the traditional college route, you know, like people that don't wanna just do liberal arts, they wanna go be a mechanic or something like that. we've introduced a lot of programs in high schools. So You can take classes if you want to be an auto mechanic or you wanna be a welder or you want to be like just shop class, right? You wanna be a a carpenter. And then we've also funded a lot of programs in community and technical colleges where they pretty much they they specialize in trades. And right now I I think if if you're a young person in West Virginia, like you're just a a high school graduate. you shouldn't really have much of a problem going and getting this education and not having, much or any debt afterwards. So I I think we're in a pretty good spot there. I think it's definitely we definitely need to shrink the influence of colleges and universities. I mean a lot of the reason why they cost so much is just because there's such a high demand when not a lot of people actually have to go to college. There are some some valid majors in my opinion, but it's it's so much fewer than than what most institutions have. I was talking I was I'm a member of Alec American Legislative Exchange Council. I'm on the on the on their education task force but they also invited me to go to a a veterans in homeland security one over in Anneapolis and they had some of their interns there help with the programming and so I I talked to them about, what they do and all that, just socializing. And one of them told me, I'm not gonna say which university she went to, but it's it's a very high profile university in in Virginia, not in West Virginia, but Virginia, just one state over. And she told me that she took bowling classes. She could take that as an alliance. Yeah. Bowling. And you you think of just just the just the colossal amount of federal and state funding. And then you think of all the the the just the the private part of the funding, right? What the student the the students or the parents pay just this in just insane amount of money and is going to like bowling classes. You know, in in my opinion, like if I was like I'm speaking like in a completely joking way, right? So this can't be clipped, but like if I was dictator or something that's that's one thing that I would like shut down immediately. that that just doesn't make any sense to have, bowling classes. Yeah. speaker-2: Yeah, yeah, it it and it's it's pretty bad. It's pretty bit it's pretty damn bad. It's not just there, it's everywhere. speaker-0: And cardiac. But if I remember correctly, I think she said there was bowling one and there was bowling two. So if you if you did bowling one you could go you could book you could go to bowling two. And that's just nuts. Yeah. Absolutely. speaker-1: That's really crazy. The question is whether you could just take polling two or you really have to enroll to both of the classes after each other. It's insane. for those who are on the college path, is there anything that is West Virginia specific? do you do anything very differently from other states or it's more on more or less the same as other states? speaker-0: Yeah, I I do I have the privilege of talking to other state legislators so I can get a a pretty good idea of where we're at versus, you know, other states. When it comes to like college programs, I I don't really know that we do things very much differently, like considering just the programs. obviously just like everyone else, we spend too much money and we don't have enough accountability and all that. We do have something interesting. It's a experimental. I think it's something you guys would be really interested in. and if you're interested after the call, I can connect you with the people who are who are doing this. But there's a new school that's been created within West Virginia University. So our our main public university called the Washington Center for civics and statesmanship. And this was created by the legislature. So it wasn't created by the university, it was created by the legislature and it's funded directly through the legislature. So it it's something that the university doesn't have direct control over. And the reason why is because this school was created with the intention of t teaching civics from a pro Western civilization view. And so I think you can go on the w what they do have a website that's running. I think you can actually look at the the course syllabus on there, the the course syllabi. and there's all kinds of really cool stuff in there about like church history and the decline of masculinity and things like that. I'm not sure that all the classes are up and running yet. obviously there's been a lot of roadblocks and the Even though the university doesn't directly control the school, that's within their campus, they found other ways to, you know, add red tape to to make it more difficult. I think they're they're having or they were supposed to have a conference, I think even this week. But this is the first semester that they're actually teaching classes. so yeah, that's the Washington Center for Civics at West Virginia University. speaker-1: Sounds very interesting and a great Gap Filler initiative. Who is the target audience for for these classes? Mm-hmm. speaker-0: well honestly it'd be just for any students to go to college. So these these would go towards their general electives and I think especially the the way that they're titled, like I don't have the the the classes listed in front of me, but the titles are extremely interesting and and they're they're titles that you just would not see in any other college setting. And so I I think the hope would be like, you know, somebody would would look at that and think, Well, I mean, I'm in college, like Why wouldn't I take a class on, the history of of war or something like that or the Bible? I mean if you can do if you can do bowling, then you know, you can do all these these other things that are actually more meaningful. so that's that's the hope. hopefully in a couple of years, it's been more refined, more classes have been added. And just like with school choice, like when you introduce something completely new, like, there's gonna be issues. There's g there's gonna be problems. It doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but A lot of times you just have to work it out and it ends up being a good program. We'll see. speaker-2: To to jump off of that, you mentioned the civic centers and you know, states have different economies that they kind of have to educate for. and and that, you know, I can see drives can drive a lot of how states may orient their education systems. But at the same time, you need to have, you know, a baseline ability to have critical thinking, competence, understanding of civics. you know, it it really helps even if you don't go to college, for example, if you know some economics so that you know, just as an educated citizen, that when someone's running for office, if they're talking about doing an economic policy, you actually know that's a really bad idea. You know, educating for for liberty, for example. So even if there's not really a desire to go to higher education, it seems like the the education reform movement sort of leans on the economic incentives for everything as opposed to you actually have to have knowledgeable or wise citizens in order to even have self governance, but it doesn't seem like we want to really engage with those debates. So how do you integrate those things into K twelve, you know, the sort of renewed interest in the trades, but also in higher ed in a place like West Virginia. speaker-0: Yeah. that's a good question. obviously, like I said, you know, the Washington Center is one. It's it's a challenge to try and change the certain section of code that deals with what is required by the like the state. So obviously a lot of the education decisions are done at the like at the county level, right? They have a lot of discretion. But there's some things that are required to be taught at the state level. So I think as an example like Holocaust education, that's something that's like in the law it says like you like every school has to teach it. there isn't a lot of political will to amend that section of code and and there's actually kind of an i interesting reason why. even in a a state like West Virginia where I'm in the house, we've got a hundred members, there's ninety one Republicans and nine Democrats, right? It's like a a super, super majority. anytime you try and And amend that section of code, what ends up happening is, let's say I I put in a a bill to require every student to take the citizenship test, right? Which is like a really basic test that you know people take to be citizens, right? Why why shouldn't people who are born here are are are already citizens take it? let's say that I introduced a bill to do that. As soon as that happens, then Everybody in the legislature is gonna want to put an amendment in there to to say, well, they should also learn this and they should also they should learn sewing and and they should they should learn more more about the Holocaust than they already know, or they should learn about DEI. And like it is it is very difficult to do something like that. just just politically and and particularly. So that's that's one one reason why it's It's kinda difficult. yeah, I hate to say that it's just it's just a political and procedural thing. Another thing is that once you actually put legislation down, once it's already passed and and you go through the whole process, the issue is that a lot of the teachers are still really against like Western civilization and American ideals. And so you could have really good curriculum that they're required to teach, but it they're gonna teach it in a way that is not very useful. speaker-2: Yeah, I I had that experience where I had to teach to fill in for a friend at a community college for a like six or seven classes here in California. It was an American government class and the cur the the curriculum was so bad, like was so god awful that I had to redesign it in like two weeks and use it. And I actually became very popular, but I had to redesign it using my own stuff and bringing in different things. And it's it's a bigger problem with the education reform movement. I wanna kinda jump in and get your thoughts on this because if you don't control the endpoint and how it gets distributed in the classroom, you don't really reform anything. you can you can say you have to do X, Y, and Z, but if you control the teachers unions, how X, Y, and Z is delivered and in what context, it really doesn't matter. speaker-0: Yeah. I don't know. it's th that is like the question. That is a big question. And I would be lying if I I told you I had like a a very d detailed, specific multi step plan for how to execute that. I think maybe some of the things that we can do is try and help influence the culture, just to make it generally more more patriotic and maybe tr you know, ignite that that spark, particularly young people to actually learn about, you know, why we live in such a great place. as an example, I'm I'm a natural born citizen who was born outside the United States. A lot of people don't understand the the distinction. You you can be born in a different country, but also still be natural born if you have American parents. And I actually grew up lived half of my life outside the United States and so I I have I would say not a unique view, but certainly a view that a lot of Americans don't see of the world. And you really come to appreciate the United States, when you see that. I was listening to a podcast recently from a man who's a a British war veteran. He's you guys have probably heard of him. He's the guy that was a retired SAS operator. He was in Africa and some hotel gets raided by terrorists and then he saves like seven hundred people or or some insane amount. And he you know, he's talking about how he can't he he lives in Nashville, but he can't go back to the UK because he'll be arrested for what he's said, right? And how he appreciates the United States so much, right? That he can live in this place, be free, go wherever he wants, say whatever he wants. And it's just really hard to try and share that with other people or instill that. It's very hard. Even in like an I I'm not even sure that it can be done like in an education setting. Some people wanna have requirements like in society to have like ev like required military service. I don't think that's a good idea. I don't know. I I I wish I had an answer, like a I speaker-2: had a I had a student who I had to teach national security and I also taught American government but in my one national security class at this one university I was teaching at which is a public university by the way I had a student who was in the naturalization process. I had no idea he was from West Africa, from Ghana. And at the end of my class he ran up all excited because he literally enlisted in the military and this was a a spring semester class and he was so like gunga ho ready to go, red, white, and blue. And this guy, was not born here. And I'm just wondering, you know, how do we get patriotic people into the classroom? Because you can have the greatest military in the world. You can have all the greatest tech and everything. But if you don't have the ideas and you don't control the classrooms, you're you're basically giving up the high ground. Because I mean and and our ed our adversaries know this. Like we see this with China with with their indoctrination programs that they're trying to get in and successfully getting into the United States, where literally it's if you change the mindset, it doesn't matter what the capacities are. You know, if you have a a a civilization that doesn't believe in itself, a country that doesn't want to stand up for sovereignty or individual rights or it can't even its own thesis for existence, you know, how do you you know it it's it's you're lost. And it just seems like there's an unwillingness to actually go into the classroom from people that actually care about those speaker-0: Things. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely true. And I think we're we're talking more abstract now. I think you guys would would agree, but the United States in many ways, if not in most ways, is like is really the pinnacle of Western civilization. And so, you know, like when you're when you're like sitting at the top of a mountain, right, but you didn't like hike all the way up there, it's just kind of comfortable to speaker-2: It's all downhill. speaker-0: Yeah, it's all it's all downhill. And you know, I I think, you know, maybe a a way where, you know, education could really play a part in that, you know, and they would certainly have to you know, we'd have to be intentional about how we do it is like just teach people about Western civilization in general, you know. because if I think even just teaching, you know, just from like the founding fathers to now that's still a little that's still too limited. and and obviously the founding fathers, they learned a lot. I mean, just statistically speaking, they quoted the Bible more than any other book in the in the debates for putting together the constitution. but they also you know, they appealed to ancient Greek philosophers. they also appealed to philosophers that were more contemporary but still, you know, preceded them. And so maybe if if you put together a you know, civic education program really starts with, you know, like the Bible, Mosaic Law, the Greek philosophers, and then you work your way up and you know, you also go through the Middle Ages and the you know, the Enlightenment. That's just how I I choose to describe the the Enlightenment. And then you see America as the pinnacle. I think that that gives a lot more context. and then maybe you could have some more appreciation then rather than just say, you know, just America's great. You know, like you just go to the grocery store anytime and you know, get Captain Crunch, right? As much of it as you want, right? As much as you can afford speaker-2: Consumerism. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. speaker-1: That's also part of greatness, I guess. speaker-0: There there's something that that you mentioned that I I think was very salient. It it's not just economics. E economics economics is super important, obviously but there's certainly a a a brand of legislator and I say, probably particularly Republicans and I I say to as a Republican that think as long as you have economic development, as long as you just get people jobs, again, very crucial, very important, but it's not the only thing. And so, yeah, I you know, we we definitely have to branch out. speaker-1: Another approach I wanted to mention is coming from one of our guests with Cafe Berlin. his name is Daniela Di Martino and he's from Venezuela. he launched a program called Dissident Project, and he's bringing guests to public schools who are from dictatorships or authoritarian countries, and these guests are actually telling and sharing their lived experiences. so he actually I think he he used these words we cannot bring Americans to dictatorial countries and give them the experience, but we can bring these people to classrooms so they can understand how, you know, other regimes work and they can also have some appreciation about the United States you know, in the light of this indirect experience. maybe this could be another approach we can expand. speaker-0: Yeah, I think that's that's a a fantastic idea. I I know Daniel. I met him a few years ago, I think it was at Acton Institute, and I think he told me about this. but yeah, that that sounds like an incredible idea. I I don't know if you guys have been to the Victims of Communism Museum in DC. They do something kind of similar. They're they're not bringing like like you know people physically to schools, but they bring kids, you know, who are on field trips to the museum and they share personal stories from people who've suffered. from communism all throughout the world. So Cuba to Soviet Union, et cetera. Yeah. speaker-1: Yes. I think it's a great initiative and that's a that's a wonderful museum. The only problem with it is that's it's too small considering how big issue communism is and how deadly as an ideology it is. So it could be twice as big. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: Well the more the more classrooms you control, the more the future you control. And it really comes down to that. speaker-1: Navigating us back to West Virginia, I have a couple of questions and we were talking about the economic issues and as as we know, one of West Virginia is one of the poorer states or poorest states, at least according to the Census Bureau and the average income of households. I was wondering how does it affect college readiness and affordability? how students arrive to colleges, what kind of scholarship opportunities out there. so what does West Virginia do with this situation? speaker-0: Yeah, we do have a lot of scholarships available. So there's one called promise and it's based it's based on how high your GPA was, I think. you know, out of high school and then and I believe they they also factor in testing scores. So like you know, ACT score as an example. And so that's a certain amount of money that you can get if you want to go to college. another interesting thing to know with West Virginia is like a lot of other states, like it it seems more monolithic when you're looking at it from a map, right? And you're you're comparing it to other states. But when you actually just look at West Virginia singularly, you can see that it also has like wealthier parts. I would say most of West Virginia is actually very similar to Western Virginia. the northern part's very similar to Ohio. you've also got Western Maryland. It's really that that southern part that is very, very poor, that is like disproportionately I mean like I think in some counties like you you have people averaging like like seventeen or twenty thousand dollars a year, right? Like annual income. Very, very low. And these are these are the remnants of you know the the old coal industry. The coal industry is still there, but the coal industry that existed and supported people at that time is is no longer operational. but you you still see people coming out of West Virginia and pr particularly the Eastern Panhandle. So that's the section that's close to DC. you have a lot of people that are very college ready, good schools, probably not on par quite with Maryland or y you know Especially Virginia 'cause you have Loudoun County that's right next to Jefferson County, West Virginia. And Loudoun County is the the wealthiest county in in the country. Yeah, I'd I'd say we're we're pretty good, but we are more of a a blue collar state. And so that's why I'm okay with having lower college participation. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I I think workforce participation is probably like a better indication of you know where a state is going and we're not doing too well there. I think I think we're one of one of the worst, if not the worst, when it comes to workforce participation. speaker-1: What do you mean by that? speaker-0: well, just there's a lot of people who are eligible to work in the West Virginia economy who simply are not working. you know, a a large contributing factor to this is the opioid epidemic. just a lot of people they're on drugs, they don't want to work or you know, if they they they do want to work, let's say, but you're on drugs, like that makes you ineligible for a lot of jobs, especially like blue collar. I mean if if you have a substance problem, you could even be on a substance that's not illegal like alcohol. if you're addicted to that, then you can't operate heavy machinery, right? You can't function as a person. I I don't want to branch too too much out of the education sphere, but obviously this is this is a factor. And yeah you have parents that are on drugs and it affects kids that are going to school. you know, you could say that's that's one of the The few things that a a public school does have is that, my kids are required to come and you know they're they're gonna be seen by other adults and they're you know, they have community. yeah, West Virginia we we still have a lot of problems. Yeah. speaker-2: I I got a question that relates to this. So, it one of the big problems, I think, structurally, if you look at different countries, for example, economic models, there's a pathway from, you know, K twelve to career. And you don't necessarily need a college education to to actually get into like the middle class. It's not expected, it's not a prerequisite for that. But it's also relevant, I think, for for the college path as well. What is the role of the private sector in just I would say graduation readiness at the K through twelve level, but also in higher ed in this? Because, you know, some states are trying to get like apprenticeships, getting the private sector kind of into the schools and into universities more efficiently so that there's not this break where it's like, hey, you graduated now, you know. figure it out. There's kind of a a a number of doors sort of ready open for you when you graduate. speaker-0: Mm. I like apprentice programs. I've been maybe a little bit I don't know what the right word is there for like s I don't want to say like cynical. but I've been a little wary, right? Because any time that a private organization approaches like let's say the legislature as an example and they want you to start a program, you know, you have to think, well, like, do you want us to to fund the program, do we have to put in a certain amount? I think there was actually an apprentice program, I don't know if it was this year or last year. but the state had to pay like a a significant portion for it. and it's one of those things where, you know, again, like I wanna help you know improve the the education culture, but at the same time like I also don't want don't want to just keep throwing money at problems. Another issue with the the private sector is and again, it's hard for me as a legislator to to fix particular issues, especially cultural issues in in the private sector, but because college degrees are so common and the market is so oversaturated with them, there kind of is a requirement for a lot of jobs that don't don't require degrees just because there's so many of them out there. So if you have two two people or you have two resumes and you know haven't met the person or anything like that, you're just reviewing it and one has a college degree and the other one doesn't, you know, you just go with the person who has a college degree because there's there's so many of them out there, right? It's it's it's almost like a just a a prerequisite that's built in. I think just more generally as a culture, we need to, you know, step back from that. look at experience. another thing you could look at is There there's pushes to try and give accreditation to different types of experience. So let's say you did go to the private sector for a while and you learned some very valuable skills. I know West Virginia I I didn't work on this particular legislation, so I probably couldn't tell you too much about it, but I know that we had legislation to give people the opportunity to take those private sector skills and actually apply them towards Like it like credit, if they wanted to. I think that that would be a good thing. And that's something you can do kind of across the board. You could you could do that with veterans too. they learn a lot of valuable skills. And this would yeah, this would save people money, give them an opportunity. Yeah. speaker-1: Seeing it from the state legislation perspective, is there anything the federal legislature could do differently when it comes to education? speaker-0: they could pass a bill to r get rid of the Department of Education. That's one good thing they could do. And that's the only thing they would ask them to do. speaker-1: I think they are working on shutting it down. speaker-0: Well, I the president certainly has. Like with the authority that he has invested in him, he's done everything that he that he you know can to do it. But the legislature are the ones that ultimately have to get rid of it. And that's the only thing I would ask the federal government to do. it's one it's a good thing. So hopefully they're they're listening and we'll do it. speaker-1: We are making sure that they're listening. speaker-2: Yeah, no, it it it's it's always encouraging, or not when the Department of Ed says they're gonna do this and this and this to try to make education better at the same time they say that they're closing. speaker-0: I I I guess one thing that you could do if the legislature doesn't want to completely get rid of it, like you still have all the money, all the the funding there. I think I I'd be stepping a little bit outside of my area of expertise, but this is something that I have talked with some other legislators about. but I think what President Trump wants to do is he wants to take that money in DC and just send it back to the states as block grants. Mm-hmm. And so that way there's a lot more flexibility, right? And I get you would assume that there's a lot more efficiency, right? Because it's there's not as much red tape. I think one thing in particular that's a concern to me is that if you like the money, we have to specify exactly where the money goes, like to like who has the authority o over it. Because during COVID, I th there was ARPA funds. that were sent directly to like the county school districts. In West Virginia we have county school districts. I think in most other states, just independent school districts. So I think like their political subdivisions are probably the size of most counties. and because they're such small operations, like there's no way that they could take federal money and then actually use it appropriately and then like follow all of the guidelines for it. And so if if the administration actually ends up doing that, I think the important thing to do would be just to give the authority to the state, and then the state can distribute that money on down to the independent school districts or the individual school districts. or West Virginia, the county school districts. that's that's the one thing that I would want them to do. Other than that, I just hope it it gets abolished. Yeah, it shouldn't exist. I one one more thing I will say about that. I guess I do have more more to say about it. I was ready to just move on to the next question, just abolish it, move on. Is there is something to be said for you know, if if you don't have like one central education system, the beauty of having fifty different states is that yeah, some of them might pass bad laws on education, but you're gonna see that. That's gonna become evident. And then we'd be able to look at the states that are actually doing a good job, because they they decided to do something differently. And this happens all the time. I literally all the time. A state comes, they have a new idea, it's never been done before, they do it, five, ten years later, it's been a great success. Now all the other states are catching up to to do the same thing. And you don't have that when you have a federal department of education. when you have just fifty departments of of education and they're able to, you know, run run on their own. Yes, of course, some states are gonna be run better than others, but you're gonna have just so much so much more creativity and so many more ideas. And I think over time you'll be able to identify what those are and it'll just be better for education in general. That's how it should be. speaker-1: That's great. we have a tradition here at Cafe Berlin. And the tradition is that we carry a question from the previous guest to the following guests. So you also have to have a question to the next guest we have. and your question is very personal. the question is about your personal motivations to be elected as House member of the House of Representatives in Virg West Virginia and also your aspirations, your motivations and aspirations when it comes to the political pathway. And you mentioned earlier that you are retiring. I don't know if you can share a little bit about your future plans as well. speaker-0: Sure. so the way that I I got elected to the legislature is not the the traditional route. So I was a sophomore in college and my neighbor from across the street was my state representative and he had been for I think for yeah four years at this point. And he he was a Democrat. I happen to be Republican. I know it's not a partisan partisan show, but I'm just stating where where we were at. And I was told that no Republican was planning to run against him. And so he was very much against my ideals. I'm personally very pro life. That's a that's an issue that's very near and dear to my heart. obviously school choice is something that I'm very passionate about. And pretty much on every issue, like I could just go down the list and and he and I were just like diametrically opposed. And so I thought, well, I'm in college. I still live at home. No Republican wants to run against him. I'll run against him. I've got nothing to lose. You know, I'll just start back, you know, where I was, you know, ten months ago if I lose. And so I went ahead, I I ran against him and come November I I beat him and then I got reelected. I ran against him again, he tried to get his seat back. so beat him last time around as well. And yeah, that was kind of interesting. I never really thought that I would run for office. It wasn't like one of those things where like, you know, ever since I was a little kid, like I just wanted to be a politician. but it was one of those opportunities that I just saw open up and it was it would have been dumb for me not to to at least attempt it. And so I went ahead I I went ahead and attempted it in and I made it. So as far as my future political ambitions, I don't know. a lot of it's very circumstantial. a lot of people just want to be in office and I think that's that's the wrong attitude. I think you should you should first like like want to do something good and then if you see an opportunity then you should go for it. a lot of people just want to be in office and you know they just go run and and they lose and yeah, they have a bunch of excuses about why it didn't work out or whatever. The next thing that I'm doing is I'm gonna join the military. That's what I wanna do before I ran for legislature. I'm I don't know if I'll make a career out of it or not, but that's that's just what I I wanna do. That's that's been somet that is something that I've always wanted to to do, like ever since I was a little kid. I won't go into much detail. speaker-2: I gotta ask. This guy was your neighbor and you were this is like a classic American movie waiting to to happen. You know that, right? I don't know if that if that's occurred to you, but this is like this is you c you couldn't make this up. speaker-0: Yeah. I heard that so many many times and a a lot of people think that it's like, well he was your neighbor so lived like the same area. But he he literally lived like directly across the street. we like our opposite like we're we're literally one number off. Right? Our addresses are our numbers are one number off. And I remember I had my yard sign in front of my house and he had his yard sign in front of his house and I had my American flag and he had his he had a pride flag at his house. people would drive down the street, you know? And it's it's a pretty big district. It's like like geographically that like it's an hour and a half wide, like if you want to drive across it. but yeah, that was that was very interesting. I'm not sure what he's doing now. but yeah. Yeah. Just just a wild story. speaker-1: It's a very influential one. Yeah. A very influential story. Yeah. Thank you for sharing it. We really appreciate it. And I know that you also made some history in West Virginia because you are the youngest who was elected or you were how how is it? speaker-0: I'm yeah, so I'm I was the youngest member of the eighty sixth and also the eighty seventh legislature, so the current one. I'm not the youngest in history. I I'm one of the youngest legislators in American history, but not definitely not the youngest. speaker-1: Mat in West Virginia. speaker-0: In West Virginia, West Virginia there's like at least three people that I can think of that are younger than me. Yeah. Okay. The youngest legislator ever to be elected in American history came from West Virginia. I think she was elected in twenty sixteen. Her name's Sarah Blair. her dad went on to be Senate president. I think it was funny because she while she was in the House, her dad was in the state Senate. but she was seventeen when she filed to run for the primary. So she got elected as a seventeen year old. And then I think the constitution just says you have to be eighteen to serve in the House. And I like her birthday was like the day before election. And so her record's probably never gonna be broken. I mean she literally like turned eighteen and then got elected to the legislature, which is pretty wild. you have I the year that I was elected, I think I was the third youngest. The the youngest legislator in America in twenty twenty two was w a woman from New Hampshire and I think there's a guy from North Dakota and and then it was me. So it's not very common. There's I there's seven or eight thousand legislators in America, but it's mi it's a little more common than you might think. Yeah, there's always a handful out there that really young. speaker-1: Awesome. Ian, do you want to ask the question? speaker-2: yeah, who is who's our next speaker on the calendar? Fidel. yeah, so we have a a guest. our next guest is Fidel Lamakiya Wusso. He's he's actually in West Africa. So our next guest is Fidel Amakia Wusu. He's actually in Ghana. And he's a geopolitical risk basically open source intelligence company owner. And he tracks a lot of security issues that go on in Africa. And, you know, you can find out from from him what's going on with Russian mercenaries in Mali, for example, before it hits the news. And He's one of the best Africa analysts that I I know and his stuff is is rock solid. So what would be your question for him? speaker-0: This is this is my question for him. So right now, drone warfare is what's taking everything by storm. I I think I heard a a stat recently that ninety percent of the the kills in the Ukraine Russia war can be attributed to drones. But throughout history, every time there's a new technological invention that's very effective, there's always a counter. There's always something that comes along that neutralizes it. And I'm not sure that we really come along with that or that that that's been discovered. But I'd like to know what he thinks that is or what it might be. speaker-1: Well, Mr. Elias Coop, thank you so much for your time and insights and we really enjoy talking with you. speaker-0: Mm. Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me. speaker-2: Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. Well, that was West Virginia Delegate Elias Coop Gonzalez. We hope you've liked this episode. If you like our work, you like this podcast and you want to check out our others, please hit like, subscribe, and keep on following. And I just want to mention that this podcast is brought to you by the National Association of Scholars. We're a membership organization devoted to restoring Western higher education. if you think education has gone off the rails, we are the good guys, so please do consider becoming a member or at least support us. There should be a QR code on your screen and we will see you next time.