Los Angeles Public Schools Train Students as Obamacare Missionaries
Sure, professional athletes have a certain celebrity appeal, but can they really convince Americans to embrace a product that a growing number have already written off as a shit sandwich? But to really win hearts and minds … Hey! How about using the public schools to recruit their captive audience of students to the cause, and then set the kids loose to proselytize their families on the glories of Obamacare? That should work wonders.
And it's not creepy at all.
From School Reform News:
The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law.
LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, "Teens trained to be messengers to family members."
Covered California spokeswoman Sarah Soto-Taylor said staff have not questioned this goal.
"We have confidence that the model LA Unified brought to the table will be successful in reaching our target population, which includes family members of students," she said.
Well, of course "staff have not questioned this goal." That's because "LAUSD will also use tax-paid staff to promote ObamaCare through phone calls to students' homes, in-class presentations, and meetings with employees eligible for ObamaCare's taxpayer-covered healthcare."
So public school teachers get paid taxpayer dollars to preach Obamacare to their co-workers and the students, so the kids will then go home and sing the glories of the health scheme to the same taxpayers who are funding the whole process. Everybody wins!
If this experiment in using the public schools as a medium for spreading the good news works out as school officials and health insurance exchange managers hope, expect more in the future.
"Teens are part of a 'pilot' program to test whether young people can be trained as messengers to deliver outreach and limited education to family and friends in and around their homes," said Gayle Pollard-Terry, a LAUSD spokesman, in an email. "Teens will be educating adults that they already know (e.g., family or friends) and not other adults."
Well, of course teens will be indoctrinated in official messages that they'll then be expected to bring home. Why else would you send them to public schools?
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