In December, President Barack Obama named Jose Rico as the new executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

What are Mr. Rico’s credentials for such an appointment? Rico started and was principal of Chicago’s Multicultural Arts High School. This school ranks 584 out of 620 schools. The district’s graduation rate is 64 percent but his school’s rate is 56 percent. His school had a community rating of 1 out of possible 5. The dropout rate was nearly double of other schools in state. Its truant rate was at 34 percent, and the state average is 3.1 percent. Pathetic stats, to say the least.

Why would Obama appoint such a man? The fact that Rico is from Chicago is your first clue. But Mr. Rico also worked for other friends of Obama: Communist Mike Klonsky and Bill Ayers who admits to being a “small c” communist. Klonsky actually headed the Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) USA. The ties between Ayers, Klonsky and Obama have been known for some time. Ayers and Klonsky also founded the Small Schools Workshop for which Rico also worked.

Rico has also been involved with Coalition for Immigrant Rights, a far-left, strongly pro-illegal immigration group whose president sits on an advisory council to the Mexican government and which is closely linked in to Illinois politics. This group has been tied to socialist, communist and other anti-American groups.

The interest Rico, Ayers, Klonsky and President Obama have in education is not so much to turn out engineers, scientists and medical researchers. Their real modus operandi is to create lockstep troops to promote social change and fundamentally transform America into their ideal.

On a website touting Jose Rico it says, “He has worked as a community organizer and educator promoting cultural education as a means for empowering our youth.” This is the same path Obama follows. Note “educator promoting cultural education.” How about teaching them science, math, history to empower them Mr. Rico?

I would hope that the Hispanic community would look at the track record of Mr. Rico and say a loud “No” to this appointment. You deserve much better and so does America.

 

Tom Jacobson

Albert Lea