House Speaker Paul Ryan took a short breather between hacking away health insurance from millions of Americans and handing over huge tax cuts for the wealthy to head to a Harlem charter school on Tuesday. He was met by protesters who made it clear that he was far from welcome in New York City.
Ryan’s visit to the Harlem Success Academy Charter School was first reported late Monday. The school, which is run by education privatization advocate Eva Moskowitz, is the same one that Ivanka Trump visited in February.
Dozens of protesters lined the blocks around the school. Ryan, perhaps intent on averting a nightmare like the one that greeted Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos when she visited a school in February, conveniently found a different way in as protesters chanted “shame.”
But when he came out at the end, he could not escape the vicious boos.
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UPDATE, 3:39 PM: Through a spokesperson, Ryan said in a statement: “Today was special— touring Success Academy, listening to these great kids and their committed teachers, hearing their stories. The quality of teacher training and preparedness was extraordinary.”
In a separate statement provided to Fusion after the visit, Moskowitz managed to brag about the school scoring in the top 2% of all schools in the state while also not-so-subtly dissing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I was pleased to welcome Speaker Ryan to our flagship school in Harlem today. The education crisis in our city and country is profoundly damaging to millions of children, and parent choice has proven to be an effective lever in education reform,” she said in the statement. “I share Mayor de Blasio’s view (in at least this one case), that open dialogue is essential in finding solutions to our most difficult problems.”