Tom Freston Is the Angelina Jolie of EducationMTV founder, multimillionaire, and newly appointed DreamWorks board member Tom Freston, whose longtime lawsuit against the city for reimbursement of his learning-disabled son’s tuition hits the Supreme Court today, wants you to know he’s not doing it for the money. Rather, Freston is suing because he believes that the light of his star will illuminate a deficiency in the system whereupon children with special needs are shuttled needlessly into a trial year at public schools when everyone knows they’d really be better off in private schools. “Children with special education needs have a right, without jumping through hoops, to attend schools capable of providing them with an education,” Freston said in a statement yesterday. Aw. Freston’s activism here, we think, is sort of similar to Angelina Jolie’s work with the U.N. You know, because every time we see a picture of her snuggling orphans in Pakistan and Malawi, we find that we completely stop thinking about whether she’s wearing makeup and her weird arm veins and what Brad thinks about her affair with Jenny Shimizu and just think about the children. Except not really. And today we’re not thinking about The One at all.
Duel on Public Funds for Private School [AP]