Real Faces of school choice: ‘Grit’ and determination to choose a different path

Although Nolan Henderson was a public school teacher, he knew he wanted something different for his son’s education.

The growth of leftist “woke” policies in Lawrence, Kansas, schools and a health emergency in his son Grit’s life prompted Henderson to seek a different path.

He always knew he wanted to send his son, now 7, to Catholic school, but a multi-year battle with cancer almost dashed those plans.

A few months after birth, Grit was diagnosed with embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer affecting his bladder.  

What followed was a year at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital in Memphis and frequent follow-up visits over the next two years. Henderson and his wife, who was also a public school teacher, quit their jobs to travel with and care for their son. 

During Grit’s illness, the family was embraced by the Corpus Christi Parish, but Henderson, who now works in sales, was still climbing out of the financial hole from all the medical treatments and travel when it was time for Grit to start school.  

“We were on everybody’s prayer list,” he says of the church. “Every week people were asking what we needed, whether it was a ride for our (older) daughter or something else because I was driving back and forth” to Memphis. 

In faith, Henderson applied for financial aid at the school and was directed to ACE Scholarships, a scholarship granting organization that collects private funds and also administers the state’s low-income scholarship program. 

With help from ACE, Henderson received a grant that enables him to enroll Grit in Corpus Christi, a school that provides smaller class sizes and individualized attention for Grit, who still has some ongoing health issues. 

“Their financial assistance gave us educational freedom and the opportunity to choose the best school for Grit’s needs, one with a smaller classroom and individualized support that has served him well,” Henderson said at a school choice rally at the Kansas State House in Topeka last month. “As a teacher, I recognize that the one-size-fits-all approach to learning is never going to be ideal, and as a parent I can testify that being empowered to put my son in a place where he will thrive is life changing.” 

The community support has continued, with Grit feeling right at home and his father exceedingly grateful for the opportunity. 

“I had my vision of what a good school and educational program was for (my) child, and they blew it out of the water,” Henderson told The Lion. “Whatever I imagined, (Corpus Christi) was 10 times that.” 

As the battle over school choice heats up, Kansas lawmakers are considering legislation to enact universal school choice. That proposal will need a united majority of Republicans to withstand an assured veto from Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly. 

Another proposal would improve and expand the state’s existing low-income scholarship program, which served about 2,400 students last year, double the year before. The program is open to students from families earning up to 250% of the federal poverty level, or $80,375 for a family of four. 

Henderson and ACE are advocating for school choice to expand. 

“Our public schools were failing. COVID proved that,” he says. “When the school system’s values no longer match the values of your family and your community, you should be able to go somewhere else.” 

And while wealthy families already have choices, income shouldn’t limit people from finding the right school. 

“I can’t imagine a parent on earth, if they knew that they could send their kids to the best and brightest school because they had the program that fit their kid’s interest, that would say ‘no,’” he says. “The only reason the Legislature is holding up is, in my personal opinion, for unions and people that are getting kickbacks from implementing this system in this school district and that school district, and they need to listen to the people.   

“If somebody wants their kid to go to a better school or a different school, you should have that choice. You’ve got choices in everything else, right?”