Gabriel Lynch III is new to his role as an education choice advocate. Though in essence, he’s been doing it nearly all his life.

He’s a product of both private and homeschooled education. He’s attended brick-and-mortar schools and studied virtually.

Along the way, Gabriel, 19, has become an ordained minister, a motivational speaker, an accomplished pianist, and a published author.

Those wondering about the benefits of education choice need only listen to Gabriel.

“School choice changed my life to who I am today,” he said.

Today, Gabriel is a college freshman majoring in music at Seminole State College in Lake Mary. His education from kindergarten through high school was supported by scholarships managed by Step Up For Students, from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship to the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options to the Personalized Education Program (PEP), which he used to homeschool in 2023-24, his senior year of high school.

“I want kids to have the same experiences I had,” he said.

That’s why Gabriel joined the American Federation for Children (AFC), an organization that strives to bring education choices to families nationwide. Gabriel was recently accepted into AFC’s Future Leader Fellowship, a year-long internship program that will prepare him to meet with lawmakers around the country to promote education choice.

Read about Gabriel's story here.

A number of Step Up For Students alumni advocate for AFC. One of them, Denisha Merriweather Allen, founded Black Minds Matter and serves on Step Up For Students' governance board. Gabriel is the first to have benefited from a PEP scholarship. The scholarship, which began during the 2023-24 school year, is an education savings account (ESA) for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. This allows parents to tailor their children’s education by allowing them to spend their scholarship funds on various approved, education-related expenses.

Gabriel’s mom, Krystle, used PEP to homeschool Gabriel and his two brothers, Kingston (eighth grade) and Zechariah (sixth grade).

A longtime advocate for education choice, Krystle and her husband, Gabriel Jr., who live in Apopka, want to take control of their children’s education. PEP allowed them to tailor the curriculum for each son.

“They have different learning paths,” she said.

Krystle is ecstatic that her oldest son is following in her advocacy footsteps.

“This has been something that has been on my heart for many years, and to see him carry on the message, that's exactly what I've always dreamed of,” she said.

Gabriel said school choice helped mold him. Attending a faith-based school led him to become an ordained minister and a public speaker. Using the PEP scholarship for piano, guitar, and voice lessons fostered his love of music and helped shape what he hopes to be his career path. He wants to be a composer.

“There are so many things I am right now because of school choice,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s because my parents put me where I fit best because even when I was in private school, I could fit in. I found my group, I found my clique, and that's why I say it really changed my life.”

Gabriel is eager to share his story with lawmakers in states that don’t have education choice. Last year, advocates from the AFC Future Leaders program volunteered on the front lines of the fight to support education choice legislation in Nebraska.

“It’s giving parents options to choose where their kid fits best,” he said. “that’s what I will tell them. I think that would be amazing for those states that don't have school choice options.”

The most rewarding aspect of working in the family empowerment movement, hands down, is the people you meet. One of my all-time favorites is Virginia Walden Ford.

Walden Ford grew up in Little Rock, Ark., during the battle for school integration. Decades later, she led the fight for the Opportunity Scholarship Program in Washington, D.C. Now, her story has been made into a movie released by the Moving Picture Institute.

Commenting on the film Miss Virginia, EdChoice founder and CEO Robert Enlow noted that “In today’s cynical political world, Virginia’s story is a reminder that one person – one motivated mom who knew the system was rigged against her – can change the course of history.”

Rigged indeed!

The District of Columbia public education system that Walden Ford encountered as a parent in the 1990s was entirely rigged against the poor. The well-to-do in Washington, D.C., either paid for private school tuition out of their own pockets or were well-ensconced on islands of privilege in a very high-spending but tragically dysfunctional district. The striving professional class tended to bail out either to Maryland or Virginia.

Washington, D.C., NAEP scores of that era indicate that any learning taking place in public schools was accidental. If you think that statement harsh, consider the fact that a dismal 7 percent of black D.C. fourth-graders scored proficient in reading. If someone had set out to purposely create a school system to advantage the advantaged and keep the poor down, spending an absurd amount of money in the process, the protype was cast in the form of D.C.-area schools circa the end of the 20^th century.

Walden Ford led the grassroots fight to provide expanded opportunities for D.C.’s low-income children, ultimately triumphing with passage of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2003. Participants in that program, by the way, demonstrated a 20 percent higher graduation rate despite only receiving a fraction of the per-pupil spending in DCPS.

Imagine what those students could do if they received their fair share of funding and the chance to spend it on tutoring and enrichment programs in addition to – or instead of – private school tuition.

Standing on the shoulders of a giant, the next generation of opportunity warriors should follow Walden Ford’s example and challenge a continually distracted Congress to pay attention to what still is a crisis for poor children in Washington, D.C. A modernized D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program could provide still greater chances for D.C. families to improve their prospects.

You will never meet a more genuine, passionate and down-to-earth advocate than Walden Ford. I’m eager to see the extent to which the filmmakers have done justice to her story.