Ed Burns: CEF Board Member     

  by Mae Duggan                                

One of the school choice movement’s first campaigners was our dear friend and Citizens for Educational Freedom Board member Edmund D. Burns.  He was “Ed Burns” to all of us. Ed died on August 15, 2010, on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.

Ed was an enthusiastic crusader for the right of parents to be free to choose the schools that are best for their own children.  Ed was a devout Catholic, and insisted that the school laws must be fair in providing an equal share of tax money for every child’s education in the school of their parent’s choice.

Here we remind our readers that parental choice in education is a Human Right.  It is listed in the Declaration of Human Rights in Article 26, Section 1-3, that “parents shall have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”.  Ed Burns valued all human rights - not just some human rights.  He stood strong against the groups that opposed the right of families who require religious schools and God-centered education for their children.  He led Citizens for Educational Freedom in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas.  All of us, his friends in CEF, will persevere as Ed did, until America has a new birth of freedom - Freedom of Choice in Education.  We offer our sympathy and prayers for his dear wife, Virginia, “Ginny Burns”.