(The Lion) — Texas mom Greta Alexander has a daughter who’s a “thriving” honors student at a Christian school and a son who recently died due to drug addiction.

She says it was school choice that made all the difference in their two stories.

“I’ve actually been on both sides of the scale here,” Alexander told The Lion in an interview.

She adopted her daughter, Miracle, from a niece who was in prison when she gave birth. Miracle now attends Temple Christian School in Fort Worth with the help of ACE Scholarships, a nonprofit that provides scholarships for low-income families to attend private K-12 schools.

Before the scholarship, Alexander said it was a financial struggle to keep Miracle in a private school, and she would clean restrooms to help pay for the girl’s tuition.

“She is thriving,” Alexander said of her daughter, who is now a junior in high school. “She is No. 12 in her class right now, she’s in honor society, she’s a chaplain of her class, she’s a community leader of her class and she plays softball, volleyball, and basketball.

“She’s doing dual credit; she’s getting prepared for college.”

Temple Christian was attractive to Alexander both for religious reasons – she describes her family as “Christ-centered” – and for its academic programs.

“I wanted her to be somewhere that she could still be cultivated and keep moving and not be stopped.”

Receiving an ACE scholarship was a “godsend,” she said, since “we were just scrambling looking for help because we could not afford it.”

In sad contrast, Alexander didn’t have the financial means to send her son to a private school, and he attended a local public school that was plagued by crime and drug issues.

“My son that was in public school, in 9th grade he got with some kids that were doing drugs, and he became addicted to drugs and he just couldn’t survive. He didn’t have anybody to talk to,” she said.

After getting fines from the school, Alexander realized he was leaving school and skipping classes after she dropped him off each day. Despite sending him to four different rehabilitation programs from 9th to 11th grade, Alexander’s son never recovered from his addiction.

Eventually, he “used some drugs and he went to sleep, but he didn’t wake up,” Alexander said of her son’s tragic death in August 2023.

“Had I had a choice, I truly believe that it would have been a different outcome with my son,” she says, adding that while not all public schools are bad, if parents had more choices, entire communities could be transformed.

“There’s no reason why we as parents have to stay in the [city] block that we’re in. I know some parents that feel like they’re in a cage because of their zip code.”

Failing public school systems and a lack of choice have even affected Alexander since her own teenage years, when she got pregnant twice in high school.

“When I went to school, there were no counselors, there was no one to talk to or ask questions,” she said of the importance of one-on-one education. “Had there been someone to talk to, even my life would have been different.”

A safe and nurturing education has the power to not only change a child’s future, but whole communities and “every single thing,” she says.

“You know the old saying ‘you’re a product of what you see.’ You’re a product of what you live every day. So if you live every day in your community, seeing people selling drugs on the corner, walking with their pants hanging down, teenagers being pregnant, that’s the life that you see, so that’s what you’re going to be, because that’s all you know.

“But just think about if a child has an opportunity to get educated, leave the community, go to college, and then be able to come back and give something to the community.”

Alexander recently met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott during his push for school choice legislation in Texas, and says she is behind him “110%.”

On a national level, she praised the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the federal Education Department and return education to the states.

“What he’s really saying to me as a parent is that he’s putting education for my child back in my hands, and that speaks volumes, because I know the level that my child is on.

“I applaud him for saying, ‘Hey, let’s put it back where it belongs’ – with our parents, because parents know what’s best for their children.”

Photo: Courtesy ACE Scholarships