Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, Walks Out on 1,000-Plus Parents Who Traveled to His L.A. County Town Hall - Los Angeles News - The Informer

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, Walks Out on 1,000-Plus Parents Who Traveled to His L.A. County Town Hall - Los Angeles News - The Informer:

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, Walks Out on 1,000-Plus Parents Who Traveled to His L.A. County Town Hall

By Simone Wilson Thu., Oct. 13 2011 at 9:35 AM

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Categories: Education, politics

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Arne Duncan has places to be.

​Lydia Grant, a big education activist in SoCal, asked us to attend U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's two-hour-long town hall in Pico Rivera earlier this week. Duncan had promised big things for the Tuesday event:

The town hall is hosted by the U.S. Department of Education and will include space for the public to ask questions and share their thoughts. The event is designed to engage community leaders from across the Los Angeles region in meeting President Barack Obama's challenge to lead the world in college completion by 2020.

Grant also invited about 200 parents -- and says over 1,000 showed up in total, some traveling all the way up from San Diego. But that didn't stop Duncan from walking out after 20 minutes.

"Everybody was just shocked," says Grant, because the town hall had been "pushed as if parents were going to be able to really tell their stories and get help."

And even for the short time Duncan was speaking and answering a couple questions in the brick El Rancho High School basketball court, according to Grant, the audience could barely hear what he was saying. The only words that really came through were "Jobs Act."