Documentary 'The Long Game' examines Texas public schools

To use accountability as a flashlight, or we're gonna use it as a hammer. Congratulations in order to our own Chris Tridico for his role as executive producer of the newly released, genuinely provocative documentary, The Long Game, a film which examines what it makes, what its makers contend is a calculated move to systematically dismantle traditional public schools and replace them with privatization driven in part by artificial intelligence. Chris, tell us more about the film. As you know, I've worked in defending teachers and administrators in schools for 40 years. And I've watched as our state government has tried to kill public education for a long, long time. And I waited and waited and waited for somebody to do something about it. And I just couldn't wait any longer. So I made this movie. I hired two directors, Sharon Ferranti and my son is the assistant director. And I told them, this is what I see, this is what I want you to go out and make this movie about. And I told them the premise, and they went out and proved it. And I did not micromanage this. I know people think, here's a Democrat, he represents teachers. I just sent them out to make a movie. And they proved my premise that the state government of Texas is attempting to kill public education. And replace it, if you want a teacher, you have to pay for it. If not, you can get an AI teacher, and that's where this is headed. And when the governor announced he's going to kill property taxes for public school districts with no way to replace that money, that's where this is headed, and that's the end game here. And we've got a 90-minute documentary that tracks this from George Bush as governor. That's when this started. All the way to today and it tracks everything that's happened all the way through the takeover of HISD and in the takeover of Fort Worth and Lake Worth and the other school districts have been taken over here recently and shows from the last 30 years of what's happening in Texas schools. So I know we're going to have viewers who want to see this film and from everybody I've talked to, it's 90 minutes. Well invested. How do they? So there's a screening tonight that you can go to our Facebook page. It's a Zoom screening. The only one we've had on Zoom is Zoom screening tonight. You can get on our Facebook page. The long game documentary on Facebook. And you can get the Zoom link on our Facebook page. And it's tonight at 7 p.m. Of all the wonderful things you've done in your career, how gratifying has this been? This really makes me happy. Something I've worked on for a long time. I can't believe I'm getting emotional. Most of it. I've invested my whole career in protecting public education and public educators. And this needed to be done. Somebody with the resources to get this done should have done it a long time ago. A couple of years ago. I've invested my own money, my own time. And all the people that said they were going to invest in this backed out. Except for just a couple of people. So I put my own resources behind protecting the public schools and the children of Texas. And if we don't do something right now, we're going to lose our public schools. All right. I'm going to watch the film. And I guarantee you, I bet everybody on this panel will watch this film. Amen. Okay. Thanks to this week's panel. And thank you for joining us. And stick with us. We'll keep talking here with What's Your Point Overtime.