Trump/MAGA Budget Cuts to Education

Unless we act now, critical programs that support our students could shut down.  The Trump administration is proposing to further politicize federal funding decisions by giving political appointees authority over decisions about which schools, colleges, and community organizations receive federal funding.  That means funding decisions will be made by political appointees with an agenda—not based on empirical data, student needs, program quality, and professional expertise. Decisions about research funding will be driven by politics rather than peer review and merit.  Here’s what you can do:  Write a public comment and urge the Office of Management and Budget to withdraw its proposal and to preserve a fair, transparent, and student-centered grant system.

Write a Public Comment  ➤

Any program supporting:  Women and girls,   Immigrant families,   LGBTQIA+ students,   Racial equity, Students with disabilities, or A fuller account of U.S. history...  ...could lose its funding under this administration if this proposal is finalized.   This would apply not just to federal K-12 and college and university programs, but to all discretionary funding received by those institutions and by nonprofits that serve our communities and receive federal grants.   To add insult to injury, it will also have a chilling effect on schools, districts, and colleges as they try to balance what they believe is best for students, with which programs could be targeted for being contrary to the current administration’s values.   We have already seen many institutions drop critically needed programs and instruction in response to similar threats to federal funding.  Before the rule takes effect, the administration must solicit and respond to comments from the public—that's you.  Please share how federal funding supports your students, school, campus, or community and why stable funding matters. You have until July 13 to act.  We give you a sample to adapt, but the more personalized your public comment is, the better.  Educators need stability so they can focus on teaching and supporting students, NOT navigating politically motivated requirements.   And, students deserve stable access to the programs and services that help them learn and thrive.  Federal funding should serve students, not politics.  In solidarity,  The NEA EdAction Team

Note: A new project of Teachers and Educators Defending democracy is in the works.  Information will be posted here when ready.  Without an educated populace, the common good cannot even be discerned. This is fundamental. When education is viewed as a private investment yielding private returns, there’s no reason why anyone other than the “investor” should pay for it. But when understood as a public good underlying our democracy, all of us have a responsibility to ensure that it is of high quality and available to all. Our central obligation as citizens is to preserve, fortify, and protect our democratic form of government — not inundate it with big money and buy off politicians. We must defend the right to vote and ensure that more citizens are heard, not fewer.

 

Chicago Teachers Striking for the Common Good

common good

Chicago educators and school staff in their third week of striking. They’re showing how unions can use the power of picket lines and public pressure to fight for more than wage increases. The twenty-five thousand educators of the CTU and 7,500 school workers represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 want their new contracts with the Chicago Public Schools to commit in writing to increased resources; more nurses, counselors, and other support staff; class size caps; limits on school privatization; affordable housing assistance; and more. The traditional bread-and-butter issues of wages and benefits are important in this strike, especially for the poorly paid paraprofessionals of both unions whose average annual salaries are low enough that their children qualify for free and reduced-price meals when they go to school. But the CTU and SEIU are using this strike to demand answers to bigger questions, too: what will it take to achieve education and social justice? And how can unions use the power of picket lines and public pressure to help get there? This broader vision for labor is often called “bargaining for the common good.”

We Need the Representative Democracies of Unions in our Schools

 October 16, 2014

Leo Casey of the Albert Shanker Institute replies to Deborah Meier again today.

Deb: To practice genuine democracy in our schools, our unions, and our communities, we need a different understanding of what it means to be political.

When I taught at Bard High School Early College in New York City, one of my favorite questions on my mid-year exam was: What did Aristotle mean when he wrote that "man is a political animal?"

For most Americans, the term "political animal" would invoke the worst of American political culture: the paranoid ranting of talk radio, the political television shows modeled after wrestling entertainment, the election campaigns dominated by negative attack ads, and the gridlock of a Congress where narrow partisan advantage is everything. No wonder so many Americans run in the opposite direction when they hear "political."