Public School Parents are An Important Part of the Resistance.

Welcome to the Resistance, Public School Parents

Jessica Grose
February 4, 2026
The New York Times

 Fear and disruption is touching nearly every parent and child in places like Minnesota and Maine. And everyday people who otherwise describe themselves as not especially political are stepping up for their fellow parents and children.

 

The terror for children, parents and teachers in Minnesota started even before Operation Metro Surge sent thousands of heavily armed, masked federal agents into the streets. The school year began with a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in South Minneapolis, where two children died and at least 24 others were injured. Local families barely had time to process those deaths — only five years after the killing of George Floyd rocked their city — before their daily lives were upended by the chaotic presence of federal officers harassing citizens under the guise of immigration enforcement.

A teacher named Sarah in the Twin Cities told me that her school received a bomb threat after Renee Good’s killing, ostensibly for being too supportive of immigrants. “I kind of forgot about it because we went on with our day, teaching,” Sarah, who is a mother, told me, acknowledging how absurd it was that lockdowns and the shadow of violence were now unremarkable fixtures of the public school experience in Minnesota. (Like many people I spoke to for this story, she requested that I use only her first name because she feared retaliation against or further targeting of her school.)

Two things became clear as I talked to parents, educators and school board members in Minnesota and Maine, where there was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown called Operation Catch of the Day in January targeting immigrants from Somalia.

The first is that the fear and disruption touch nearly every parent and child in these places. A Minnesota woman named Alli, who has a child on the autism spectrum, told me that because she and her child are not white, she is worried about him having a meltdown in public and attracting immigration enforcement. She wondered aloud to me, “Can we go to swim class tonight,” or should they just stay home to avoid being hassled and potentially traumatized?

The second is that everyday people who otherwise describe themselves as not especially political are stepping up for their fellow parents and children. We know public schools are often a hub of local connection, but what stands out is how far schools have extended their care into the community. Fellow parents are offering rides, food, grocery delivery and money to the families affected. They’re patrolling the sidewalks in front of schools to keep an eye out for ICE vehicles in the deep northern freeze.

Educators like Valley View Elementary School’s principal, Jason Kuhlman, are taking students to visit their detained parents at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. Valley View is where Liam Conejo Ramos — the prekindergartner in a bunny ears hat whose photo while being detained by federal agents has become an icon of the crackdown’s cruelty — is a student and where at least 25 other families have had a parent or guardian apprehended.

“We gave them hugs,” Kuhlman told my newsroom colleague Sarah Mervosh, of two children he took to see their detained mother. “We’re crying; they’re crying.” Later he found out that the three were taken to a detention center in Texas.

It struck me that these parents and teachers, mourning together, are treating all children as their own.

When parents across the country leave the house for school drop-off or errands, they have to figure out whether the route they are taking is safe by checking Signal and WhatsApp chats and social media posts and recalculate if they think agents are lingering. If they are immigrants or the relatives of immigrants, they are afraid of being targeted and detained even if they are here legally.

Alexandra, a stay-at-home mother of two children in a suburb of Minneapolis, is married to an immigrant from the Caribbean. Though her husband is naturalized, she explained that he will no longer do pickups and drop-offs at school, and she doesn’t take her children to places like Mall of America because she is afraid they will be targeted because of the color of their skin. “I’m terrified when he leaves by himself that he won’t come home,” Alexandra said of her husband. “He travels anywhere he goes with his passport. It’s like my body is on constant alert, knowing that anywhere I turn, something could happen and my kids could see that and it would affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Even the littlest children notice that their friends are missing from class and have questions. On Jan. 27, 21.3 percent of public school students in Portland, Maine, were absent, according to Sarah Lentz, the chair of the city’s school board. That’s about three times the average for a typical day in January. Attendance dropped so much in the Twin Cities that public schools are now offering remote learning as an option for children too scared to go in person.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about how public school is for care: that so many educators and counselors are going above and beyond their job descriptions to give children whatever they may need when they walk through the door, from food to clothing to emotional stability. That is part of the mission of public schools — to take the children as they are, whoever they are. Lentz told me that Portland schools have long served recent immigrant communities and that the school district has worked with multiple food organizations for decades. “We send bags of culturally relevant food home on the weekends for kids and their families that need it,” she said, including halal options.

Among the greatest critics of public schools seem to bemembers of the Trump administration who have not set foot in them for decades, if at all. They do not acknowledge that schools, for all their imperfections, are highly functioning civic centers providing so much more than academics. It also occurs to me that the organizing on behalf of all children in Minnesota and Maine schools might be one reason the people running the Education Department want to defund public schools.

The heroism of ordinary people helping one another is profound and a silver lining of this preventable tragedy. But we should not lose sight of the real fear and anxiety, which won’t disappear overnight, even as the federal government claims to be backing off in Maine and Liam and his father have been returned to Minnesota from their detainment in Texas.

Every person I spoke to in Minnesota and Maine said that the disruption to their children’s lives was much worse than with Covid. At least then they knew that they would be safe when they were inside. The parents I spoke to who were organizing grocery drop-offs and driving other people’s children to school were afraid of being followed by ICE agents to immigrants’ homes or back to their own.

“These actions are going to have lifelong impacts on our kids, whether they’re experiencing it, whether they’ve witnessed it firsthand or they just saw it on social media,” said Anil Hurkadli, a Minneapolis-based independent educational consultant who served in the Department of Education under President Joe Biden. Whenever this ends, Hurkadli said, it’s going to take the entire community to help the children recover.

In an essay he wrote for The Minnesota Star Tribune, Hurkadli pointed out that during immigration crackdowns in Florida and California in the past few years, test scores fell among children who were affected. It’s nearly impossible to learn when students are afraid that their parents will be taken away.

For those of us who do not live in Maine or Minnesota, the past two months should serve as a warning. The targets are ultimately arbitrary — far from the southern border and hardly the states and cities where the most undocumented immigrants live. ICE raids continue all over the country, even if the presence of federal officers is not as disruptive or violent as it has been in these states.

Just because it’s not our children today doesn’t mean it won’t be tomorrow.

End Notes

• There was a public education bright spot last weekend when Leigh Wambsganss — a Texas Republican who was a proponent of book-banning efforts and far-right school board takeovers in Texas — lost a state legislative special election in the Fort Worth area to a Democrat, Taylor Rehmet. Wambsganss far outspent Rehmet in the district, which President Trump won by 17 points in 2024. This suggests to me that even in heavily Republican districts, parents do not want a far-right agenda in their public schools and are sick of the divisiveness.

Jessica Grose newsletter.  A journalist and novelist offers her perspective on the American family, culture, politics and the way we live now.

 

Protect Public Education - Stop Trump et al

Congress created the Department of Education to ensure all students, no matter who they are or where they live, get equal access to an education. Students in every community benefit from its programs.  Today, Donald Trump announced that he is moving forward on dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.  Tell your senators and member of Congress to stop this unprecedented, unilateral, and illegal action.

Write Congress  ➤

Trump and his Administration are robbing students of educational opportunity by gutting the education department and shifting its hallmark programs to agencies with no expertise to meet the needs of students.   Their action will deny students the critical supports that they need to learn, grow, and succeed in life.   It will explode class sizes and deny students access to higher education and job programs.  Let’s be clear: Congress created the Department of Education and only Congress can dismantle it.    Please write your elected officials right now and demand they protect students and put a stop to Donald Trump and Linda McMahon’s ILLEGAL decision to dismantle the Dept. of Education.   Ensuring a brighter future for our children should be a top priority for any administration, but this administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need—all to pay for billionaire tax cuts.  America’s educators and parents will not be silent as Trump and his education secretary, Linda McMahon, turn their backs on our students, families, and communities.  Thank you for taking action and for all you do for our students.  In solidarity,  Becky Pringle  President  National Education Association  Write Congress  ➤    Donald Trump just announced a plan to dismantle the Department of Education,

Vouchers: A Republican Scam : Kevin Kiley

Call. Kevin Kiley.  Congressperson. MAGA,

The evidence is clear: Private school vouchers divert needed funding away from public schools, are a boon to the wealthy and don’t help student achievement. Yet even as President Donald Trump tries to end the federal role in education, he and his allies in Congress want to create a new federal role in education—not for public schools but for a national voucher program.

In Congress, Trump’s allies are trying to sneak a new voucher program into a bill about taxes. But this “tuition tax credit” is nothing more than a national voucher program that also allows people like Elon Musk and Betsy DeVos to turn a profit, personally earning millions of dollars from the scheme, while our public schools, which 90 percent of all students attend, are underfunded and undermined.

Send your letter to Congress telling lawmakers to stop plans to implement a national school voucher program.

We can’t let Republicans representing billionaires insert a national voucher program into a bill with so many cuts to essential services that they hope we won’t notice. Adding a so-called tuition tax credit to their tax bill would:

• Divert billions of dollars in public funds to private schools—even though public schools serve 90 percent of our students.
• Let wealthy taxpayers profit from this voucher scheme even as it channels more taxpayer money to wealthy families already using private schools.
• Harm students with special needs who rely on public school infrastructure and are often not welcome in private schools.
• Allow discrimination with public funds, even as our public schools, which are nondiscriminatory and open to all, do not receive the funding they need.
• Harm food banks, houses of worship, veterans’ organizations and all nonprofits that rely on donations, by creating a financial incentive for donors to direct their money to vouchers instead.

We know vouchers are bad news for our students, schools and communities. The evidence is clear that vouchers don’t help achievement; they have been used mainly by the wealthy who already send their children to private schools, and most important, they deplete essential funding from public schools. We can stop this attack on our schools.

In the same way parents, educators and community members came together across the country last November to defeat vouchers, no matter their political persuasion, we can stand with parents and education advocacy groups now to send a clear message to members of Congress trying to defund public schools through this federal voucher scheme.

Click to send a letter to your members of Congress opposing a tuition tax credit for private schools and a nationalized school voucher program.

In Unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

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The evidence is clear: Private school vouchers divert needed funding away from public schools, are a boon to the wealthy and don’t help student achievement. Yet even as President Donald Trump tries to end the federal role in education, he and his allies in Congress want to create a new federal role in education—not for public schools but for a national voucher program.

In Congress, Trump’s allies are trying to sneak a new voucher program into a bill about taxes. But this “tuition tax credit” is nothing more than a national voucher program that also allows people like Elon Musk and Betsy DeVos to turn a profit, personally earning millions of dollars from the scheme, while our public schools, which 90 percent of all students attend, are underfunded and undermined.

Send your letter to Congress telling lawmakers to stop plans to implement a national school voucher program.

We can’t let Republicans representing billionaires insert a national voucher program into a bill with so many cuts to essential services that they hope we won’t notice. Adding a so-called tuition tax credit to their tax bill would:

• Divert billions of dollars in public funds to private schools—even though public schools serve 90 percent of our students.
• Let wealthy taxpayers profit from this voucher scheme even as it channels more taxpayer money to wealthy families already using private schools.
• Harm students with special needs who rely on public school infrastructure and are often not welcome in private schools.
• Allow discrimination with public funds, even as our public schools, which are nondiscriminatory and open to all, do not receive the funding they need.
• Harm food banks, houses of worship, veterans’ organizations and all nonprofits that rely on donations, by creating a financial incentive for donors to direct their money to vouchers instead.

We know vouchers are bad news for our students, schools and communities. The evidence is clear that vouchers don’t help achievement; they have been used mainly by the wealthy who already send their children to private schools, and most important, they deplete essential funding from public schools. We can stop this attack on our schools.

In the same way parents, educators and community members came together across the country last November to defeat vouchers, no matter their political persuasion, we can stand with parents and education advocacy groups now to send a clear message to members of Congress trying to defund public schools through this federal voucher scheme.

Click to send a letter to your members of Congress opposing a tuition tax credit for private schools and a nationalized school voucher program.

In Unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

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Texas Take Over of Public Schools Fails

The Troubling Trend of State Takeovers of Public Schools

Despite aiming to close achievement gaps, state takeovers of school districts worsen education inequality for low-income and minority students.

Blogging Our Great Divide

August 06, 2024

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by Georgia Jensen

 

The state takeover of Houston Independent School District, the eighth-largest public school system in the United States, is entering its second year. 

State-appointed superintendent Mike Miles is celebrating the occasion by touting state test score results that show preliminary improvement in student achievement. Other leaders in education across the country are paying close attention to Miles’ tactics to see if they’re effective enough to implement in their own schools.

Since 1989, over 100 school districts across the U.S. have been subjected to state takeovers, in which the state seizes control of low-performing or financially struggling school districts, replacing their locally elected school boards. This is done with the goal of dramatically improving the district’s academic or financial performance. State takeovers are difficult to neatly describe because they vary from place to place depending on the policies that the state-appointed board and superintendent decide to implement. But they are overwhelmingly ineffective.

A 2021 study done by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia analyzed over 100 state takeovers between 1989 and 2016. It found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.” In fact, it can take years for schools to return to their previous levels of academic achievement after a takeover. 

 

Texas State Takeovers.

 

https://inequality.org/great-divide/the-troubling-trend-of-state-takeovers-of-public-schools/

 

  

Plot by Right-Wing Billionaires to 'Sabotage' Public Cut Public Education

 

Sanders Report Details Plot by Right-Wing Billionaires to 'Sabotage' Public Cut Public Education

"Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education."

JAKE JOHNSON

Jun 25, 2024

24

Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.

The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—"ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers."

Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, "AFC's political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers," the report adds.

The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 "to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to 'win the American Culture War.'"

"The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona's former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation's first universal private school voucher)," the report adds.

"For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable."

The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.

More. 

Voucher Programs Defund Public Schools

Cagle Cartoons: Pat Bagley

How Right-Wing Brainchild ‘Universal School Vouchers’ Blow Through State Budgets

Newly enacted universal school vouchers are greatly exceeding state budgets, and it’s not clear where the money to pay for cost overruns will come from. 

• Jeff Bryant
• Nov 12, 2023

In 2023, Republican state governors went to unprecedented lengths to enact universal school voucher programs in legislative sessions across the country and made support for these programs into rigid party ideology. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for instance, went so far as to recall the state’s legislature for a fourth special session, a historically unprecedented action in the Texas Legislature’s 176-year history, according to a November 7 article in the Texas Tribune. According to the report, “[t]he biggest point of contention” is a universal school voucher bill that House Republicans have repeatedly rejected. Previously, Abbott warned any Republican holdouts that they would be challengedfrom within the party in the 2024 primary elections if they didn’t get in line and extend their support for vouchers.

Abbott calls his voucher plan “education freedom,” echoing a term favored by former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who used her office to push for a federally funded nationwide school voucher program.

School vouchers can take on many forms, including tax credit programs—which give tax credits to anyone who donates to nonprofits that provide school vouchers—and so-called education savings accounts (ESAs), which allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into an account that they can tap for education expenses. Abbott is attempting to push through an ESA in Texas.

When voucher programs were initially enacted in early adopting states, such as Florida and Arizona, eligibility was limited to low-income families or to children with special needs or circumstances.

When voucher programs were initially enacted in early adopting states, such as Florida and Arizona, eligibility was limited to low-income families or to children with special needs or circumstances. But the trend over the last few years has been to make these programs open to all or nearly all families. What Abbott is proposing, in fact, would allow all families to apply for vouchers.

Nine states have enacted universal school vouchers as of November 2023, including Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia, according to State Policy Network, a school choice advocacy group. Indiana’s voucher program is “near universal,” as 97 percent of families are eligible under the scheme.

 

More;

https://www.laprogressive.com/education-reform/universal-school-vouchers

 

 

 https://www.laprogressive.com/education-reform/universal-school-vouchers

The Coming Crisis in Public Educati

The Coming Public Education Crisis 

A fiscal calamity awaits public schools once pandemic-related federal assistance ends.

Justin H. Vassallo  Spring 2023A teacher interacts with students virtually in an empty classroom at Hazelwood Ele[1]mentary School in January 2022 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images) 

Of all the social inequities that the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted in the United States, the crisis of public education is among the most intractable. Reports of staffing shortages and declining enrollment—twin problems especially acute for poorer districts contending with slashed budgets and meager classroom resources—have persisted even after the introduction of vaccines for children. With most state funding tied to student enrollment, shrinking attendance means smaller budgets to meet fixed operating costs and fewer funds to attract and retain talented educators. A fiscal calamity awaits public schools once pandemic-related federal assistance ends in September 2024.

Left unaddressed, the crisis portends the return of the “K-shaped” economic recovery—in which the well-off see strong gains and those already struggling experience more instability and income loss—that economists warned about in the early days of the pandemic. The actions of congressional Democrats and other party officials have been discouraging. In late 2021, House Democrats abandoned a proposed $100 billion for modernizing school infrastructure during negotiations over President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. (The subsequent Inflation Reduction Act did not include meaningful provisions for education.) Absent a political reckoning that extends federal funding to restore programs and classroom resources to pre-pandemic levels, let alone make significant improvements, schools could face a new round of disenrollment at a moment when they are already struggling to recover the approximately 1.4 million pupils who withdrew during the first year of the pandemic.

 

 

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-coming-public-education-crisis/