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As
the nation prepares to reopen its schools for the 2021-2022 year,
very few groups and/or individuals have focused specifically on the
overall well-being of our school children. The primary emphases, to
date, have been vaccination of teachers, whether students will wear
masks, virtual vs. in-person instruction, and the teaching of
critical race theory.
Except
for national teachers 'unions, the National Education Association
(NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), there has been
limited public discussion of classroom heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning systems; mold in classrooms; lead-based water
circulating in school buildings; and upgrading of aged-school
buildings.
These
issues have a particular salience in low-wealth urban and rural
school districts where the student population, disproportionately
populated by children of color, seems increasingly ignored and
forgotten. The reality of the situation is that since K-12 public
education students are over 50 percent ethnic minority—Indigenous,
Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Latinx-- they do not matter.
If
one were to take a more cynical view, a close observer of this
process could conclude that there are parallels between voter
suppression, the gerrymandering of political districts at every level
of government, and the denial of economic and physical resources to
those schools and school systems serving what I would term our new
public school students.
These
students are ‘new’ in that their numbers have never been
as robust as they are today, except in our major urban centers. Now
that their numbers have increased exponentially throughout our
nation, their overall educational well-being is being threatened by a
Republican majority at the various levels of government which appear
to view their needs as superfluous.
We
can see this in the decrease in funding of public education in states
where ethnic minority citizens and families are the overwhelming
minority—Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota,
Georgia, Michigan, Idaho, and others—but have overall public
school populations that do not mirror the racial makeup of the
states.
In
Wisconsin, at every turn, a Republican-controlled legislature has
stymied Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in his efforts to increase
education funding for poor students, those with disabilities, and
those districts with decaying physical structures. The
lead-poisoning crisis which is enveloping the Milwaukee Public
Schools, where more than 80 percent of the students are low-income
ethnic minorities, is ignored.
Additionally,
the Republican Elections Commission Chair, after visiting the Arizona
election ‘fraudit’ announced that she will conduct a
cyber audit of Wisconsin’s 2020 elections. In doing so, she
reiterated the key elements of the Big Lie that Trump and his
minions.
Simultaneously,
Republican legislators have developed a series of voter suppression
bills that would deny the parents of these students access to voting
compared to their White counterparts. These include the empowerment
of Texas partisan poll watchers to intimidate Black and Latinx voters
while limiting the corrective power of poll workers.
Some
would say that this connection is an overreach, an exaggeration, the
same conclusion reached by North Carolina Republicans when 4th
Circuit Appeals Court Judge James A. Wynn, Jr., writing for a
three-judge panel, concluded that they drew Congressional districts
with racial surgical precision to reduce the political power of Black
citizens. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this decision without
dissent.
Thus,
we have to be vigilant in ensuring that our new public school student
populations have the broad-based economic support that is needed for
them to succeed and excel. They are under siege with regard to their
need for educational resources even as their numbers continue to
surge. Well-intentioned advocates for social justice have perhaps
ignored this urgent need as they focus on voter suppression.
Few,
other than the teachers’ unions noted above, view K-12 public
education as crucial to “Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”
enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. Republicans are
dismantling the public education system in tandem with their undoing
of voting rights and access. We need to be active in both arenas.
They
would have us rewrite and/or ignore the tortured history of our
nation’s founding and progress as exemplified in the ongoing
attacks on critical race theory as a proxy for an assault on social
and racial equality. The Apartheid-like system pioneered in South
Africa in the late 1940s, instituted in the United States in 1619,
and persisted post-slavery and through Jim Crow targeted ethnic
minorities.
Here
we are in 2021 having to re-fight 19th and 20th-century battles
against racial oppression and educational inequality. Unfortunately,
public education looks to be disconnected from the current attention,
which is important, directed toward voter suppression. Both are
significant, and both need to be aggressively addressed at the same
time.
The
Republicans are defunding K-12 public education, even holding back
the distribution of education funding in President Biden’s
American
Rescue Act.
They have a game plan to undermine the New American Majority at
every turn. In the interim, who will save our children?
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