"Rallying for Schools" Is Not Always Synonymous With Rallying for Education

While watching the crowd rally outside and fill the room of a recent school board meeting to discuss $142 million in budget cuts for my local district, I was transported back to the spring of 2020, when hundreds of parents and community members came together to rally for our schools. I joined the movement back then, believing that the ultimate goal was to reopen schools and ensure our children received the education they needed and deserved. The realization that, for many, the goal was solely to reinstate athletics and extra-curricular activities rather than re-establish academic learning was disappointing, to say the least. The rallying cry heard at the recent school board meeting was eerily similar and equally disheartening.

Like many other states, in the spring of 2020, public schools in my state were indefinitely closed due to COVID, and our children were stuck at home with nothing but time on their hands. Schools hadn’t quite figured out how to implement “virtual learning” effectively, which greatly concerned some parents. Other parents were distraught that all athletic and extracurricular activities had also been halted. Everyone came together as a united front to voice their concerns. It was refreshing to see so many people focus on school for a change. What I didn’t realize then was that a focus on schools and a focus on education are not necessarily synonymous.

Sadly, once the campaign to resume sports and extracurricular activities was successful, most of the parents reverted to being blissfully unaware of what was going on academically. It seemed many were more concerned about whether their children could participate in lacrosse, marching band, and soccer than about whether they were proficient in literacy, math, and science. Make no mistake, I am a staunch supporter of youth sports and other extracurricular activities, but I realized we were facing a major academic crisis and wouldn’t be so easily pacified. Unfortunately, those of us focused on the academic aspect of school were in the minority and largely left to fight the battle on our own.

The enthusiastic and passionate crowds of hundreds at the initial school board meetings dwindled to just a few dozen once sports and extracurriculars resumed. I continued raising the alarm about academics and spoke about the pitiful literacy rates at three sparsely attended board meetings in 2021. During my third and final speech at the October meeting (they went virtual with no public comment for months after that), I was heckled by some parents and community members in the audience and completely dismissed by the board members when I shared data about the steadily declining literacy rates. The hecklers were there to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion were protected, even if none of those improved student learning. Once again, I was reminded that a focus on schools and a focus on education are not necessarily synonymous.

Fast forward to last night’s packed board meeting. The media showed images of a crowd gathered outside the district’s central office, where the meeting took place. Many wore green and carried signs to show their support and solidarity with Mental Health Practitioners (MHPs- as if the education world needed another acronym). During the public comment portion of the meeting, passionate, emotional speeches were delivered about the importance of MHPs in schools. If I were watching as an outsider and didn’t know any better, I would have assumed that every one of the 93,000 students attending a JCPS school suffered from some type of abuse, neglect, or other form of trauma. I know better.

Public schools were created to ensure that future generations of well-educated, knowledgeable citizens capable of self-governance would successfully carry on the great experiment of America. In recent decades, many have shifted away from being education providers and toward being social service providers. This has been detrimental to student learning and poses a serious risk to our country's future.

A recent study from the Manhattan Institute citing the harm of Universal Mental Health Screenings in schools noted that, “Schools are…trading away valuable time and resources that could be used to improve academic outcomes if they had been allocated toward educational programming like classroom instruction.” The board’s decision to continue funding MHPs while eliminating funding for Academic Instructional Coaches (AICs) was a clear example of such trade-offs. It is also a clear statement about where their priorities lie.

While it is my belief that children are being over-diagnosed with “mental health issues” in today’s hyper-therapeutic society, I will admit there is some real cause for concern. Much of that concern stems from excessive screen time among children. Ironically, there were no crowds rallying outside of the school board meeting demanding that schools replace harmful (and expensive) 1:1 devices with paper, pencils, and teacher-led instruction.

MHPs know that it’s not healthy or academically beneficial for children to spend hours every day staring at screens, yet they aren’t wearing a particular color shirt to show their solidarity, carrying signs with passionate messages on them, or uniting their voices to demand the removal and replacement of a major contributor to “mental health issues”. Any solution to the problems schools face would ultimately reduce staffing needs. It was abundantly clear from many of the public comments that those rallying for schools are strongly opposed to any reduction in staffing.

Throughout the marathon school board meeting, I kept waiting for the discussion to shift toward academic achievement. It did not. I have my suspicions that anyone who stood up to talk about actual education would have been heckled by the audience, just as I was during that October 2021 meeting. It was a disheartening reminder that a focus on schools and a focus on education are not necessarily synonymous, and that we have a lot of work to do to restore K-12 education in my district.