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OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN
RAMPING UP OUR EFFORTS TO SECURE AN AFFIRMATIVE RIGHT TO QUALITY EDUCATION & LEVELING THE EDUCATIONAL PLAYING FIELD
When students returned in-person this past fall for the first time in over a year and a half, many of them, particularly those in communities of color, returned to a school more likely to have a police officer than a counselor. Along with their books, many of these students carried the traumas they endured over the course of the pandemic - with many young people losing parents and loved ones to the virus or facing significant financial hardships. Schools need to invest in resources to support students facing that reality.
Instead, we have witnessed a push to keep or return police to public schools, despite data that shows that police in schools create a hostile environment and strain relationships between students, educators, and law enforcement.
While the pandemic has made organizing a bit more challenging, we did not let this stop us. In 2021, we convened the Police Free Schools Abolitionist Summer ActionCamp in collaboration with Alliance for Educational Justice (AEJ). Held virtually, the 10th Anniversary ActionCamp brought together over 120 participants from 16 states across the United States, as well as from Canada and the United Kingdom. ActionCamp opened with a presentation that reasserted that achieving police free schools is possible, providing a space for partner organizations to learn and draw inspiration from their peers, and coordinating organizing and communication strategies to further advance local campaigns with national impact.
We also relaunched ourPolice Free Schools campaign website and#AssaultAt map to serve as a national campaign center of resources and stories for our partners in the field. The map shows the harm caused by keeping police in schools.
It was essential to begin the school year with this energy and enthusiasm, as school districts increased surveillance of students and re-hired law enforcement to serve in other roles, rather than hiring and training staff qualified to provide students the supports they need to actually be safe. We are working with our campaign partners to hold local officials accountable to the demands of their communities to remove police from their schools and address education equity.
THE PANDEMIC HAS BOTH EXPOSED & EXACERBATED THE SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES INHERENT IN OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.
While schools were closed, many students, particularly those in communities of color, languished on the deficit side of the digital divide and those lacking access to reliable broadband fell even further behind. A report commissioned by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, found that “the pandemic had negatively affected academic growth, widening pre-existing disparities. In core subjects like math and reading, there are worrisome signs that in some grades students might be falling even further behind pre-pandemic expectations.” These findings are particularly troubling given that the majority of students in public school are students of color.
Through generous support from Arnold & Porter, we have hired a fellow to pursue legal and advocacy challenges to racial inequities and to advance the idea of a right to education. For the past several years, Advancement Project has been conducting research and monitoring litigation relating to the right to education. We plan to use this research to develop a strategy to help grassroots organizations challenge a range of issues that create and perpetuate structural barriers to high quality education. We believe public schools are a public good under control of the community and should be fully resourced to ensure that not only are the mental and physical needs of students met, but that they experience power, dignity, freedom, creativity, experimentation, wholeness, wellness, nurture, and care.
