LP School Board Download 📚 | Fully funding public education, sustainable school facilities, & a recap from our National Convening this summer! | September 2024

🏫 Resources Related To School Funding

Our friends at Alliance To Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) are planning a day of action on September 30 to rally public school supporters across the country to call for increased funding for public schools. Sign up for more information here. 

And next month, Local Progress will team up with AROS for a school board-focused session about fully funding education in the wake of the ESSER cliff. (Reminder that the deadline to obligate those federal funds is September 30.) Stay tuned for more details! 

School districts interested in grants from the EPA Community Change Grant program for environmental health and sustainable building improvements can now get dedicated application support from Better Buildings Alliance member U.S. Green Building Council. 

Until October 4, applications are open for the 2024-2025 Energy Champions Leading the Advancement of Sustainable Schools (Energy CLASS). This program, run by the U.S. Department of Energy, will help approximately 50 school districts advance sustainable energy projects and upgrades. Learn more about this opportunity here. 

📝 New Resources from Local Progress Impact Lab

Last month, the Local Progress Impact Lab and our partner HEAL Together released Advancing Culturally Responsive Curriculum: A Toolkit for School Boards. This easy-to-use guide offers a roadmap to implementing CRE in your district and showcased how other districts have done it. A few weeks ago, we hosted a webinar featuring Dr. Tarece Johnson-Morgan, a LP School Board Steering Committee member, who talked to us about how she worked to implement CRE in her school district in Georgia. If you missed the webinar check out the recording here.

Want to learn more about how school districts can stand up for workers? Check out this new guide from Local Progress Impact Lab and the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative. (You’ll find the info for school districts on page 4.)

According to the Migration Policy Institute, during the 2021 school year, nearly 1 million students were new to the U.S. (and this number is likely too low). It’s important that schools are welcoming places for these kids and we suggest you take a look at our messaging guide on how to support new arrivals. It’s especially relevant as dangerous public discourse about immigrants ramps up as we near the November election.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s Direct Pay provisions mean there’s a lot of funding available right now for clean energy projects in communities that need them most and it’s important school leaders take advantage of this opportunity. Maybe your district has been waiting to make the jump to solar or transition to electric buses but don’t know where to start? Check out our recent resource – Cash For Communities: Leveraging Historic Federal Funds For Racial, Economic and Climate Justice.

Not sure of what your district should be doing to support students experiencing homelessness? Keep a look out for Local Progress Impact Lab’s new policy memo on the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which we’re planning to release in October.

📰 Latest News

In Florida, the conservative takeover of school boards had a recent setback when eleven of the twenty-three ring-wing school board candidates backed by Governor DeSantis lost their election bids.  Several of his candidates won outright and several others are headed to runoffs. This is a big shift from his first foray into school board elections in 2022 when twenty-five of his thirty endorsed candidates won. DeSantis opponents are saying the shift shows there is growing pushback against his conservative education platform, which has included book bans, expansion of parental rights, and attacks on the rights of trans children. 

Earlier this month, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that taxpayer dollars can’t be used to fund a student’s private school tuition. (The dollars can still be used for tutoring and education supplies.) 

Using public funds to pay for private school has been a top priority for the school choice movement, especially in recent legislative sessions, with heated fights happening in red and blue states across the country. Meanwhile, in Arizona (the first state to implement universal vouchers) the budget had a shortfall of nearly 1.4 billion largely due to the public dollars being funneled into private education.