(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

An estimated 20,000 teachers in the U.S. could be deported because of President Trump’s cancellation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), the federal policy that has protected some young people brought to the U.S. as children.

Among them is Karen Reyes, a 29-year-old teacher of Deaf pre-kindergartners in Austin, Texas. A former Girl Scout who has lived in the U.S. since the age of 2, Reyes attended U.S. public schools from kindergarten through graduate school, eventually earning a master’s degree in special education from the University of Texas-San Antonio.

“I love my job. I love it!” says Reyes. “I get students who have zero or very limited language skills, and we help them reach the outside world. I had a student last year who came to my class with two words—at the end of the year, he was looking over my shoulder at a photograph and saying, ‘Who that? That Julian’s mommy? I like her!’”

There are about 1.2 million DACA-eligible young people in the U.S., according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), which estimates that 365,000 of them are high-school students and 241,000 enrolled in college. The rest are workers whose deportations would cost the federal government an estimated $60 billion in revenues and the national economy an estimated $215 billion in productivity, according to a Cato Institute study.

The additional costs of replacing the 20,000 teachers is mind-boggling. Replacing just one teacher is estimated to cost as much as $17,872, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. That means replacing the 20,000 could cost school districts—and local taxpayers—as much as $350 million. This does not include the emotional price paid by students or the toll on these young teachers, who are fiercely dedicated to their students and careers.

“As a teacher, all I want to do is teach and help my kids,” says Reyes.

[Help Reyes by asking Congress to support the 2017 DREAM Act.]

Tell Congress To Do The Right Thing

While Trump’s revocation of DACA is “immoral and un-American,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, she is hopeful that Congress will pass compassionate, just legislation that will allow young immigrants to pursue their American dreams.

“Now more than ever, we need a permanent legislative solution to DACA so these young people have the certainty they deserve,” says García. “Congress should…act immediately to protect DACA recipients and Dreamers, and pass into law the bipartisan Dream Act of 2017.”

First introduced in 2001, and re-introduced this July by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), the DREAM Act is a bipartisan bill that would offer permanent legal status to qualifying young people who arrived in the U.S. as children. According to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll, 76 percent of Americans believe these young people should be allowed to stay.

Teacher Karen Reyes earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas public universities.

But, for the legislation to pass, members of Congress need to hear from those Americans who support their neighbors, their classmates, their soldiers, their teachers who have lived in the U.S. for nearly all their lives.

Reyes is far from the only NEA member with DACA certification. Among the 20,000 DACA-mented teachers, MPI estimates about 5,000 work in California. Texas and New York each benefit from about 2,000 DACA teachers, while Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania have about a thousand per state, Education Week has reported.

Jorge Resendez, a DACA-certified, 9^th-grade social studies teacher, is among a group of Denver teachers originally hired through Teach for America (TFA), which has actively recruited DACA recipients. He loves teaching, his school, and his students so much that he stayed beyond TFA’s typical two-year commitment, and now is in his fourth year.

“I heard so many stories when I was in college about undocumented young folks who graduated but couldn’t go into a career,” says Resendez, who graduated from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2013. “Fortunately for me, I was able to apply for DACA, and I was able to do something I’m passionate about, which is education.”

Resendez’ students know his immigration status, and they joined him in protest on the day this month that Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the cancellation of DACA. “It was a really proud moment for me—to see them standing up for me, and standing up for their peers,” he says.

As a student organizer, Resendez worked on the passage of California’s DREAM Act. He knows what is possible when people get organized and speak with a united voice. He also knows it’s going to be hard. “The first thing we can do is protest,” he told his students. “But moving forward, we need to write letters, talk with our legislators. I know this isn’t going to be our last battle, but I have hope of protecting our community.”

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

About 800,000 young people, brought to the U.S. as children, have been been able to go to college and pursue their dreams in the country that they call home, thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DAC) program, which has protected them from deportation. In September, President Trump announced an end to DACA.

Tell Congress to Preserve DACA and Pass the Dream Act. DACA recipients deserve the certainty and permanent protections the Dream Act provides.

Washington State University students and community members rally in support of the DREAM Act on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018. (Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP)

It’s been an emotional roller coaster for 800,000 Dreamers—young people brought to the U.S. as children, who have received the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, protections over the five years of the program.

In September, President Donald Trump rescinded DACA, sparking fear and uncertainty among Dreamers, including 600,000 who are high school or college students, and nearly 9,000 who are educators.

Five months later, Trump vowed to work with Congress to protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. “We are gonna deal with DACA with heart,” he said.

But just this month, he tweeted “DACA is dead” and “NO MORE DACA DEAL.”

“It’s hard being in this limbo,” says Karen Reyes, a 29-year-old teacher of Deaf pre-kindergartners in Austin, Texas. A former Girl Scout who has lived in the U.S. since the age of 2, Reyes attended U.S. public schools from kindergarten through graduate school, eventually earning a master’s degree in Deaf Education and Hearing Science from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

“One moment you have your hopes up, thinking a deal might happen, and then there’s a tweet and people think you’re back to square one,” she says. But that’s not the case, she explains.

“I had so many people call and text me as they heard about the tweet, asking what it meant and if we were back to square one. But they don’t realize all the work that we’ve done, the allies we’ve made, and the foundation we’ve built. Those of us in the movement know we’re not back to the beginning—we’re just on a detour.”

Approximately 22,000 DACA recipients have lost their status—including educators—since September. This means, they lose their work permits and the ability to teach and support themselves or their families.

“Lives are on the line,” says Andrew Kim, an immigration-rights activist who in 2015, as a student at Emory University in Atlanta, organized a successful campaign to provide need-based financial aid to undocumented students. Since then, the university has expanded their policies to include all undocumented students, not just DACA recipients.

What’s happening today, however, is more than just going to college, says Kim. “It’s about their existence because DACA affects people’s lives in every way.”

Reyes, for example, worries about having a job next school year, paying rent, and her car note. “There’s so much uncertainty,” she says.

Dreamer activists attend a press conference on Capitol Hill in September 2017 calling for passage of the Dream Act.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

‘The Environment is Very Tense’

While fear and anxiety is mounting, especially in places like Texas and Arizona, which forces local governments and law enforcement agencies to do the work of federal immigration officers by asking residents to show proof of citizenship and where in-state tuition was dropped for Dreamers, respectively, immigration activists are busy organizing their communities.

Hugo Arreola is a campus lab technician for the Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona. A DACA recipient himself, he sees his students and community in turmoil.

 “We have a lot of students on hold,” says Arreola. “Many are afraid to renew their DACA applications, student anxiety is up, and people are still scared—the environment is very tense.”

Arreola, however, isn’t idle. Through his union, the Arizona Education Association and Phoenix Union Classified Employees Association, as well as  local organizations, he’s involved with various workshops, information forums, and trainings that help inform people of their rights.

“It starts in the local area and making sure you have representatives who understand the realities of the situation and how this impacts their area,” Arreola explains, adding that educators and community members can lobby their schools’ governing board to get friendly immigration policies passed, such as creating safe zones and protecting the rights and privacy of undocumented students.

Elizabeth Jiménez, for example, is an elementary school teacher in Westmont, Ill., and a school board member for Berwyn South 100, a district just west of Chicago with large populations of Latino, ELL, and immigrant students.

Jiménez was once undocumented herself. “I understand how it feels, however, I cannot imagine how it feels to be threatened, to be in danger of being forced to leave the only place that you know as your home … attacking our students, our neighbors, our friends and our family is un-American and immoral,” which is why she helped pass a school board resolution to create safe zones within the Berwyn school district.

The resolution passed, but more still needs to be done. “I need professional development for teachers,” says Jiménez, explaining that some teachers who don’t share the same experiences as their students don’t know what to do when parents of students get detained or deported.

Grassroots Organizing Continues

“Our fight is going to continue,” says Karen Reyes of Texas. “We still have to lobby for the Dream Act and lobby for a permanent solution because DACA was a band aid.”

Since September, Reyes has met with state and federal lawmakers. “Our biggest tool is sharing our story because once we humanize it we become more than just an acronym. I’ve met so many people who’ve said, ‘I had no idea you were undocumented.’’’ Reyes shares that many of the people who once spread anti-immigrant messages are now fighting for a permanent solution alongside her.

Additionally, the pre-kindergarten teacher has been involved with citizen drives sponsored by her local union, Education Austin, and United We Dream. “As educators we have this great niche where people trust teachers, and we can hold these trainings and reach a vast majority.”

Recently, Reyes helped organize a citizenship drive and assisted 112 permanent residents with their citizenship paperwork. “I now know there’s going to be 112 new citizens who will vote and that’s amazing,” she says.

Voting will be a critical aspect in realizing change. “We are watching,” says Elizabeth Jiménez. “Next election cycle, if you don’t support us, we’re going to campaign against you.”

Andrew Kim, originally from Georgia and currently a Ph.D. student at Northwestern University in Illinois, says the type of work Reyes, Arreola, and Jiménez do is critical and needs to be increased and sustained.

“We’re in a dire state,” he says, and suggests volunteering or donating money to legal aid clinics, advocacy groups, or non-profit organizations that provide direct services for undocumented immigrants. Kim underscores that the efforts of everyday people need to be more than just a “one-off.”

“A drastic shift needs to happen, from a one- or two-day volunteer trip to sustained active resistance and continued solidarity with organizations that are already on the ground providing direct resources,” he says, adding that “DACA isn’t dead, but we need to support these organizations.”

Karen Reyes agrees and says, “It’s all these little steps: building up the community, building up the people power, and showing people that they do have power—just because we’re undocumented doesn’t mean we don’t have a voice. We do have a voice and it matters just as much as anyone else’s voice.”

On the national stage, NEA filed amicus briefs in two lawsuits (University of California vs. U.S. Department of Homeland Security and New York vs. Trump/Batalla Vidal v. Nielson) urging the courts to strike down the actions of the Trump Administration to end DACA.

NEA’s amicus briefs contain the voices of dozens of educators from across the country who provided a view of why DACA is important and of the impact the threat of revocation of DACA has had from the frontlines of education.

• Cindi Marten, the Superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, noted anxiety among students transcends immigration status, “Kids are worried about what’s going to happen to them. People think this is just . . . an immigration issue. That’s not what we’re seeing. Teachers and principals are saying that kids are scared for their friends. They’re also affected.”
• Angelica Reyes, a DACA recipient and an A.P. History teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District where she was once a student says, that thanks to DACA “I could finally serve my community. And I could be an educator. DACA gave me a clear path to obtain the career I had been working towards.”
• Kateri Simpson, a teacher in the Oakland Unified School District, has seen first-hand how DACA has motivated students to fully engage in school and work toward graduation because postgraduate opportunities like college were now within reach. Simpson says, “The basic sense of human dignity to be able to work for what you want—I don’t think can be underestimated.”

As Dreamers, educators, and families anxiously await a court decision, grassroots organizing continues around the country to pressure Congress to act.

Whether you’re a classroom teacher, school counselor, paraeducator, bus driver, cafeteria worker or school secretary, everyone who works in a public school faces a new school year ready to do the job they love. But they are also prepared to confront undeniable challenges. These challenges may differ district to district, school to school, but one thing is clear: the voice of educators is needed now more than ever and their unions are providing the megaphone. It’s not up to our teachers and school staff to shoulder this burden themselves. Administrators, parents, communities, lawmakers must do their part. But as the mobilization of educators that began earlier this year has demonstrated so powerfully – the “Educator Spring” as NEA President Lily Eskelsen García calls it – the nation is finally listening to what they have to say.

Education Funding: Where’s the Money?

When educators from around the country walked out of their classrooms last spring, their message was clear: Our students deserve better. By taking this action, they said no more jam-packed classrooms with 40-plus desks, no more decades-old textbooks held together with rubber bands, and no more leaky ceilings, broken light fixtures, pest infestations, and cuts to basic curricula that are essential to a well-rounded education.

“We are truly in a state of crisis,” says Noah Karvelis, an educator from Arizona, where cuts to public school funding have been deeper than anywhere else in the country.

Public school funding has been cut to the quick all over the country after excessive and reckless tax cuts.

It’s been more than 10 years since the Great Recession, but many states are providing far less money to their schools today than they did before the crash. Our schools are crumbling and educators are leaving the profession in droves, unable to pay off student debt or make ends meet on stagnant salaries.

As of the 2017 – 2018 school year, at least 12 states had slashed “general” or “formula” funding—the primary form of state support for elementary and secondary schools—by 7 percent or more per student over the last decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Seven of the states—Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma—enacted tax cuts costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each year, instead of restoring education funding.

“To add to this heartache, new teachers in our state of North Carolina have never known anything different, and many even believe our current reality is normal,” says Todd Warren, a Spanish teacher and president of North Carolina’s Guilford County Association of Educators. “While the wealthy and corporate elite recovered from the recession of 2008, public school teachers and their students did not. North Carolina public school teachers make more than 11 percent less on average than we did 15 years ago when salaries are adjusted for inflation.”

But it’s the students who suffer the most from budget cuts, particularly poor students. Public education has been a pathway out of poverty for families for generations, but that pathway is blocked when schools are unable to offer a decent education.Too often, low-income students end up in schools with the lowest funding, fewest supplies, the least rigorous curriculum, and the oldest facilities and equipment, according to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

On average, school districts spend around $11,000 per student each year, but the highest-poverty districts receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of students of color get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color, the study says.

No more, says Todd Warren.

“There are enough of us to say, ‘Enough!’” says Warren. “It is time to leverage our power now.”

Join millions of voices fighting for our nation’s public school students and educators. Take the #RedforEd Pledge! 

Keeping School Safe

A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center conducted two months after this year’s February school shooting in Parkland, Fla., showed that 57 percent of U.S. teenagers are worried that a shooting could take place at their own school. One in four are “very worried” about the chance.

Those numbers are staggering but hardly surprising given the rash of school shootings that have captured headlines this year, and in previous years. Since the shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School in April 1999, more than 187,000 U.S. students have been exposed to gun violence in school.

Fed up with lawmakers’ inaction, students across the nation in 2018 are leading a national movement to bring common sense to the discussion.

Educators understand if students don’t feel safe at school, achievement suffers. It’s the paramount duty of everyone in the community–and the politicians who represent them–to help create safe learning spaces.

Arming teachers and school staff is not the answer. According to an NEA survey, seven in 10 educators said arming school personnel would be ineffective at preventing gun violence in schools and two-thirds said they would feel less safe if school personnel were armed.

Educators across the U.S. stood up to reject the idea that more weapons would help save student lives. As of May 2017, only one state had passed a law that mandated arming teachers and staff.

“We don’t want to be armed. We want better services for our students,” says Corinne McComb, an elementary educator from Norwich, Conn. “More psychologists and counselors who can be present for the students more than one day a week or month. We need services for families. We have the money, we can do this.”

The Pressure is On

Kathy Reamy, a school counselor at La Plata High School in La Plata, Md., says the trend is unmistakable.

“Honestly, I’ve had more students this year hospitalized for anxiety, depression, and other mental-health issues than ever,” says Reamy, who also chairs the NEA School Counselor Caucus. “There’s just so much going on in this day and age, the pressures to fit in, the pressure to achieve, the pressure of social media.”

It doesn’t help, adds Denise Pope of Stanford University, that schools have become “a pressure cooker for students and staff…and student and teacher stress feed off each other.”

According to a 2018 study by the University of Missouri, 93 percent of elementary school teachers report they are “highly stressed.”

Stressful schools aren’t healthy for anyone. There’s nothing wrong with a little pressure, a little nervousness over an exam, or a teacher who wants students to succeed. We all feel pressure, but something else is going on.

The causes and convergence of teacher and student stress has been a growing concern over the past decade. Research has consistently shown that stress levels in newer educators especially is leading many of them to exit the profession within five years.

Teachers need adequate resources and support in their jobs in order to battle burnout and alleviate stress in the classroom. If we do not support teachers, we risk the collateral damage of students.

One solution for students could be more one-on-one time with psychologists and counselors. But that’s a challenge since so many of those positions have been cut and are not coming back. That said, more and more schools take the issue of stress seriously, and have begun to look at ways to change policies over homework, class schedules, and later school start times to help alleviate the pressure many students feel.

“People are finally seeing what negative stress does to the body, what that does to the psyche, and what it does to school engagement,” says Pope. “Schools and communities know stress is a problem and they want solutions.”

A Better Way Forward on Discipline

Think back on the days when you were in middle school and high school. Remember the awkwardness, anxiety, and angst that hung over you like a cloud? Your students, no matter their behavior, are probably grappling with the same troubling emotions, says Robin McNair, the Restorative Practices Program coordinator for Prince George’s County in Maryland.

“When you look beyond behavior, when you truly look at the person behind the behavior, you’ll often find a cry for help,” says McNair, whose work in Restorative Justice Practices (RJP) aims to drastically reduce suspensions and expulsions, increase graduation rates, and transform student behaviors.

RJP has proven to be the most effective way for educators to break the school-to-prison pipeline, a national trend where children—mostly low-income and children of color—are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems through harsh “zero tolerance” discipline policies for even minor infractions.

In the 2013 – 2014 school year, the most recent nationwide data available, black students were three times more likely to receive both in-school and out-of-school suspensions than white students.

Rather than casting out students after wrongdoing, RJP seeks to reintegrate them into the classroom or school community to make amends and learn how to handle problems more positively. 

Simply put, students are better off in school than they are when they’re kicked out and left to their own devices in an empty home or apartment, where court involvement becomes more likely. But all students who participate in RJP—even those not directly involved in a conflict—report feeling safer and happier.

McNair suggests that educators strive to create a tight-knit community, even a family, in their classrooms from day one so that students not only know each other, but genuinely care about each other. 

“Restorative practices aren’t only for use after a conflict or incident. These practices allow us to proactively build community within a classroom and within a school by nurturing relationships between teachers and students,” McNair says. “When students know that you care about them they are more likely to follow the rules and more likely to stay in the classroom and do the work,” adds McNair.

Learn more about restorative practices in schools.

Chronic Absenteeism

According to the U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), about 8 million students missed more than three weeks of school during the 2015 – 2016 school year, up from 6.8 million the previous year.

Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as missing 10 percent or more of a school year. This translates  to roughly 18 days a year, or two days every month. Chronic absenteeism is usually a precursor to dropping out. And dropouts often wind up before the court.

Educators like Lois Yukna have created innovative ideas designed to keep kids in school. Others can learn from what Yukna is doing. 

For more decades, Yukna was a school bus driver in Middlesex County, N.J. Today, Yukna is a school attendance officer in New Jersey’s Woodbridge Township School District. Her job now is to make sure that once students get to school, they stay. 

When students don’t attend school regularly, Yukna works closely with students, parents, and the courts to turn the situation around.

“Something needed to be done because the main goal is to educate students, and they can’t be educated if they’re not in school,” says Yukna.

She noticed that students who were frequent no-shows at school were the same ones whose behavior when they attended resulted in detentions, suspensions, and sometimes, trouble with police.

Yukna and a guidance counselor in the Woodbridge district put their heads together to come up with something that would emphasize restorative practices instead of suspension and encourage students to return to and stay in school.

Supported by NEA grants, the program exposes about 100 students “to a world of possibilities through internships, mentorships, and achievement incentives.” Parents have classes on nutrition, health, and the impact of social media and family dynamics on learning. “They learn how to motivate their children to come to school and do their best,” Yukna says.

In the first year, approximately 85 percent of the students improved in at least one area: academics, attendance, or attitude. In the second year, all of the students improved in each area. Best of all, of the participants who were seniors, 100 percent graduated in 2017.

—Contributed by Joye Barksdale

Getting in Front of ESSA

In the last few years, schools and states nationwide have spent a lot of time designing new plans to coincide with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed by Congress in 2016. 

Now that ESSA state implementation plans are done, what should educators expect in the new school year? 

Expect to see more schools identified for improvement under the law’s expanded accountability system. Some states, like Washington, have already released their list of schools, which were identified through multiple measures of academic and school quality indicators, not just test scores.

The challenge here is that while the accountability system was expanded, the money to help support the additional schools identified for improvement was not. These schools will be put on tiers of support. The greatest amount of money will go to the highest priority and trickle down. 

As the school year continues, district leaders will need to create ESSA implementation plans, leaving schools identified for improvement with the task of building their own site-based plans. Since the plans must include educator input—not only teachers, but also paraeducators, nurses, librarians, counselors, and other education support professionals—this is the period during which the voices of NEA members will be critical. 

“Get in front of it,” recommends Donna Harris-Aikens, director of NEA’s Education Policy and Practice department. “It is possible that the principal or superintendent in a particular place may not be focused on this yet.”

To learn what’s available at their schools, educators can use NEA’s Opportunity Checklist, a short, criteria-based tool to quickly assess what’s available at their school, and the Opportunity Audit, a tool that is rooted in the seven NEA Great Public Schools (GPS) criteria, which addresses the research and evidence-based resources, policies, and practices that are proven to narrow opportunity and skills gaps.

While some may be discouraged by the thought of placing more schools on an improvement plan, the truth is that despite some funding challenges, ESSA remains a promising opportunity. 

Supporting Undocumented Students

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

If the last several months are any indication of the challenges educators will face around the immigration status of students, they should expect uncertainty and fear.

It’s been an emotional roller coaster for Dreamers—young people brought to the U.S. as children, who have received the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, protections over the five years of the program. In September 2017, President Donald Trump rescinded DACA. Five months later, he vowed to work with Congress to protect undocumented immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. In April, he tweeted “DACA is dead” and “NO MORE DACA DEAL.”

“We have a lot of students on hold,” says Hugo Arreola, a campus lab technician for the Phoenix Union High School District in Arizona. A DACA recipient himself, he sees his students and community in turmoil. “Many are afraid to renew their DACA applications, student anxiety is up, and people are still scared. The environment is very tense.”

Hugo Arreola

“It’s hard being in this limbo,” says Karen Reyes, a 29-year-old teacher of deaf pre-kindergartners in Austin, Texas. A former Girl Scout who has lived in the U.S. since the age of 2, Reyes attended U.S. public schools from kindergarten through graduate school, eventually earning a master’s degree in Deaf Education and Hearing Science from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

“One moment you have your hopes up, thinking a deal might happen, and then there’s a tweet and people think you’re back to square one,” she says. That’s not the case, she explains. “But they don’t realize all the work we’ve done, the allies we’ve made, and the foundation we’ve built. We’re not back to the beginning. We’re just on a detour.”

Arreola and Reyes are active union members helping to inform, engage, and empower the immigration community in their respective hometowns.

Through Arreola’s unions, the Arizona Education Association and Phoenix Union Classified Employees Association, and local allies, he’s involved in various workshops, information forums, and trainings that help inform people of their rights. “It starts in the local area and making sure you have representatives who understand the realities of the situation and how this impacts their area,” Arreola explains.

Reyes has been involved with citizen drives, sponsored by her local union, Education Austin, and United We Dream. 

Educators can take steps in their own communities to fight the uncertainty and fear undocumented students face.  Go to NEA Ed Justice to learn more about Safe Zone school board policies and NEA’s toolkit for “Know Your Rights.”

Seeing Past the Hype of New Technologies

Every few months it seems educators get inundated with stories about the next big thing in classroom technology—a “game changer” set to “revolutionize” teaching and learning. Sound familiar? It should. Education technology, for all its benefits (and there are many), tends to be subject to egregious hype. A lot of money, after all, is to be made and many school districts—eager to demonstrate that their schools are on the “cutting edge”—can make some rather questionable purchasing decisions. 

Just recall the 2013 decision by Los Angeles Unified School District to proceed with a $1.3 billion plan to put an iPad loaded with a Pearson curriculum in the hands of every student. Technical glitches and lack of teacher training were just a couple of problems that eventually crippled the initiative.

Educators know better than anyone that healthy skepticism or at least caution about the latest classroom technology will end up serving their students best. It’s a stand that gets teachers branded as resistant to change, a convenient and unhelpful label. It has more to do with what’s best for student learning. 

The good news is that the impulse to buy into the latest hype has been curtailed somewhat over the past few years as educators have taken a seat at the table. If you want to try the latest and greatest virtual learning, gamification, personalization, the first question always has to be “What is best for my students?” As Tracey Matt, a language arts teacher in Albia, Iowa, says. “It takes a great teacher to foster independent learners. This must be done with the use of technology on the forefront, but it should not supersede the importance of an instructor.”

Technology will continue to advance and more “game-changers” are invariably lurking around the corner. Maybe they can revolutionize the classroom, but it’s the educator who is best suited to determine how and why new tech should be used to best serve students. 

Pushing Back Against Privatization

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos may be privatization’s most visible and stalwart proponent, but school privatization has been a threat to public education for more than 20 years and is financed and championed by a network of corporate interests. Their goal: to use their financial muscle and propaganda to undermine the mission of public schools and position the nation’s students as commodities upon which to draw a sizeable profit. 

Still, DeVos’ appointment to lead the nation’s education agenda in 2017 was a huge boost just as charter schools and voucher programs were losing a little steam. (Vouchers have been voted down at the ballot box every time they’ve been attempted through referendum.)

DeVos is a vocal advocate of cutting education spending and freeing up federal dollars to expand charter and voucher programs nationwide. Charter schools have expanded dramatically since their introduction in 1992, and currently serve about 5 percent of the nation’s students. 

Educators, however, are determined to stop vouchers from taking hold in the way charters have done. Voucher schemes drain hundreds of millions of dollars away from public school students to pay the private school tuition of a select few.

They “are destructive and misguided schemes that use taxpayer dollars to “experiment with our children’s education without any evidence of real, lasting positive results,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

Educators and activists are making a huge difference in their states by lobbying lawmakers to reject vouchers (often rebranded by their advocates as “education savings accounts” or “tuition tax credits”).

In 2018, New Hampshire educators led the way in defeating a plan to establish so-called “education savings accounts,” which would have diverted a massive chunk of taxpayer money from public schools to fund the private school education of some students. Private schools would have to accept public funds but provide “no access to financial records, student achievement data, and no say in how the school is run,” says Megan Tuttle, president of NEA-New Hampshire. “The absence of public accountability for voucher funds has contributed to rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in current voucher programs across the country.”

NEA: Vouchers Cost Kids

Voucher proposals have been defeated in other states but their proponents are nothing if not relentless. Which is why, according to David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, activists must stay alert to the ongoing effort to push school voucher initiatives and to hold them up to public scrutiny.

“There’s a need to be vigilant in every state where governors and key legislators support these bills,” Sciarra says. 

Join the fight against school vouchers at vouchers.nea.org

Electing Better Lawmakers

Did you yell at the TV when you heard Betsy DeVos confuse proficiency and growth during her confirmation hearing? Are you disturbed by out-of-touch lawmakers like Arizona’s John Allen, who said teachers work second jobs so they can afford boats and big homes? Do you cringe at the fact that some Kansas lawmakers have tried to skirt the state supreme court’s ruling that they must remedy the woeful underfunding of schools?

 The reality is that too few elected officials at the local, state, and federal level have the in-depth knowledge of public education that only comes from working as an educator. And it shows in their policies and their budgets. 

 As if educating students every school day weren’t enough, it’s also on you to make sure officeholders understand the issues you face in the classroom and how to make progress solving them.

 The key is to show up and speak up.

 “We have to make our voices heard by the people who are making decisions that affect our classrooms,” says Maryland music teacher Jessica Fitzwater.

Balvir Singh, a high school math teacher from Burlington, N.J., won a seat on the Burlington County Board of Freeholders in November. Singh, an alum of NEA’s See Educators Run candidate training program, previously served on his local
school board.

“Elected officials need to understand that it’s not just dollars and cents, students’ entire lives will be impacted by these decisions,” she adds. 

That means showing up and sharing your story at school board meetings, lobby days with state lawmakers, and town halls when your members of Congress are back home. Check your state association website and attend your next local association meeting to find out how to get involved. 

And if your elected leaders still aren’t listening, throw your support behind people who will.

 This November brings a critical opportunity to elect (or re-elect) pro-public education candidates who are not beholden to those who want to privatize education, and who are willing listen to educators and parents. 

Educators are reliable voters. But you can inspire others to head to the polls for pro-public ed candidates as well.

 Latwala Dixon, a math teacher at Columbia High School in Lake City, Fla., says talking to people about the importance of voting in past election cycles has made her even more passionate about the issues that affect her as an educator and a citizen.

 “I tell a lot of people, if you don’t use your right to vote, you will lose it,” Dixon says. Some of the people she speaks with—friends, acquaintances, colleagues—have responded enthusiastically, but others indicate they do not believe their vote makes a difference.

“So what you’re only one vote? Your vote counts,” Dixon says emphatically. “What if all of you ‘only one vote’ people got out there and voted? It could really turn the tide.”

Here’s another “tide turning” way to make sure elected leaders invest in schools—become one yourself! If you’re considering a run or supporting a colleague who is running for office, check out NEA’s candidate training program for members at SeeEducatorsRun.org.

(photo: Rebeca Logan)

On a makeshift stage in El Paso, Texas, former Texas Regional Teacher of the Year Leslie Anaya delivered a message to the roughly 15,000 immigrant children who are held captive in federal detention centers, where they are denied an education and separated from their mothers, fathers, and anybody else who loves them.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “Sing. Sing because you have so many people fighting for you, so many teachers who won’t stop fighting to make sure you’re treated humanely and that your families will be together.”

Hundreds of NEA members, including dozens of state Teachers of the Year, were in El Paso on Saturday, Feb. 17, for the “Teach-In for Freedom,” an all-day event organized by Teachers Against Child Detention (TACD) and led by National Teacher of the Year Mandy Manning to protest the inhumane detention of children and the criminalization of immigrant families.

“All children deserve to be in school,” Manning said. “All children have endless potential and deserve to reach that potential. All children deserve to be free.”

Educators and others have been outraged by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating immigrant and refugee children as young as 18 months old from their parents. Detained in more than 100 government detention centers across 17 states, these children have been denied access to public education, and likely will suffer irreparable, lifelong psychological damage, educators said. The practice also violates their fundamental right to seek asylum.

When a shelter for migrant kids and their families ran out of supplies, our members bought food, prepared it and served it, on a holiday weekend! @txstateteachers @NoelCandelaria @LaMissMarquez @ieanea #teachinforfreedom #classroomsnotcages @NEAHCNews pic.twitter.com/I04zjXfszl

— NEA (@NEAToday) February 19, 2019

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“The NEA family believes children belong with their families—not in cages,” said NEA Executive Committee member Robert Rodriguez, a California middle school special educator, to the crowd who gathered in El Paso’s San Jacinto Square. “We demand that the U.S. government never separate children from their families. Not at the border. Not ever!”

Since the Trump administration began its practice of separating children from their parents, NEA has made four specific humanitarian demands:

• The U.S. government never separate children from their parents—not at border crossing, not in detention proceedings, not ever.
• Immigrant children be provided with at least six hours of language-appropriate classroom instruction every day.
• Child detention centers be open to visits from doctors, teachers, social workers, clergy, and other children’s advocates.
• The U.S. government comply with the guidelines for basic standards of care for children, as set forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“We have a moral responsibility to protect these children, especially these innocent immigrant children who are fleeing violence and war,” said Illinois teacher Gladys Marquez, chair of the NEA Hispanic Caucus. “Our actions matter. Our leadership matters. There must not be any doubt about where we stand.”

A Teach-In for Freedom

Ovidia Molina

Across nine hours, as the sun made its way from one side to the other of the El Paso square, more than a dozen teachers from across the U.S. provided lessons on the history of immigration in the U.S., how asylum works, detention centers today, and more. They shared art, poetry, songs and letters written by their students, making sure their voices also were heard.

Although the data is hard to track, and the U.S. government has admitted to “losing track” of at least a thousand children, an estimated 15,000 children are being held today, found New Jersey Teacher of the Year Amy Andersen.

The trauma of being forcibly separated from their mothers and fathers will be a lifelong burden, said Texas State Teachers Association vice president Ovidia Molina. She knows this because she was separated from her mother for four years when her mother first came to the U.S. to seek a better life. “It is still traumatic for me to have been separated from my mother, and I was with family that loved me and supported me. Imagine the trauma that the children today are going through!”

Carrying a photo of herself as a child, Molina told the crowd, “This is the face of an immigrant… This is not the face of a criminal. This is not the face of a person who needs to be in a cage.”

Kelly Holstine, Minnesota Teacher of the Year, also explained the proven psychological and educational consequences of traumatic experiences in childhood. “I have met hundreds of students who struggle because of trauma and it breaks my heart,” she said. “Please help us make this country better for our kids—all our kids, whether they’re documented or not—because all our kids are all our kids.”

The hundreds of educators and allies who attended the teach-in are committed to making a difference for all children, they said. Their fight didn’t end at sunset. “We’re not here for the free t-shirts or the selfies,” said Utah’s Chelsie Acosta, a 2017 NEA Social Justice Activist of the Year nominee. “Don’t just post and go home and be comfortable. Don’t ever get comfortable. Because the 200 to 300 families dropped off every day at one of these centers? They’re not going to be comfortable ever.”

NEA Today senior writer John Rosales contributed to this report.

By Saul Ramos

This is part of NEA’s series Voices of Pride: The LGBTQ Experience in Schools 50 Years After Stonewall.

For the LGBTQ+ students who are undocumented, refugees, or newly-arrived to this country, the president’s rhetoric about brick walls, detention centers, and incarceration inspires nothing but fear.

“Will I be deported?”

“Can I stay in school?

“What did I do wrong?”

“Are my parents safe here?”

These are just a sampling of questions I’m asked by the immigrant LGBTQ+ students I work with as a paraeducator at Burncoat High School in the Worcester Public School system in Massachusetts. The questions started hitting me the day after President Trump was elected. As I walked into our classroom, I could see the fear in the eyes of my students.

Like many in the nation on that cold November morning in 2016, they were asking, “What just happened?”

At a Gay Straight Alliance club meeting that afternoon, some students were in tears. Trump’s election and subsequent policies regarding immigrants, transgender youth, and transgender men and women in the military, for example, have caused much internal conflict for students who are at that unique intersection of marginalized identities.

Even though intersectionality is being more talked about these days, it is a life-or-death situation that many of our students, and educators, face. Yes, many educators must also cope with the fear of rejection, if not deportation, as a result of being LGBTQ+ immigrants.

Many students fear not only for themselves, but also for family and friends. It is a big concern for LGBTQ Dreamers, for example, to be picked up by ICE and incarcerated at detention centers, especially since they are more prone to physical, mental, and sexual abuse at these centers. Even worse, while most people can spend up to 30 days in a border detention center, LGBTQ+ people who file for asylum get added time simply because of their sexual orientation.

The fear of being sent back to a country that they may have escaped from, or have no memory of, is a terrifying situation for these students. Many already face challenges at home, as their parents or guardians may frown upon their coming out. Imagine being sent to a country where you are at risk of being beaten, incarcerated, and even killed because of your authentic self. Imagine how this constant fear can interfere with learning, studying for exams and enjoying extracurricular activities.

These circumstances sometimes lead some students to drop out of school, or run away from home and become homeless. Even worse, some turn to selling drugs and prostitution to survive.

Imagine being an ethnic minority, LGBTQ+, and homeless. Imagine the desperation of not having anyone to turn to.

Fortunately for many students, they have us at school, their educators. As teachers and education support professionals (ESP), we do not choose which students we work with.

We simply must try and do our best to help meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of all who enter our classrooms. Our LGBTQ+ students are no exception. We must learn to embrace them and make sure they know that in a world of ups and downs, with risks galore, they have a safe place to be themselves without worry, prejudice, or threat. And that place is their school. Our school.

Our students always deserve better, and we are the key to creating that success. Let’s stand with them and remind them every single day that they are perfect just the way they are.

Saul Ramos is a District Wide Paraeducator/Braillist in the Worcester Public School system in Massachusetts. In 2017, he was named NEA’s Education Support Professional of the Year.

Today, in a legal brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the National Education Association urged justices to protect the thousands of educators who rely on a federal immigration policy known as DACA to shield them from fear and deportation.

The Trump Administration’s inhumane termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2017 “not only broke the law but, more importantly, threatens to sweep away the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of our students, educators, and our neighbors,” says NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

“The result will be disastrous for students and public education,” says Eskelsen García. “Young children will suffer the abrupt departure of trusted teachers to the measurable detriment of educational outcomes, teacher shortages will worsen as thousands of DACA educators lose their status, and immigrant students will lose a lifeline to education mentors. Rescinding DACA will deprive young people of the protection and certainty they deserve.”

Since 2012, when it was introduced, DACA has enabled about 660,000 young people, known as Dreamers, to be sheltered in two-year increments from deportation. These are people who were brought to the U.S. as children—37 percent before age 5—by their parents. With DACA’s protection, they have stepped out of the shadows, getting work permits and Social Security numbers, going to college and living their dreams.

They include Areli Morales, an aspiring teacher who remembers “[feeling] voiceless” in the years before DACA, and Anayeli Marcos, a University of Texas graduate student who plans to work as a counselor or social worker to under-served clients. “[DACA] affects every aspect of my being,” she says.

Justices will hear arguments in the case on November 12, and decide DACA’s fate sometime in 2020. Lower courts in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., already have ruled the Trump administration’s actions were based on faulty legal reasoning, forcing the administration to continue administering DACA renewals.

NEA’s brief joins others from all corners of the country, including one this week from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who argues that his 443 DACA employees bring “stories of adversity [and] achievement” to the massive technology company.

“DHS swept away DACA, together with its recipients’ dreams and their communities’ needs, in one curt memorandum that failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the agency’s drastic change of course,” writes NEA attorneys. “DACA educators, students, and administrators can—and do, here in this brief—attest to the serious reliance interests engendered by DACA, as well as the disastrous results that will ensue if the program is terminated.”

The Voices of DACA Recipients

In NEA’s brief, the stories of students and educators speak directly to justices. California world history teacher Angelica Reyes remembers dreaming of becoming an educator, accumulating more than 1,000 hours of community service as a student—but being blocked in her professional dream until DACA.

“It was heartbreaking that I couldn’t be part of the system I had tried to enrich,” she says.

Morales describes “wanting to be invisible” in her New York City public school classrooms. Today, she works as a substitute teacher, earning her teaching certification. If she can renew her DACA status, her future classroom will “foster acceptance, understanding, and empowerment to educate future generations of children, so they can strive to reach their greatest potential.”

Schools are full of teachers like Reyes and students like Morales. Ousting DACAmented teachers would lead to costly teacher turnover, which is proven to negatively impact student achievement and cost districts money, NEA points out.

From Oakland, California, high school teacher Kateri Simpson describes how DACA gave hope to her students. Without fear of deportation, they can envision working someday in U.S. hospitals or schools as nurses, teachers, and other professionals. They see a path through college. And, with work authorization papers, they can get jobs to pay for tuition. Students “all of a sudden… were able to work for themselves and that was such a powerful thing,” she says.

“The basic sense of human dignity to be able to work for what you want—I don’t think can be underestimated,” says Simpson.

With their attack on DACA, the Trump administration threatens the academic and economic wellbeing of countless students, families, and communities. Stress has an impact on academics and behaviors, points out Superintendent Matt Utterback, of the North Clackamas School District near Portland, Oregon. His students’ ability to concentrate, as well as “their ability to excel is being hampered because they are worried about their safety…and that of their family members.”

Other educators agree: “The constant uncertainty that our DACA students and our students [and] families without legal status face has caused fear, stress, anxiety, [and] hopelessness,” reports Maile Valu, a Washington State counselor. In Marshalltown, Iowa, this has led to a “lack of ability to focus, more frequent absenteeism, and lesser achievement with coursework and on test performance,” says Superintendent Theron Schutte.

In addition to its legal advocacy, NEA also supports legislative solutions to the immigration crisis, including passage of the DREAM Act, which would open a pathway to citizenship for some Dreamers. (Tell your Senators and Representatives to support the DREAM Act, too!)

In 2019, the news generally got better for educators and students. Across the U.S., educator walkouts have led to increased funding for public schools, more support for teachers and education support professionals, and more attention to the needs of students. Today, we know more than ever about the effects of childhood trauma and racial bias on learning—and that’s a good thing. As the end of the calendar year approaches, let’s take a look at eight positive education trends of 2019 that we hope will persist in 2020.

Power at the Polls

Educators know how to help correct chronic underfunding of our schools: Elect pro-public candidates to local, state, and federal offices. In 2019, in Denver, union-supported candidates flipped the school board. In Virginia, educators helped flip the state legislature. And, in Louisiana, educators helped elect a new governor. Meanwhile, in Kentucky, union members were key in tossing Gov. Matt Bevin, whose fight with teachers over the state pension system led to massive protests and school shutdowns in 2018.

“Our KEA members…knocked on doors. They talked to their neighbors and, most importantly, they went to the polls,” KEA President Eddie Campbell told reporters. Now, he’s confident that incoming-Gov. Andy Beshear will be supportive of educators and students. “We know…he is going to stand with us and give us a seat at the table so we can have conversations about public education.”

(Learn more about how educators can get involved in the 2020 election.) 

Spotlight on Mental Health

Millions of U.S. children live with mental-health disorders, including a growing number with depression or anxiety. Between 2007 and 2017, the suicide rate tripled among children aged 10 to 14—middle-school students are now more likely to die by suicide than car crashes.

It’s a crisis—and educators and their unions are responding. This fall, NEA-Rhode Island brought together hundreds of educators for their second mental-health summit. Meanwhile, the St. Paul Federal of Teachers (SPFT) in Minnesota has made the mental-health needs of students their number-one issue at the bargaining table with a contract proposal that calls for every school to have a mental-health team that includes certified social workers, psychologists, nurses, and education support professionals.

“Out of necessity, we’re currently in a reactive mode,” says St. Paul social worker and trauma educator Kris Christensen, who saw a third grader hospitalized last year for suicidal ideations. “We really need to take a proactive approach, which is what our union is doing with its proposal.”

(See also: Educators Make Mental Health a Top Priority at the Bargaining Table and Are Schools Ready to Tackle the Mental Health Crisis?)

Support for Trans Students

This year, we saw growing legal support for transgender students and their safety. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court preserved a Pennsylvania school district’s policy that enables students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. And, in August, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that a trans student’s rights had been violated when he was barred from using the boys’ bathroom. (That student, Gavin Grimm, is now studying to be a middle-school teacher.)

These court victories are paving the way for better school: In Arlington, Va., board members this year approved a policy that enables trans kids to use the bathrooms and locker rooms, and participate in extra-curricular activities, that match their gender identities. It also enables students to use their chosen names and pronouns. But still, many other districts lag behind (more than half of trans students say they can’t use the bathroom of their choice) with dire consequences: more than half of transgender male teens have attempted suicide during their lives.

“The changes here in Arlington have been fantastic,” says pre-kindergarten teacher Jaim Foster. “But there are pockets of the country where it’s not safe for transitioning students, or faculty and staff. There is still a lot of work that we need to do.”

(See NEA’s resources to support LGBT students, including NEA’s “Legal Guidance on Transgender Students’ Rights”)

Closing the Teacher Pay Gap

In 2019, NEA found that the national average teacher salary had declined 4.5 percent over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. That’s bad news for teachers and students—low pay leads to less qualified teachers in classrooms. But a 2019 national poll also found that 74 percent of parents would support their community’s teachers striking for higher pay.

People are paying attention to this issue, and we see progress. In Hawaii, where teacher salaries are the worst in the nation and roughly one-third of students aren’t taught by qualified teachers, the statewide Board of Education voted in December to give $10,000 raises to special-education teachers, and $3,000 to $8,000 raises to teachers in hard-to-staff areas.

The Hawaii State Teachers Association has a comprehensive plan to end the teacher shortage by 2025 that includes improving pay for every teacher and working with financial institutions to help teachers get low-cost mortgages. (The average price of a single-family home in Honolulu? An eye-popping $812,000!)

(See also: How Higher Salaries Can Save the Teaching Profession and Education Support Professionals Fight for a Living Wage.)

Immigrant Power

When Texas teacher Karen Reyes exited the Supreme Court on a chilly morning in November, she saw hundreds of immigrants, like her, amassed on the steps, chanting and cheering. “Looking out, coming out of that court, [I saw] we have power,” she says. “We don’t need them to tell us that we’re worthy, that we deserve to be here in a place we call home. We know that—and we’re not going to stop.”

In 2019, U.S. immigrants faced many challenges, including the forced separation of parents and children at the border, which NEA members protested in February, and increasing anti-immigrant incidents in schools and communities. The status of Dreamers, like Reyes, who was brought to the U.S. as a 2-year-old, remains uncertain, as the Supreme Court weighs the White House’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. (NEA has urged the justices to do the right thing for DACA recipients.)

But immigrants also have tallied a few wins: In October, federal judges blocked the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, which would have made it harder for immigrants to get green cards if they might also need food stamps, Medicaid, or other public benefits. And, like Reyes says, immigrants—and their allies—aren’t backing down.

(Learn more about these issues at NEA EdJustice, and take NEA’s pledge to stand up for immigrant students.)

Sharing Trauma-Informed Practices

Inside Heather Harrison’s Delaware classroom, natural light filters through sheer shades onto piles of yoga mats. Nearby, a “cool-down” corner invites students to calm down with stress-relieving putty or magic sand. For students who have experienced trauma, such as eviction or violence in their homes, and that’s 55 percent of U.S. children, this kind of calm, structured environment is essential to learning.

Brain research tells us that adverse childhood experiences, known as ACEs, cause structural changes to developing brains. Often these traumatized children act out, are punished, and feed the school-to-prison pipeline. Meanwhile, their educators are overwhelmed, stressed out, and desperate for help.

In 2019, NEA and a growing number of its affiliates helped educators learn more about trauma-informed practices, including in Delaware, Vermont, Illinois, Maryland, Kentucky, and Oregon. In May, representatives from 39 NEA state affiliates attended a trauma convening in Chicago, and their report promises additional support the years to come. While there is no magic pill, educators with professional training can reduce the impact of trauma on their students.

(For more information, read NCSEA’s report on “Addressing the Epidemic of Trauma in Schools”)

#RedForEd Across the USA

A national movement for the schools our students deserve hit its stride in 2019. “When we fight, we win” proved Los Angeles educators, whose January strike won a historic victory. “Class-size reduction, limits on testing, and access to nurses, counselors and librarians will change our students’ lives forever,” said union president Alex Caputo-Pearl.

A month later, striking Denver teachers won a new salary schedule that includes 7 to 11 percent pay increases. Then, two weeks later, Oakland, California, educators won class-size reductions, lower caseloads for special-education teachers and counselors, and an 11 percent salary boost. And it didn’t stop there: In August, the Columbus (Ohio) Education Association won about 60 new positions, including nurses, social workers, and social-emotional learning practitioners—plus the first class-size limits in 25 years.

This momentum will continue in 2020. The Indiana State Teachers Association’s massive Red for Ed Action Day in November was just a start. Now, ISTA is calling on lawmakers to invest $75 million in teacher pay. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, thousands of educators are expected to rally in mid-March for more funds and less testing, and in Florida a “Take on Tallassee Rally” takes aim at decades of neglect for public schools. “On January 13^th, I will be on the steps of the Capitol,” promises Florida Education Association President Fedrick Ingram, “and I will be looking out at a sea of red.”

(Learn more about #RedforEd)

Education Takes Center Stage in the 2020 Presidential Race

NEA President Lily Eskelsen García (left) at “Public Education Forum 2020: Equity and Opportunity for All,” hosted by MSNBC.

How does it feel to have the men and women who would occupy the most powerful, elected position on Earth compete for your attention? Public education has taken center stage in the presidential primary race, and undoubtedly this will continue through November 2020.

In July, ten presidential hopefuls stood before almost 7,000 delegates to the NEA Representative Assembly to answer NEA members’ questions about educator pay, school funding and privatization, gun violence, college debt, the next Secretary of Education, and more. “The power of this union and the collective voice of our 3 million educator members was on full display today,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, who promised “we will play a vital role in choosing who becomes the next president of the United States.”

Then, on December 14, in a forum co-hosted by NEA and other groups, seven Democratic candidates again provided answers to public educators, parents, and students. “We appreciate the candidates…tell[ing] us how they will work to make sure all students have the tools, resources, and opportunities they need to succeed,” says Eskelsen García.

(Learn more about the candidates’ education proposals—and take the Strong Public Schools 2020 pledge.)

Dreamers and DACA supporters rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, June 18, 2020, after the court rejected the Trump administration’s push to end DACA. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

When Angelica Reyes said good-bye to her students on Monday, the start of summer break in her Los Angeles school district, she didn’t know whether she’d be seeing them again this fall, or facing possible deportation.

Reyes, who has lived in Los Angeles since her parents brought her there from Mexico at the age of 9 months, is one of about 650,000 Americans, including nearly 15,000 educators, 125,000 college students, and 138,000 high-school students, who currently rely on a federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, to provide them with renewable work permits and protection from deportation. Basically, the program enables them to live their lives outside of the shadows.

But, in 2017, the Trump administration abruptly ended DACA. Since then, DACA holders have lived in limbo while advocates — including NEA’s Office of General Counsel — have fought all the way to the Supreme Court.

Finally, on Thursday, Supreme Court justices agreed (5-4) that the Trump administration’s rescission of DACA was “arbitrary and capricious,” that it did not follow the procedures required by federal law, and it did not properly consider how ending the program would affect those who rely on it. With its ruling, the court hands another defeat this week to the Trump administration, following Monday’s 6-3 decision protecting LGBT people from job discrimination.

“Honestly, I’m surprised. I was fighting with the intent to win, but I honestly did not think this court would rule with us,” said Reyes, who teaches world history and ethnic studies, and this year will be leading her school’s restorative justice and anti-racism efforts. “It feels so good. It feels amazing. For me, of course, it’s important to be a teacher, but for my students, my classroom offers them such a safe space, and I’m just so grateful to be able to continue doing that for them.”

And the court’s decision offers an important lesson to her 8-year-old son, said Reyes: “When we stand up, when we fight against oppression, we can win!”

NEA President Lily Eskelsen García also called the court’s decision “much-needed” and “timely, especially as so many DACA holders, including an estimated 29,000 healthcare workers and 142,000 in food-related occupations, are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, nearly 15,000 educators can continue to sustain student learning during unprecedented times, she points out.

This is about #DACA so you know it’s not going to fit in one tweet.

The #SCOTUS decision is a stinging rebuke of the Trump administration’s ill-conceived attempt to end DACA, deeming it ARBITRARY and CAPRICIOUS.

— Lily Eskelsen García (@Lily_NEA) June 18, 2020

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Who are DACA Holders?

In public schools, which already face a nationwide shortage of teachers, DACA holders play a critical role, often working in hard-to-staff areas such as special education and bilingual education. For example, Karen Reyes, a 31-year-old Austin, Texas, master’s-educated teacher, who came to the U.S. at age 2, has been teaching Deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers since 2013.

“We help them reach the outside world,” Reyes told NEA Today in 2017. “As a teacher, all I want to do is teach and help my kids.”

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in October, NEA argued that Trump’s inhumane elimination of the program would be disastrous for public schools and educators. Students would suffer the abrupt departure of trusted teachers, while teacher shortages worsen.

Teacher Karen Reyes earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas public universities.

“DHS swept away DACA, together with its recipients’ dreams and their communities’ needs, in one curt memorandum that failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the agency’s drastic change of course,” wrote NEA attorneys. “DACA educators, students, and administrators can—and do, here in this brief—attest to the serious reliance interests engendered by DACA, as well as the disastrous results that will ensue if the program is terminated.”

To qualify for DACA, applicants must have lived continuously in the U.S. since 2007, and arrived here prior to turning 16. (In fact, federal data shows than 37 percent arrived before age 5.) They also must be in school, or have graduated from high school, have a GED or been honorably discharged from the military, and have a clean criminal record. As they have grown into adulthood, the program has enabled these young Americans to go to college, get jobs, fuel the economy, and live their dreams.

In 2017, a study showed that about half were in college. Others reported that getting DACA had helped them to earn more money—from $10.29 an hour, on average, to $17.56 an hour. Currently, about 59,000 DACA-holders own homes and make $613.8 million in mortgage payments a year. Their rent payments add up to $2.3 billion annually. They also pay $5.7 billion in federal taxes and $3.1 billion in state and local taxes a year, according to the Center on American Progress.

What’s Next?

Although the court’s ruling is welcome, the fight isn’t over.

DACA-holders and other immigrants, as well as their advocates, say they won’t stop asking Congress for comprehensive immigration reform, including pathway to citizenship. NEA strongly supports legislation like the American Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 6), which the U.S. House passed last June by a vote of 237-187.

“We need to keep going and ride the momentum,” says Angelica Reyes. “There are still so many people excluded (from DACA’s protections.) My last DACA recipients graduated this year, and I know I’m going to have undocumented students this year who aren’t going to qualify for DACA. What they’ve heard since elementary school is that if they work hard, they can achieve anything — but without a legalized path, it’s very difficult.”

An estimated 454,000 college students are undocumented—or about 2 percent of all U.S. college students, according to a 2020 report from the New American Economy. Of them, about 216,000 are DACA-eligible. A large percentage aim to work in STEM fields (Of DACA-eligible students pursuing a graduate degree, 43 percent already have undergraduate STEM degrees.)

Want to understand what this decision means for DREAMers and their families, and find out what’s next? Join NEA attorney Emma Leheny, National Immigration Law Center attorney Trudy Rebert and DACA holder Karen Reyes for a webinar on June 23, 8 pm ET. Register now. . 

On Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden praised “the courage and resilience of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who stood up and refused to be ignored,” and he promised that, “as president, I will immediately work to make [the court’s decision] permanent by sending a bill to Congress on day one of my administration.”

With its decision, the court reminds us of who we are, as a nation, and what we must continue to fight for, Eskelsen García said.

“The Supreme Court victory also validates our core identity as a country — one that thrives when we welcome and embrace diverse contributions and ideas,” said Eskelsen García. “We will keep fighting for our DACAmented educators, their families and their students. We will continue to fight for justice.”