Take Action
Personalize your letter, then submit it to Regulations.gov
A fair and accurate census has incredible implications for schools.
From federal funding like Title I and IDEA to planning resources for future school construction and deciding how many educators to hire, states and school districts rely on accurate U.S. Census data.
Excluding people from the census will have impacts on health care services, classrooms, and our roads and transit systems by reducing the money that pays for these essential services.
The Trump administration has proposed unprecedented changes to how the U.S. Census will count the population of the United States. They want to:
- No longer count many residents: Even though the U.S. Constitution requires counting every “person” who lives in the U.S., the Trump administration proposes to exclude millions of immigrants. DACA holders, international students, work-visa holders, refugees, asylees, and other residents from the Census for the first time in 260 years. The fear this exclusion creates would depress response in households with citizens, too.
- Prohibit the collection of data about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation: Asked in some form in every census since 1790, race questions would be prohibited, as would longstanding questions about ethnicity and planned new questions about sexual orientation. Not only would this policy seriously hinder attempts to measure and address inequities, nearly every other government and non-government survey is weighted to U.S. Census counts, so the loss would ripple through public opinion, public health, civil rights, business data, and more.
- Count people in the wrong place: A new January 3 to April 1 “enumeration period” and a tax-records test for where you live would miscount snowbirds, movers, rural P.O. box filers, college students, and service members. The count of children, who are already the most-undercounted age group, would be greatly impacted, given that children are more likely than adults to split their time among multiple households and are less likely to be connected to tax records.
Before the proposal is finalized, you have an opportunity to weigh in.
You have until October 13 to submit a public comment.
Your submission must be unique and personal. You can talk about your community and public school, and how resources may change if they proposed census rules go into effect.