Issues and Impact June 2020

Five ways educators defeated Betsy DeVos this school year

Every school year comes with unexpected challenges. But when we have a secretary of education who works against public schools, educator-activists across the country must be especially vigilant.

During the 2019 – 2020 school year, NEA educators stood up and showed what they are made of. They called out U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her allies, protected students and schools, and defeated the DeVos agenda time and again. They spoke up, wrote letters, emailed, rallied, and marched to deliver their powerful message: Supporting strong public schools in every community should not be a partisan issue.

1. Big Election Wins

Public school advocates will remember the election of 2019 as one in which their voices were heard loud and clear. Stunning victories in Kentucky and Virginia were cause for celebration nationwide.

In the Kentucky governor’s race, state Attorney General Andy Beshear defeated DeVos ally Gov. Matt Bevin, who expanded vouchers, defunded schools, and bullied educators. Beshear recognized the hard work educators had poured into his election, saying: “To our educators, this is your victory.”

And educators were a driving force behind a historic turnaround in Virginia: Voters ended the GOP’s long reign in the state legislature. Taking both the House of Dele- gates and Senate for the first time in 24 years, Democrats passed legislation to boost school funding and teacher salaries.

2. Federal Funding Cuts—Defeated!

In December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a historic education budget. House lawmakers rejected the Donald Trump/DeVos effort to cut education funding by $7.4 billion. They also denied DeVos’ proposed elimination of Title II, which helps states recruit and train teachers, and her call to expand funding for vouchers and other privatization schemes. Instead, legislators approved a $1.3 billion increase in education funding—with large increases for both Title I fund- ing for schools in low-income communities and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides critical resources for students with special needs.

The House also permanently reauthorized a bill that provides $255 million in funding for historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions.

And, this spring, facing bipartisan opposition and an outcry from education groups, including NEA, DeVos retreated from a bookkeeping change that would have caused more than 800 rural, low-income schools to lose critical funding from the Rural Education Achievement Program.

In 2019, NEA members contacted Congress nearly 900,000 times about legislation affecting students, public education, workers’ rights, and other important issues.

3. Action on Gun Violence Prevention

For the first time since 1996, Congress provided $25 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to study gun violence as a public health issue.

And educators fought for school safety after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., when Trump and DeVos endorsed the idea of arming educators. Though educators overwhelmingly opposed the dangerous and reckless proposal, it gained traction among state lawmakers. But local educators banded together and defeated most of these efforts.

4. Voucher Schemes Went Down in Flames

Educators in Kentucky helped defeat the proposed tax-credit voucher program that the Kentucky Education Association called, “Nothing but a backdoor voucher system to undermine public education.”

In another critical victory, Arkansas members helped defeat a voucher expansion bill that would have diverted millions of dollars in tax revenue to private schools.

5. Educator Voices Carried Us Forward

Even in the face of DeVos’ anti-educator agenda, educators made their voices heard and prompted change in the states. Here are highlights from just a few of this year’s rallies:

INDIANA: As many as 20,000 people attended a rally on November 19, in Indianapolis. More than 140 of the state’s school districts closed so educators could speak out against lawmakers’ inaction on education funding.

FLORIDA: In January, more than 20,000 educators, parents, students, and allies rallied at the state capitol in Tallahassee. They protested

more than a decade of declines in school funding and a dire teacher shortage that has left more than 3,500 teacher vacancies statewide. The Florida Department of Education and district superintendents threatened teachers with expul- sion, union decertification, and loss of license for participating, but educators turned out nonetheless to speak up for their students.

VIRGINIA: In February, educators rallied in Richmond to fight for collective bargaining rights for public employees. In March, the legislature ended the ban on collective bargaining for public employees.

Be Like Marcie: Speak Up on Behalf of Students

Marcie Villanueva is the lead worker (supervisor) of the food service staff at Harlan Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware.

NEA TODAY: In February, you were part of a Capitol Hill briefing on the issue of school meal debt. What inspired you to speak out?

MV: I’ve witnessed “lunch shaming” firsthand, and it was heartbreaking. Five years ago, when I started working in the Brandywine School District, I was training in a middle school. I saw a cashier take a child’s lunch, throw it away, and replace it with a cheese sandwich. A look of distress came over that child’s face—I knew immediately that she felt shame at being singled out like that. The cashier looked uneasy as well, but she had to follow the district policy: If a child’s meal account balance was $10 or more in debt, the meal had to be thrown out and replaced, even though theprice of the regular lunch was still added to the child’s debt.

Things have changed dramatically for your students. How so?

MV: All students at my school now receive free school meals under the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. We were able to do that because more than 40 percent of our students are directly certified for free school meals. Eleven of the 17 schools in our district have implemented CEP. Our district also did away with the cheese sandwich policy and now gives every student a regular meal. All communication about meal debt is only between the adults. That eliminates any possi- bility of cafeteria shaming and allows food service professionals to focus on providing nutritious meals and a positive environment, instead of acting as debt collectors.

What do you wish more people understood about school meal debt?

There is so much more we can do to help schools address it. District leaders can work to implement community eligibility in schools that qualify or cover the family share of reduced- price meals. They can also establish an “Angel Fund,” like we have, so businesses and individuals can donate money to help struggling families pay for school meals.

What did you learn from speaking out through your union? That people really want to hear what educators have to say when it comes to the issues that affect our kids. There are a lot of people who care about our students and want to help. Lawmakers need to hear from all of us.