Saturday, February 22, 2025

How to defend our public schools -- and our students -- from Trump's attack


With their permission, adapted from the excellent summary from IL Families for Public School posted here.

Is your Congressperson pushing back on vouchers?

February 21, 2025

The attacks on public education—and public goods of all kinds—by the Presidential administration continue and continue to escalate. We’ll cover a few of these below,but also include ways you can pitch in to the fight.

Congressional Reps demand President withdraw EO on school privatization

Forty-five US representatives sent a letter to President Trump in response to last month’s executive order (EO) on school privatization, which ordered various federal departments to devise ways for states to divert federal dollars meant for public schools to private school coffers.

The push to support school vouchers in this EO is independent of the proposed creation of a federal voucher program by Congress, something that could be snuck into a budget bill later this year.

The letter from members of Congress calls on Trump to withdraw his order, saying: “The federal government should be investing in robust funding to support and strengthen our public schools rather than redirecting resources to unaccountable, privately run secular and religious schools.” You can read the full letter here.

Here’s a press release, listing the signers.  Among the members from New York: Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Jerry Nadler (NY-12), and Nydia Velázquez (NY-07). Is your rep on this list of signers? If so, call and thank them for defending public schools and urge them to oppose the passage of a federal voucher program, known as the Educational Choice for Children Act. Find your US Rep here.

If your rep is not on that list of nine, find out where they stand on the policies pushed by the EO and the proposed Educational Choice for Children Act. Urge them to oppose any diversion of federal tax dollars to private schools.  

Calls are best, but you can also send an email via this link. (We recommend the 5 Calls app as a quick way to find your US Rep and Senators’ phone numbers at multiple office locations; you can use your own issue/script when you call.)

These calls continue to be important whether you have Republicans or Democrats representing you. We know that vouchers aren’t popular with voters in either party based on polling and ballot referenda. And recent fights at the state level show this too:

NBC News: Trump is pushing 'school choice,' but some Republicans aren't on board

Make sure you identify yourself as a constituent and are specific about the issue you are calling about: Public dollars must be for public schools, not vouchers to bankroll tuition at private schools. Here’s some more good tips for communicating with your reps.

Learn more about the Trump administration's plans and how to counter them

If you’re feeling bewildered by the day-to-day and hour-by-hour developments on the federal level and want some bigger picture context, there’s a virtual event this Wednesday, February 26th that we recommend:

DePaul College of Education’s 2025 Winter Forum

"THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S PLANS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION"  

Wednesday, February 26 at 5:30-7pm (CST)
Register here

Two education policy experts will discuss the new administration’s policy agenda for public schools and the future of public education in this country—Dr, Carol Burris, executive director of Network for Public Education, and Dr Julian Vasquez Heilig, professor of education leadership at Western Michigan University. They will also explore advocacy efforts to protect public education—what you can do!

US Department of Ed weaponizes the Office of Civil Rights

Along with the EO on education privatization, last month the President also issued an EO threatening funding of schools that are striving to welcome and educate all kids, no matter their racial, cultural or gender identity. This EO is an attack on our children’s freedom to learn.

Last Friday the US Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor sent a follow-up "Dear Colleague" letter to all educational institutions receiving federal funds. The letter makes sweeping—and legally-dubious—threats to investigate schools and withhold federal funding for implementing nearly any race-conscious policies or programs.

Inside Higher Ed Trump admin threatens to rescind federal funds over DEI

Trainor’s letter goes far beyond the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that essentially ended affirmative action in college admissions. Unfortunately, even without legal weight or enforcement, this letter can have a chilling effect on K-12 public schools that have made deliberate choices in recent years to address the long shadow that structural racism and other forms of discrimination have cast on our public school system.

You can read critiques of the legal claims in Trainor’s letter below. The first one listed is authored by 17 law professors and deans, experts in the areas of “antidiscrimination law, education law, employment law, constitutional law, and civil rights.”

Memorandum: DEI Programs Are Lawful Under Federal Civil Rights Laws and Supreme Court Precedent

Julian Vasquez Heilig - Cloaking Inequity blog U.S. Department of Education’s 14-Day Ultimatum on Equal Opportunity: Will Universities Surrender or Resist?

Chronicle of Higher Education In Sweeping Letter, Ed. Dept. Says SCOTUS Ruling Applies to All Race-Conscious Programs

US Senator Patty Murray (D-OR): Senator Murray Slams Trump & Elon Threatening to Rip Away Federal Funding for Public Schools & Colleges Over Political Crusade: “Do Not Be Intimidated”

Here is a  statement from the NY State Education Department on the recent Trump Executive Orders:

The President cannot decide which laws to enforce or funds to distribute.  It’s also why two federal courts immediately enjoined the President’s attempt to “freeze” federal funds.

The Board and the Department remain committed to the inherent dignity and worth of every child.  As such, we denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders.  Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.

What should public school parents and advocates be doing in response to this letter? Make sure your local school leaders hear from you: Public schools must be welcoming places where all kids in our community have the freedom to learn and thrive.

Julian Vasquez Heiling, one of the speakers at the Depaul College Of Education Forum next Wednesday has compiled a good list of questions and answers on how to resist and maintain educational institutions as “a space of intellectual freedom, critical inquiry, and equity for all students, staff, and faculty.”

The grassroots group Honest in Ohio Education also has a great to-do list for standing up for schools and policies that serve all our kids.

Here’s some of the other developing threats to our schools and students from the federal executive branch, along with actions you can take to oppose them:

Save the Date: March 4th Day of Action to Protect Our Kids

Several national organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, Moms Rising and the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, are planning a day of pro-public school actions on March 4th to protest the presidential push to defund public schools and dismantle the US Department of Education. We’ll keep you informed about events planned for Illinois, but you can also organize your own local activity and register it to connect with others in your school community.

Thanks for continuing to stay informed and take action in these very trying times!

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

NEW video about how NYC Dept of Health is enabling Talkspace to share teen personal data with social media platforms, undermining their mental health

 

Please watch the brief video above about how the online mental health company Talkspace, which has a $26M contract with the NYC Department of Health, continues to share NYC teen data with ad trackers and social media companies -- the very same companies NYC is suing for undermining their mental health. 

This is despite our repeated letters to the Department of Health, raising our privacy concerns starting last September. Also, check out this recent piece in Gizmodo, that reports that now Seattle and Baltimore schools also have similar contracts with Talkspace to provide free mental health to teens, with likely similar data privacy violations. 

Moreover, as the Gizmodo article revealed, Talkspace is now developing a “Personalized Podcast” created through AI, that harvests patients' personal mental health info from their therapy sessions and feeds it back to them in the form of a sound file. One can only imagine the damage this could cause to vulnerable teens if someone got hold of the sound files on their phones or they themselves played them back inadvertently in public. Not even considering how the use of AI chatbots can itself be perilous, as shown by the recent lawsuit filed by parents who allege that a chatbot caused their son to commit suicide

One clarification: though the Gizmodo article notes that after we brought attention to this issue, ad-trackers were removed from the NYC Teenspace landing page, we found many other pages on its website are still collecting and disclosing teens' personal data,  as our video explains above, including the page featuring the new supposedly improved Teenspace Privacy Policy.  We wrote about our findings in our most recent letter sent to the NYC Department of Health more than a month ago, and yet have gotten no response.  

Parents: If your child has visited the Teenspace website or has signed up for their services, please contact us at info@studentprivacymatters.org as soon as possible.

CEC 15 President's letter about the importance of resistance and running for your CEC and Citywide Councils

See the excellent letter below from CEC 15 President Antonia Ferraro about how the CEC is responding to Trump's threats to control school curriculums, violate student civil rights, and ban books. 

She also points out how given this political climate, it is more important than ever for parents to run for their district CECs and Citywide Councils.  The deadline to apply is Feb. 16, only a few days from now.  More info on how to apply is here.

 

February 11, 2025 


Dear District 15 Families and Community,


CEC15 has received letters of concern regarding various Trump Administration Executive Orders1 2 3 and their potential impact on school funding4 5 and the rights of our diverse student body.6 I believe advocacy for all our children is more important than ever, and I appreciate the ongoing efforts of families to support students by sending such letters.


In the absence of statements from NYCPS I am compelled to respond to concerns about the executive orders. It is an open question as to how enforceable or legal they are; legal analysts have called their legality and constitutionality into question,7 8 9 and numerous lawsuits10 11 12 have already been filed. What I do know is that the federal government cannot dictate to states and cities how their schools function and what curriculums they use. Regardless of questions of legality, there are workarounds to safeguard student rights and I implore our NYCPS to stay the course and develop those workarounds.


What do I mean by workarounds? After the Supreme Court decided in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 113 that K-12 schools could not consider race in admissions, the Obama administration issued guidance14 that enabled school districts to integrate by looking at measures of poverty. This formed the basis for our diversity plans. This type of thinking is essential right now. It is crucial that NYCPS, together with school and community leaders, stay focused on the mission of ensuring that all children in New York City receive a high-quality education in a safe, caring environment.


I also want you to know that as President of CEC15, I have been reaffirming our organization's commitment to celebrating, protecting and respecting all of our students at every single meeting. I have and will continue to demand that the DOE leadership resist attacks on students’ and teachers’ civil rights, human rights, and First Amendment rights.


I have been doing this through the issues I elevate at our public CEC meetings and in meetings that I regularly attend with our Chancellor. CEC15 has been doing this through the resolutions the council has passed, such as CEC15’s Resolution to Prevent and Respond to Hate Speech.15 And I have been doing this through the banned and challenged books that I highlight in meetings. I often share banned books that reflect identities celebrated by our cultural and heritage months and various overlapping holidays. This month we celebrated Black History Month and Lunar New Year. To honor Black History Month, I featured All Because You Matter by Tami Charles, which offers love, hope and affirmation through the Black experience. And to honor Asian and immigrant families, I featured Drawn Together by Minh Le, which tells the story of a grandson and grandfather, struggling to communicate across a language barrier, but find connection through art.


CEC15’s recent Legislative Breakfast largely focused on the threats of this new administration. The event had more than 80 registrants including elected officials, principals, teachers and school staff, and parent leaders. Many important topics were raised, including SCA accountability, libraries, arts funding, protecting migrant and asylum-seeking families, school transportation, the importance of Title I funding, the importance of mental health professionals and mandated services, and the need to revise building utilization plans in buildings collocated with charter schools.


Here again CEC15 featured banned and challenged books. These books were raffled to attendees. The list of books honored the experiences of the trans or gender-questioning children, Native American, African American, Jewish, Hispanic, and immigrant children. The books included:


I am Enough by Grace Byers

Hold Onto Your Music by Mona Golabeck and Lee Cohen

Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard

Planting Stories by Anika Aldamuy Denise When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff We are Still Here! by Traci Sorell




These books were challenged in 2022 by the Northampton (PA) Area School District (NASD) school board, which unanimously voted to table a donation of fifty books from The Conscious Kid, a non-profit organization focused on equity and promoting healthy racial identity development. They rejected the donation after just ten parents complained during a meeting. One of ten parents/grandparents to object to the donation claimed, “The Conscious Kid uses Marxist critical race theory.” Some of the people had not even read any of the books. 

I feel that elevating banned books does what proclamations can’t. By sharing these books, I aim to shine a spotlight on the creativity and excellence of writers whose work reflects the rich and varied lived experiences of children in our own communities. Others may call it DEI, but I call it reality. 

Therefore, I will keep calm and carry on with the mission of supporting all our students. But I will also keep an eye on protecting the democratic infrastructure that makes supporting students possible. Protecting the independence of democratic institutions and functions should be, must be a nonpartisan concern to all Americans. 

This is why it is so important for all community members to participate. I urge parents and caregivers who want to have a voice in our children's collective education to consider running for a seat on a Community or Citywide Education Council (CCEC). CCECs are a small but impactful part of our local democratic infrastructure. CCEC elections for the upcoming 2-year term will be happening soon, and if you have a child in a New York City public school, you can run for a seat. The deadline to apply is soon!

2025 Selection Process Schedule:

      January 13 - February 16: Candidate application period

      February 28 - April 2: Candidate Forums

      April 25 - May 13: Parents vote online

      May 14 - June 2: Run-off elections, if necessary

      June: Election results announced

      July 1: Members-elect take office

Regardless of whether you wish to run, we need parent voices at our CCEC meetings, Community attendance is critical to engage on these topics. Please join us for our next Business or Calendar Meeting, or join us for an upcoming workshop or community celebration.


Thank you again for your support of District 15 schools, and the children and families who depend on them. Rest assured, I will continue to be clear with the DOE leadership that District 15 families expect them to resist attacks on students and teachers’ civil rights, human rights, and First Amendment rights. Hearing your voices helps me do that.

Keep Calm and Carry On Supporting All Students,

 CEC15 Signatories

Antonia Ferraro Martinelli, CEC15 President Leslie King, CEC15 Co-President 1

Vanessa Gonzalez Ueoka, CEC15 Co-President 2 Nancy Cruz, CEC15 Secretary

Katina Rogers, CEC15 Treasurer Jonathan Davis, CEC15 Parliamentarian Hans Arrieta, CEC15 member

Kwame Egerton, CEC15 member

 D15 Presidents’ Council Signatories

Elton Dodson, D15 Presidents’ Council Co-President

Elizabeth Sanders Greyson, D15 Presidents’ Council Co-President

 

1 https://www.ed.gov/media/document/title-ix-enforcement-directive-dcl

 2 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/

3 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/

4 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/expanding-educational-freedom-and-opportunity-for-families

5 https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-advances-school-choice-supporting-charter-schools 

6 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/trump-executive-orders-local-control-schools.html 

7 https://www.nilc.org/articles/analysis-of-trump-day-1-executive-orders-unconstitutional-illegal-and-cruel/

8 https://democrats-appropriations.house.gov/news/fact-sheets/background-unlawful-impoundment-president-trumps-executive-orders

9 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/where-do-legal-cases-against-trumps-executive-orders-stand-2025-01-30/

10 https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/tracking-the-legal-challenges-to-trumps-executive-orders

11 https://natlawreview.com/article/dei-whirlwind-continues-new-lawsuit-challenges-constitutionality-anti-dei-orders

12 https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-lawsuits-list-executive-orders-doge-citizenship-2018514

13 https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/551/701/

14 https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/guidance-ese-201111.pdf

15 https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/951dd9a1-96ac-438b-8642-d89cc6651997/downloads/6e7a1ac2-4590-4f19-9535-bef161121cd1/Approved%20-%20CEC15%20Resolution%20to%20Prevent%20and%20Res.pdf?ver=173886625285 3

 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Alert: PowerSchool data breach at (at least) four NYC schools


 As reported in tonight's Daily News (free link here), contrary to previous DOE assurances, four NYC public schools were likely affected by massive PowerSchool breach:  . 

Fordham HS for the Arts

Long Island City High School

Lower East Side Prep 

                                                             Westchester Square Academy

About 3,000 students are currently enrolled in these schools, but former students may also have been affected if the school used the Student Information System in years past. 

Please let parents, students and former students at these schools know to ask questions at their schools as soon as possible.  They should then check for ID theft and sign up for free credit monitoring and ID theft insurance, offered by PowerSchool.  More info here.

What's unacceptable is how DOE still refuses to confirm to reporters the names of affected schools, or announce this publicly, as hundreds of other districts have done.  The information came instead from the NYSED Privacy office. 

NYSED has also put out guidance to districts, suggesting that PowerSchool may not be telling the whole story and that the data breach may affect not only former students, but also schools that no longer use the School Information System but once did.  

 
Yet I can find no mention anywhere on these schools websites nor on the DOE website where they alert parents to data breaches - or as the DOE euphemistically like to call them, "Data Security Incidents." 

Also very problematic is how the PowerSchool contract with DOE for seventeen data-hungry products implies the company will only comply with state and federal privacy laws when they consider them "commercially reasonable." I shared my concerns with DOE over a year ago about this and got no response.


Though up to now, only the PowerSchool SIS has been reported as breached, such lax privacy language applies to all these products and is unacceptable. As has not been widely reported, PowerSchool failed to take the most simple security protections such as two-factor authentication for user access, and instead, the hacker just obtained the password of a single employee.

By the way, according to many reports, teacher personal data was also exposed. Have teachers at the affected schools been informed?

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Free legal resources to help support the rights of immigrant and undocumented students

On Monday, Trump will be sworn in as President.  There is a lot of uncertainty as to what this will mean for thousands of NYC undocumented students.

NY Legal Assistance Group workshop on Know Your Rights for Immigrants, co-sponsored by CM Lincoln Restler and CM Shahana Hanif:  Federal immigration regulations, expectations of the new administration, New York’s sanctuary city policies, and resources available locally. Thursday, February 6th at 7pm.  Register here.

Here are other helpful guides to protecting the rights of undocumented students, some of them compiled by Project Unicorn.  If you have other suggestions, please put them in the comments section.