Education

Despite Trump’s win, school vouchers were again rejected by majorities of voters

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Series: School Wars:How Battles Over Vouchers, Book Bans, COVID-19 and More Are Harming Public Education

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In a state with school vouchers for all, low-income families aren’t choosing to use them

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Series: School Wars:How Battles Over Vouchers, Book Bans, COVID-19 and More Are Harming Public Education

Reporting Highlights

Not a Choice for Everyone: In Arizona, which now offers school vouchers to all students, lower-income families are using the program less than wealthier ones, a ProPublica analysis shows.
Barriers to Entry: Lower-income families said that the location of private schools and additional costs for things like transportation, tuition and meals keep them from using vouchers.
Sales Pitch: Advocates for vouchers have long argued their plan is a way for all children, no matter their socioeconomic background, to have access to a high-quality education.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

Alma Nuñez, a longtime South Phoenix restaurant cashier with three kids, attended a community event a few years ago at which a speaker gave a presentation about Arizona’s school voucher program. She was intrigued.

Angelica Zavala, a West Phoenix home cleaner and mother of two, first heard of vouchers when former Gov. Doug Ducey was talking about them on the news. He was saying that the state was giving parents money that they could then spend on private school tuition or homeschooling supplies. The goal was to ensure that all students, no matter their socioeconomic background, would have access to whatever kind of education best fit them. Zavala thought: This sounds great. Maybe it will benefit my family.

And Fabiola Velasquez, also a mother of three, was watching TV with her husband last year when she saw one of the many ads for vouchers that have blanketed media outlets across metropolitan Phoenix of late. She turned to him and asked, “Have you heard about this?”

Working-class parents like Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez have often said in surveys and interviews that they’re at least initially interested in school vouchers, which in Arizona are called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Many across the Phoenix area told ProPublica that they liked the idea of getting some financial help from the state so that they could send their children to the best, safest private schools — the kind that rich kids get to attend.

Yet when it comes to lower-income families actually choosing to use vouchers here in the nation’s school choice capital, the numbers tell a very different story. A ProPublica analysis of Arizona Department of Education data for Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, reveals that the poorer the ZIP code, the less often vouchers are being used. The richer, the more.

In one West Phoenix ZIP code where the median household income is $46,700 a year, for example, ProPublica estimates that only a single voucher is being used per 100 school-age children. There are about 12,000 kids in this ZIP code, with only 150 receiving vouchers.

Conversely, in a Paradise Valley ZIP code with a median household income of $173,000, there are an estimated 28 vouchers being used per 100 school-age children.

The question is, if there’s interest in school vouchers among lower-income families, why isn’t that translating into use, as conservative advocates have long promised would happen?

In our interviews, several families said that they simply didn’t know about the program. Some mentioned that they didn’t have the social contacts — or the time, given their jobs — to investigate whether vouchers would be a better option for their kids than public school, which is generally simpler to enroll in and navigate.

But others, like Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez, said that they knew plenty about Empowerment Scholarship Accounts. Still, they had come to understand that the ESA program was not designed for them, not in a day-to-day sense. Logistical obstacles would make using vouchers to attend private school practically impossible for them and their children.

It starts with geography. The high-quality private schools are not near their neighborhoods.

ProPublica compiled a list of more than 200 private schools in the Phoenix metro area using a survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, as well as a Maricopa County listing and other sources. We found that these schools are disproportionately located to the north and east of downtown — in Midtown, Arcadia, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and the suburbs — rather than to the south and west, the historically segregated areas where Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez live.

Only six of all of these private schools are in Census tracts where families earn less than 50% of the county’s median income of $87,000.

So even if lower-income families were able to secure spots at a decent private school and could use vouchers to pay the tuition, they would still have to figure out how to get their children there. After all, while public schools generally provide free transportation via school buses, private schools rarely do.

Would they send their kids on $30-plus Uber rides each way every day? Or on city bus trips that might take up to two hours in each direction, because the routes aren’t designed for students the way that school bus routes are? This might require their little ones to make multiple transfers, on their own, at busy intersections.

Zavala used an app that showed the private schools near her home; there weren’t many, but she did know of one, St. Matthew Catholic School, that served students her daughters’ age and was in the vicinity. It also had sports and a dual-language program, which not many private schools provide.

She filled out all the forms to apply for her daughters to attend St. Matthew using vouchers, before deciding that the stress of transportation — there wouldn’t be a school bus — wasn’t worth it. (Zavala also said she realized that the academics wouldn’t necessarily offer an improvement over public school.)

Then there’s tuition. Zavala, as well as Nuñez and Velasquez, learned that a voucher might not even cover the full price of a private school.

A typical voucher from Arizona’s ESA program is worth between $7,000 and $8,000 a year, while private schools in the Phoenix area often charge more than $10,000 annually in tuition and fees, ProPublica found. The price tag at Phoenix Country Day School, one of the best private schools around, ranges from $30,000 to $35,000 depending on the age of the student. (The Hechinger Report has also found that private schools often raise their tuition when parents have vouchers.)

“Just because you gave me a 50%-off coupon at Saks Fifth Avenue doesn’t mean I can afford to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue,” said Curt Cardine, a longtime school superintendent, principal and teacher who is now a fellow at the Grand Canyon Institute, a left-leaning public policy think tank in Phoenix.

Next add the cost of food: breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack. These are provided by public schools to students from lower-income families, but at private schools, parents typically have to pay for them.

And throw in a supply of uniforms with the private school’s logo — hundreds of dollars more.

Plus there is pressure to spend money at auctions, raffles and other fundraisers. (It’s Christian to do so, many religious private school websites say.)

Consider the choices available to Nuñez. For 17 years, she was a cashier at a restaurant, working 10 or more hours a day. Now she is raising three children, two of whom have autism. Private schools have some appeal to her in part because they might have smaller class sizes and more support for her son in third grade, whom she describes as “an earthquake.”

For all of these reasons, Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez — despite their initial interest — chose not to use Arizona’s voucher program. Instead, they have each decided to start volunteering at the neighborhood public schools that their kids attend and to organize other busy parents to help make those schools better. They meet with their school administrators regularly. They lend a hand at drop-off and pick-up. They’ve organized “cafecitos”: an informal sort of PTA coffee hour.

“I’m committed to the idea of public school for my and my neighbors’ children,” Velasquez said. “I have zero regrets about not using ESA.”

This school year, ProPublica is examining Arizona’s first-in-the-nation “universal” school voucher program: available to all families, no matter their income. We are doing so because more than a dozen other states have enacted, or are attempting to enact, voucher initiatives largely or partly modeled after this one.

Arizona’s experience holds lessons for the rest of the country amid an election season in which the future of education is at stake, even as issues like immigration and inflation grab more headlines.

As they were initially conceived, school vouchers were targeted at helping families in lower-income areas. The first such programs, in cities like Milwaukee and Cleveland, provided money specifically to poor parents who had children in struggling, underfunded public schools, to help them pay tuition at a hopefully better private school.

Conservative advocacy groups still say that this is the purpose of vouchers. “School choice provides options for low-income families” by breaking “the arbitrary link between a child’s housing and the school he or she can attend,” the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with deep ties to former President Donald Trump, said in 2019. “At the core of the school choice movement is the aspiration that every family obtain the freedom to pursue educational excellence for their children — regardless of their geographic location or socioeconomic background,” the Goldwater Institute, the Phoenix-based conservative think tank that pioneered and helped enact Arizona’s ESA law, has asserted.

But now that groups like these have successfully pushed for vouchers to be made universal in several states, the programs are disproportionately being used by middle- and upper-income parents.

“Arizona is the school choice capital of the U.S. — great, but if it’s not quality schools within a reasonable distance, then it’s not meaningful choice for our families,” said Stephanie Parra, CEO of ALL In Education, a pro-public-education Latino advocacy group that Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez have been working with.

Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a pro-charter-school and school voucher education reform think tank, told ProPublica that Arizona’s version of vouchers “is not well-designed to achieve the goal of providing more choice for low-income and working-class families.” He said that “if you were going to design a program that really wanted to unlock private school choice for those families, you would design it very differently than Arizona did.”

Petrilli said that this would at least include means-testing the program: in other words, making larger vouchers available to lower-income parents, rather than giving the same amount to the very wealthy, who do not need the help. (Some states with near-universal voucher programs, he noted, give priority to lower-income families, unlike Arizona.) This would help poor parents cover the cost of transportation, among other things.

Arizona’s program does allow parents to use their ESA money on transportation costs, but those who’ve already spent their voucher on tuition don’t have anything left for a year’s worth of Uber rides, city bus fares or gas. ESAs can also be used for homeschooling supplies, but most working parents can’t homeschool.

Some private schools provide additional scholarships or financial aid to students from lower-income backgrounds, though the process can be complicated to navigate. In some instances, ProPublica found, private school application systems even require a nonrefundable fee to apply for need-based aid.

Advocates for vouchers argue that many of these inequities already exist and are just as bad in the public school system. They note that poor families are often practically limited to the public schools nearest to them; it’s not as though the government provides transportation if parents want to send their kids to a better public school across town. (At least not since the end of the desegregation-era practice of busing Black children to mostly white schools. Busing helped to desegregate the public schools and improved academic outcomes for Black students, but it was broadly unpopular.)

Michael McShane, director of national research for the pro-voucher advocacy and research organization EdChoice, said that it’s still “early days” for universal programs like Arizona’s, and that “there is an adoption curve anytime any new innovation takes place.”

Asked why these efforts haven’t yet clearly helped lower-income families, McShane said that the “first movers” in a newly reformed system “tend to be more risk-takers, which sort of comes with affluence.” For lower-income parents whose children have long just been assigned to a public school, he said, school choice is “a muscle that has to be learned.”

He acknowledged, though, that more still needs to be done to help students from less-affluent areas access private schools, especially in a sprawling state like Arizona. This could include providing larger vouchers based on students’ socioeconomic circumstances as well as working on the “supply side” of the system — developing new private schools in places where there aren’t many.

But the question remains whether quality private schools, interested in making a profit, will have any reason to build new locations in South or West Phoenix, where most parents can’t pay tuition beyond their $7,000 voucher. So far, in these areas of the city, the free market has mostly just provided strip-mall, storefront private schools as well as what are called microschools, with little on their websites that working parents can use to judge their curricula, quality or cost. (Private schools in Arizona aren’t obligated to make public any information about their performance.)

These schools might not be accredited. Their teachers might not be certified. They might close soon. They are certainly not the large, established, elite private schools of the American imagination.

While lower-income families are struggling to access or even learn about ways to use vouchers, wealthier parents enjoy a smoother path.

Affluent parents in the Phoenix area whose kids were already attending private school, for example, told ProPublica that they are now being sent webinars and other emailed advice — from the private school administrators to whom they are already paying tuition — on how to apply for vouchers to subsidize that tuition.

Erin Rotheram-Fuller, a mom in South Scottsdale who is sending her daughter to a private school using the ESA program, is also an Arizona State University associate professor of education. She said that the program has largely worked for her family, in part because she lives in an upper-middle-class area and there are quality schools serving her daughter’s needs that are relatively nearby. Moreover, she has been able to rely on word of mouth and help from her social circle, asking other ESA parents for advice about navigating logistical issues, like which documents to submit during the application process.

“As a parent, I’m grateful for it,” Rotheram-Fuller said of the program. “But there are several layers of barriers.”

“Parents near us can make so many more choices than other families who really need it,” she said.

The moms in South Phoenix agree.

Zavala said that another reason that she didn’t ultimately submit those forms to send her daughters to private school using vouchers was that what she could provide materially was less than what she predicted the other kids at the private school would have. She worried that her little girls, if not equipped with the latest cellphone, laptop and other indicators of wealth, would feel left out or be bullied.

Velasquez, meanwhile, wondered if she would be received in the same way at a private school as she is as a public school parent leader.

“Yes, there might be a nicer playground and basketball court, but would I be able to advocate for them?” she asked, referring to her children.

Dani Portillo, superintendent of the Roosevelt School District in South Phoenix, which these three mothers all send their children to, told ProPublica that ultimately “parents will speak by choosing our schools.” She said, “The idea that if they don’t go to a private school, they’re not giving their child the best — no, that’s false.”

These parents made a clear school choice of their own, Nuñez, Zavala and Velasquez said: to say no to vouchers.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

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'The state is not God': DeSantis paid educators to teach 'Christian nationalism' report says

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis last year recruited thousands of public school teachers and paid them thousands of dollars out of taxpayer funds to attend training on teaching what he called “civics,” but a report states the program focused on “the tenets of Christian nationalism,” and included at least one quote from the Christian bible.

“Training materials produced by the Florida Department of Education direct middle and high school teachers to indoctrinate students in the tenets of Christian nationalism, a right-wing effort to merge Christian and American identities,” Popular Information founder Judd Legum revealed in his exclusive report Tuesday.

“A three-day training course on civic education, conducted throughout Florida in the summer of 2023, included a presentation on the ‘Influences of the Judeo-Christian Tradition’ on the founding of the United States,” Legum writes. “According to speaker notes accompanying one slide, teachers were told that ‘Christianity challenged the notion that religion should be subservient to the goals of the state,’ and the same hierarchy is reflected in America’s founding documents. That slide quotes the Bible to assert that ‘[c]ivil government must be respected, but the state is not God.’ Teachers were told the same principle is embedded in the Declaration of Independence.”

Legum included a screenshot from the training that bears the logos of the Florida Department of Education and DeSantis’ “Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative.”

It reads in part: “‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ Matthew 22:21.”

“The next slide in the deck,” Legum continues, “quotes an article by Peter Lillback, the president of Westminster Theological Seminary and the founder of The Providence Forum, an organization that promotes and defends Christian nationalism. The group’s executive director, Jerry Newcombe, writes a weekly column for World Net Daily— a far-right site known for publishing hundreds of stories falsely suggesting Obama was a Muslim born in Africa.”

That slide “argues that there would be no freedom, no republic, and no constitution without religion. The speaker notes accompanying the slide emphasize that ‘the separation of Church and State did not mean the separation of God and government,’ and all the founders were ‘steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition.'”

In a March of 2023 press release, DeSantis’s office trumpeted: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis highlighted Florida’s continued commitment to expanding civics education in Florida schools and announced that the first 4,500 teachers have completed the Civics Seal of Excellence endorsement course and will receive a $3,000 bonus.”

The statement claimed the course was “at capacity with 20,000 teachers making their commitment to civics education, and there are additional 14,000 teachers on the waiting list for this first of a kind civics teacher professional development program.”

It also pointed to a 2022 program, saying “Florida’s Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative also included a three-day Civics Excellence teacher training course in the summer of 2022 for teachers to increase their knowledge of civics in addition to the creation of supplemental materials for civics lessons including the Civics Reading List and the Portraits of Patriotism video series to further student interaction with civics.”

Some teachers called that 2022 program’s teachings “cherry-picked,” NBC News (video below) reported at the time. Others were “shocked to learn what they were expected to teach their students.”

“They told us what to think and what our opinions were,” one teacher told NBC News, calling it “very unsettling.”

One slide in that program NBC News reported claimed it is a “misconception” that “The Founders desired strict separation of church and state and the Founders only wanted to protect freedom of worship.”

In 2022 The Washington Post reported, “New civics training for Florida public school teachers comes with a dose of Christian dogma, some teachers say, and they worry that it also sanitizes history and promotes inaccuracies.”

Watch that NBC News video below or at this link.

— (@)

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GOP bill awaiting DeSantis’ stamp is 'as an outgrowth of rising Christian nationalism': analysis

Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies in the GOP-controlled Florida State Legislature have been major allies of the Religious Right, pushing a socially conservative agenda in public schools. State lawmakers have passed a bill that would allow religious chaplains to offer students counseling in public schools, and the bills awaits DeSantis' signature.

In an opinion column published on March 17, MSNBC's Zeeshan Aleem argues that if DeSantis does sign the bill into law, it will be an egregious violation of the United States' separation of church and state.

The Religious Right and Christian nationalists have been claiming that there is no such thing as separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution, but the Constitution's First Amendment clearly states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The late Norman Lear's People for the American Way, over the years, has emphasized that while the U.S. promises freedom of religion, government has no business promoting one religion over another.

Aleem warns, "The emerging crusade to install school chaplains should be understood as an outgrowth of rising Christian nationalism, and an alarming threat to America’s students. It violates the spirit of the First Amendment for public schools to hire religious administrators who have the opportunity to indoctrinate students with their religious beliefs."

The MSNBC columnist notes that the Florida bill's "requirements for serving as a volunteer chaplain are virtually nonexistent."

"Public schools inviting chaplains onto campus raises obvious First Amendment questions," Aleem explains. "School districts will be picking and choosing religious figures to come onto campus to provide children with services that would typically be carried out by a school counselor — guidance on issues such as academics, relationships, mental health, trouble at home, bullying and future career ideas. But instead of drawing from education and training specific to counseling young people, chaplains would be drawing from their spiritual beliefs."

The columnist adds, "At the bare minimum, this means schools would be priming students to think of specific religions as an educational resource."

The "specific religions" part, according to Aleem, is important. Although Christian nationalists believe the U.S. is a "Christian nation," there is nothing in the Constitution that favors Christianity over Judaism, Islam, Hinduism or any other religion.

"Chaplains infiltrating public schools would constitute state-sponsored promotion of religion, in violation of the First Amendment's commitments to a secular state," Aleem writes. "In Florida's bill, parents would have to consent to allow their child to see such a cleric, but in some other states’ bills — including Texas’ policy — no consent is required."

Zeeshan Aleem's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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GOP nominee for NC public schools chief endorsed 'pay per view' execution of Obama: report

The Republican nominee to lead all of North Carolina’s 2500 public schools over 200 charter schools has said she would like a televised extra-judicial execution of Democratic former President Barack Obama for treason, and issued a call to assassinate then-President-elect Joe Biden as a traitor.

CNN’s KFile reports conservative activist Michele Morrow has “called public schools ‘socialism centers’ and ‘indoctrination centers.’” She is “a registered nurse and grassroots activist who homeschooled her children,” and “ran on a platform of supporting parental rights and opposing critical race theory.”

Please share this handy chart with friends and family as they head to the polls.\n\nLet them know that there is a REAL choice in the Superintendent of Public Instruction race. #nced #ncpol #SuperTuesday
— (@)

Morrow “has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats.”

In May of 2020, Morrow wrote on Twitter, “I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” in response, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck report, “to a user sharing a conspiracy theory who suggested sending Obama to prison at Guantanamo Bay.”

“I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death,” Morrow said of President Obama.

Also in May of 2020, Morrow “responded to a fake Time Magazine cover that featured art of Obama in an electric chair asking if he should be executed.”

“’Death to ALL traitors!!’ Morrow responded.”

Later that same year, in December, Morrow suggested killing President-Elect Joe Biden. In response to a social media post that asked, “Will you follow Joe Biden’s advice and wear a mask for 100 days?” Morrow replied: “Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica.”

NEW: Michele Marrow, the GOP nominee to run North Carolina\u2019s public schools and its $11 billion budget has repeatedly called for executing Democrats including Joe Biden and Barack Obama (who she said she wanted executed PPV on TV). \n\nhttps://t.co/jIKYqBQtNn
— (@)

CNN also reports between 2019 and 2021, “Morrow made disturbing suggestions about executing prominent Democrats for treason, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Clinton, Sen. Chuck Schumer and other prominent people such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.”

See the social media posts above or at this link.

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'Egregious': FL college sanctioned over DeSantis’ 'reign of terror'

The American Association of University Professors announced a "rare sanction" on Florida's New College Monday as a result of Governor Ron DeSantis' right-wing "takeover" of the state school last year, The Daily Beast reports.

Citing "egregious and extensive standards violations during its conservative takeover last year" by the failed GOP presidential candidate, the nonprofit wrote in its report the decision to sanction the school was due to "'unprecedented politically motivated takeover' that was a 'complete departure from shared governance.'"

Per the Beast, "The association said it publicly sanctions schools 'for the purpose of informing Association members, the profession at large, and the public that unsatisfactory conditions of academic government exist at the institutions in question.'"

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in October that at the start of the 2023-24 school year, Interim Provost Brad Thiessen confirmed "27% of the student body had decided not to return—or about 186 students" after the governor's takeover, which included appointing six new conservative board members.

"These actions have seriously impaired, if not irreparably damaged, the collective and individual functions of the New College faculty," a press release from the organization said.

Noting that New College's change in environment has sparked a mass exodus of professors as well, Florida A&M University law professor LeRoy Pernell said, “What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror. There is a tremendous sense of dread right now, not just among faculty; it’s tangible among students and staff as well. People are intellectually and physically scared. We are being named an enemy of the state."

The Daily Beast's full report is here (subscription required).

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Florida education board removes DEI, sociology course from colleges: report

As a part of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' ongoing culture wars, the Sunshine State's board of education on Wednesday approved rules that "will limit the use of public funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, activities, and policies, as well as remove a sociology class from a list of required courses" from the state's colleges, The Daily Beast reports.

Per the report, the general sociology course will be replaced by "an American history course at Florida's 28 state colleges."

Regarding the new class, "Education Commission Manny Diaz said Wednesday that while the sociology course would still be available, it would no longer be a general education course, because 'within the general education code, courses may not distort significant historical events or include curriculum that teaches identity politics or theories.'"

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Florida Department of Education, according to the Beast, issued a statement saying the revised course, called, "'Introductory Survey to 1877' will provide students an 'accurate and factual account of the nation’s past, rather than exposing them to radical woke ideologies, which had become commonplace in the now replaced course.'"

In October, The New Republic reported that as a result of DeSantis' education takeover, the University of South Florida's Sarasota campus saw "27 percent of its student body drop out" marking "the lowest retention rate of first year students" in the school's history.

The Daily Beast's full report is here (subscription required).

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GOP bill aims to expose librarians who indoctrinate kids — one says 'they would have to prove that I do'

Anxiety for many Arkansas librarians is at an all-time-high under new "state laws governing the availability of books and the sharing of ideas in schools," according to a Monday, January 1 report from News From The States.

Per the report, "Act 372 would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider 'obscene' or 'harmful to minors' — two terms that the law does not define — and put the availability of challenged books in the hands of elected officials.".

Another piece of legislation, called the LEARNS Act "prohibits 'indoctrination' of children in schools but does not define the term. Those who oppose 'indoctrination' in libraries and classrooms often cite LGBTQ+ topics and systemic racism as the information they do not want children to have."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Pulaski Heights Middle School librarian Brittani Brooks, however, isn't worried, and "is confident that none of the books in her library run afoul of the undefined terms in Act 372 and the LEARNS Act."

A December 1, 2023 report from News From The States noted "Eighteen plaintiffs sued the state in June over Act 372 of 2023," and"U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks temporarily blocked two sections" of the bill "in July, shortly before the law was scheduled to go into effect."

Now, the news outlet reports the suit "will go to trial in October 2024, but the unchallenged sections of the law are likely to remain up to interpretation regardless of whether" Judge Brooks "declares the challenged sections unconstitutional."

News From The States reports:

All school and public libraries already had procedures in place to handle book challenges before Act 372 was introduced this year. Brooks reminded the House Judiciary Committee that school libraries must have content reconsideration policies in order to be accredited by the state Department of Education.

She also said school librarians across Arkansas were removing books from shelves 'behind closed doors,' since other states have also passed policies limiting what topics can be shared or discussed in schools.

Brooks said, "One thing I always tell people is, 'We know we don't indoctrinate kids. We don’t,' she said. '…I’m not going to go around proving that I don’t. They would have to prove that I do."

She noted, "I think the unspoken intention [of the law and its supporters] was more about fear, miscommunication and self-censorship, and I think they’ve achieved that, and it’s only going to get worse in schools."

In his ruling, Judge Brooks wrote the "'lack of clarity seems to have been by design' in the blocked portion of Act 372 giving city or county elected officials the power to relocate library books," and that "by keeping the pivotal terms vague, local governing bodies have greater flexibility to assess a given challenge however they please rather than how the Constitution dictates."

News From The State's full report is here.

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Leonard Leo allies lead effort to establish publicly funded religious school

Oklahoma's newly approved religious charter school, which proponents hope will serve as the basis of a legal test case before the U.S. Supreme Court that could alter the principle of separation of church and state, is being boosted by a number of right-wing groups with ties to Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, according to new reporting—including a legal clinic with links to some of the high court's most conservative justices.

As Common Dreamsreported in July, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board earlier this year gave preliminary approval for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the country's first publicly funded religious school if it survives legal challenges. The school board also approved a contract with the institution in October.

Politico on Friday detailed groups that are aiding the effort to open St. Isidore, including a legal clinic at the University of Notre Dame that was announced shortly before Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed.

At the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative (RLI), law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett is representing St. Isidore in a case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which was initiated by state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond. The state argues that the establishment of St. Isidore violates both the Oklahoma and U.S. constitutions; the state requires charters schools to be nonsectarian by statute.

Since representing the school, Garnett has also joined the board of the right-wing Federalist Society, which has ties to the Supreme Court's conservative justices and which has helped reshape the federal court system, pushing for the confirmations of far-right judges.

Garnett is close personal friends with Barrett and has hosted Justice Clarence Thomas at her home in South Bend, while Brendan Wilson, a corporate attorney who joined the clinic's legal team in 2021, purchased Barrett's home for nearly $1 million around the time that the RLI began advocating for right-wing causes at the Supreme Court by filing amicus briefs.

That real estate deal drew scrutiny from ethics watchdogs earlier this year, as reports surfaced of Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito accepting luxury trips and other financial gifts from Republican donors.

The RLI also announced in 2020 that its director, Stephanie Barclay, would take a leave of absence to serve as a clerk for another conservative Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch—during the same period that the clinic was working with St. Isidore.

In 2022, the clinic funded a trip to Rome for Alito.

Paul Collins, a legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Politico that St. Isidore's work with the Leo-linked RLI shows that "the Christian conservative legal movement... has its fingerprints all over what's going on in Oklahoma."

"They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment," Collins told the outlet. "They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you're going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly."

A spokesperson for Leo declined to comment for Politico's article. A spokesperson for RLI declined to tell the outlet whether Barclay had been involved in work on behalf of St. Isidore before, during, or after she worked with Gorsuch, and whether Garnett and Wilson had discussed the school's case with any justices.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the right-wing group that has lobbied to curtail reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights through the courts, is representing the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, and counts among its financial benefactors the Donors Trust, a group that government watchdog Accountable.US called the "'Dark Money ATM' for Hate Groups" last month.

Leo's Judicial Education Project, which pushes for the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices and promoted views that deny the scientific consensus on climate change, has counted Donors Trust as its main beneficiary.

Peter Greene, a retired teacher and blogger who focuses on education issues, said the push for a publicly funded Christian school "has attracted all the usual Christianist power."

— (@)

Changing the Supreme Court's interpretation of separation of church and state, said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler, "has always been their goal."

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'Frightening' report sounds alarm on DeSantis’ threat to 'survival' of higher education: professor

A new report entitled "Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida's Public Higher Education System," produced by the American Association of University Professors, sounds the alarm on the "destruction" governor and 2024 GOP candidate Ron DeSantis "is inflicting upon his state's colleges and universities," according to a December 7 MSNBC op-ed by Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau.

"Reading through 'Political Interference,' the author of Campus Confidential: How College Works, and Doesn't, For Professors, Parents and Students writes, "I was struck by the staggering number and variety of extremist conservative missions that are being launched against higher education. These range from donors practicing what I call 'viewpoint philanthropy' (providing funding for partisan pet projects) to attempts by the Legislature to fund a 'Freedom Institute' whose academic goal, of course, would be to end 'cancel culture.'" He emphasizes, "This air, land and sea invasion of Florida's campuses entails lawsuits, legislative skulduggery and hostile takeovers of boards and committees."

Berlinerblau emphasizes, "The study — which will dismay professors, students and parents alike — concludes with an ominous warning about mounting authoritarian threats to scholars across the globe."

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The report reads:

'We call on all professional organizations, unions, faculty, students, staff, administrators, and communities across the country to fight such ‘reforms’ tooth and nail and to offer support to colleagues and unions in Florida and beyond, however they can. The survival of the institution of higher education free from political interference and the ideological agenda of autocrats—a cornerstone of democratic societies—hangs in the balance. Being a bystander is no longer an option.'

Berlinerblau notes the "lengthy, meticulously researched" report's "pages are populated with incidents and characters that seem spun from a campus novel, a genre of fiction that lampoons the extreme dysfunction of the frisbee-strewn quad. Unintentionally, the AAUP's report illuminates DeSantis' role as a comedy content creator."

The "consequences" of the governor's takeover, the professor adds, "are now evident," as over 40 percent of the state's New College faculty has quit this year. He emphasizes, "At other state schools, 'professors are leaving the state in droves, either retiring or accepting offers in other states [...] Many are leaving the state, often to take positions at less prestigious institutions with more onerous teaching loads.'"

Noting that "Republicans are not only good at dismantling democratic institutions, but enriching themselves in the process," Beerlinderblau writes, "'Political Interference' exposes how GOP patronage networks are filling in the gaps created by DeSantis' purges. It should come as no surprise then that sitting on one New College presidential search committee was Bridget Ziegler, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty (whose husband has been accused of rape, allegations he has denied)."

Berlinerblau's full op-ed is here.

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An Ohio college secretly picks 'election-denying' GOP rep as new leader despite 'resounding boos'

Students, faculty and community members are calling on Youngstown State University's board of trustees to reverse its "secretive" decision to select US Representative Bill Johnson (R-OH) as its next president during an unexpected "emergency meeting," The Daily Beast reports.

Per the report, the board's 8-1 vote went against "resounding boos and shouts of 'Shame!'" in response to the right-wing lawmaker's "anti-abortion, election-denying, [ex-President Donald] Trump-endorsing" reputation.

"Everybody's got their hair on fire because they think I’m going to bring my politics here," Johnson said during a November press conference, according to the Daily Beast. "But if everybody else is allowed to bring their politics and ideology here and I'm not, how is that fair?"

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The report notes he also recently told local CBS affiliate WKBN, "People say that I'm this, that, or the other, and there's no foundation of truth in any of that. If they would just sit down and talk to me first, and then draw their conclusion, I think we'd be a lot further down the road."

However, YSU board member Molly Seals, who voted against the congressman, told The Daily Beast that she's "gravely concerned about the way Johnson talks about 'liberal' indoctrination on college campuses being responsible for declining enrollment, and hears echoes of 'some of the language and words we've heard in… political agendas' when he speaks."

She added, "What I as a board member would like to see is a step back, and to go through this process again in an appropriate way," because according to Seals, "the community response has been 'very significant,'" as "alumni, students, past board members and trustees" believe Johnson was selected "for other [reasons] than what is in the best interest of the university."

The Beast notes, "The optics didn't help: three trustees appointed by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine had given tens of thousands of dollars to Johnson's congressional campaigns, and the entire affair to this point had been conducted almost completely behind closed doors."

Top university donors, according to the report, have already "pulled their financial support in response" to the GOP lawmaker's appointment, "and actor and YSU alum Ed O'Neill, star of the classic sitcom Married… with Children,has vowed to return the honorary doctorate the university awarded him in 2013."

Additionally, "A group of YSU alumni, including the university's only Rhodes Scholar, penned an open letter asking the trustees to revisit the procedure and conduct a more transparent search for a new president. And although it garnered more than 2,000 signatures, as did a petition on Change.org, the request for trustees to revisit the procedure and conduct a transparent search for a new president has so far fallen on deaf ears."

The Beast emphasizes, as "one of the largest employers in the area," a drop in YSU's donations could significantly "depress the wider regional economy."

Seals told the news outlet, "I wish I knew what would happen next. I don't know what will happen next."

The Daily Beast's full report is available here (subscription required).

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'Does America need more God?': Mike Johnson laments LGBTQ high school kids

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is promoting his far-Christian right beliefs in his latest fundraising email, which asks, “Does America Need More God, Patriot?”

Johnson, who last year was the lead sponsor of a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill, lamented in his email that an increasing number of high school students identify as LGBTQ+. He also claimed “America is hanging on by a thread,” “I fear America may be beyond redemption,” and said, “we live in a depraved culture.”

“I’m uneasy, Patriot,” Johnson’s email, sent via the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), begins, as Insider reported. (Google cache copy here.) “This is Speaker Mike Johnson, and I just had to send this email. I’ve been thinking about the state of our country, and I cannot conclude anything other than America is hanging on by a thread. Our culture has fallen so far since the founding of our country, and it’s just getting worse.”

“Just consider the frightening drop in church attendance over the past several decades,” he continues. “1 in 4 high school students identifies as something other than straight- what are they being taught in school? God is mocked openly in the public square. And you don’t even want to see the filth that passes for popular culture these days.”

“Let’s face it- we live in a depraved culture. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but I fear God may allow our nation to enter into a time of judgment for our collective sins.”

Insider points to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that it says finds “25.7% of high school students do not identify as straight, with 3.2% identifying as gay or lesbian, 11.9% identifying as bisexual, and 9% identifying as something else, or questioning.” Insider adds, “it’s been no secret that Johnson is an evangelical conservative who has previously supported the criminalization of gay sex.”

Johnson has spent a large portion of his career pursuing an anti-LGBTQ agenda.

The Daily Beast on Tuesday revealed that before Johnson was elected to Congress, his “ardent religious beliefs and Christian nationalist ideology brought him to serve, often for free, clients affiliated with some of the nation’s most extreme anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ groups in the country—including agitators connected to militant movements with a penchant for violent expression.”

The news outlet examined Johnson’s legal clients from his time as a Louisiana attorney who later worked for a far-Christian right organization now designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. That “review turned up one former Johnson client who said the government ‘should be a terror’ to abortion providers and the LGBTQ community.”

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Is the white working class ready to trade in some of their whiteness?

One of the major narratives about working-class white Americans - white people without college degrees - has been that they vote against their economic interests. They have shifted to the right since the mid-1990s and support policies that may preserve their cultural identity but do little to address their economic downslide. Restricting abortion is a winning issue with them, but not raising the minimum wage. Banning critical race theory is a top priority, but not universal health care.

Consider Barack Obama’s infamous 2008 remarks about Midwestern working-class voters: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I imagine that Obama regrets the language used here. But I believe he was essentially correct. Midwestern working-class voters (implied here is that the voters are white) are struggling economically, and instead of pushing their representatives to address those economic concerns, they turn their attention to issues of culture and identity.

In the 2016 election, for example, data suggests that “fears about immigrants and cultural displacement were more powerful factors than economic concerns in predicting support for Trump among white working-class voters.”

In a prior piece of mine, I described the (white) American story. Let me repeat it here:

America is a unique 'city on a hill' founded on Christian faith and Western principles. Husband-led nuclear families, given the freedom to farm and build businesses, spread out across this land and turned it into the greatest nation on earth. There have been some injustices along the way, but Americans have corrected those mistakes. The history of the United States is primarily one of economic, scientific, and moral progress. You succeed based on what you and your family can do. Social support from the government is unnecessary, and 'isms' like racism or sexism are so rare as to be unworthy of mention.

This is what working-class Americans are trying to preserve, trying to remake. And they voted for a president in the last two elections who promised to do just that.

This story does not explicitly mention race. But the brush strokes of Christian faith, western principles, rejection of government assistance for the disadvantaged, and a rejection of racism paint that picture clearly.

Conservative working-class white Americans are voting for their racial identity instead of class identity. These are the “wages of whiteness,” described by sociologist WEB Du Bois.

Whiteness wages

Du Bois was a Black sociologist working in the late 19th and early 20th century, and a co-founder of the NAACP. He put forth an explanation as to how wealthy whites in the south convinced poor southern whites to vote against their economic interests. Du Bois argued that whiteness was a form of compensation – a benefit of being a member of the dominant racial group. Poor white people voted for the identity of being white, and the status and privileges that go along with it.

And so, as Joshua Zeitz wrote in his excellent piece:

In most Southern states, poor whites and wealthy whites forged a coalition that overthrew biracial Reconstruction governments and passed a raft of laws that greatly benefited plantation and emerging industrial elites at the expense of small landowners, tenant farmers and factory workers.

Zeitz goes on to argue that Trump voters in 2016 were voting for their racial identity. As Thomas Frank opined in his 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, in which he chronicled the rightward shift of the white working class in the state in which he grew up.

But there is some evidence now that the white working class is willing to trade in “some” of those whiteness wages for actual economic ones.

Trading in the wages of whiteness

In a recent episode of the PBS show Firing Line, host Margaret Hoover interviewed Matthew Continetti, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. The interview was about Continetti’s recent book, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.

In the interview, Continetti mentioned some facts I was aware of, but never considered seriously. He points out that white college degree holders have fled the Republican Party. The trend that Continetti points out, this “diploma divide,” has been ongoing since at least the 2000 presidential election and has been discussed in many outlets.

But Continetti draws a reasonable conclusion that less educated - and presumably less economically well-off - voters in the Republican Party will be less concerned with the traditional Republican issues of limiting government and entitlement reform. Instead, he says, they will want those entitlements. They are going to want their Medicare and social security. And some polls suggest that they are beginning to want universal health care, with disapproval among Republicans as a whole declining.

This dynamic will play out most among older voters.

Economic necessity will compel this group to include in their “City on a Hill” appearances from Uncle Sam. If Continetti is right, then the well-worn strategy by GOP leaders of tying entitlements to people of color, and instead urging their poorer constituents to vote for tax cuts that favor “job creators” (read: the wealthy) may fall flat.

This would be a remarkable change, as so much of whiteness has been connected to rejecting government assistance, even as that assistance can save lives. The paradigmatic work on this phenomenon is Jonathan Metzl’s Dying of Whiteness.

Moreover, white working-class millennials are more secular and liberal than their older counterparts. They are also less likely to identify as conservative, even as they vote Republican. This looks like the makings of a different cohort of white working-class voters, with profound consequences in the future.

Some have made the argument that these changes among younger white working-class voters will lead to them abandoning the GOP and embracing progressive causes.

I am not ready to go that far. But at least this group, being more secular and liberal, is rejecting the white Christian nationalist focus currently dominating the party. This rejection may occur even as they continue to embrace fiscal conservatism. In other words, this is a pro-business and pro-small government voter who is not as eager to organize their politics so tightly around whiteness and the platforming of white Christian heterosexual norms.

They won’t be freaked out about the growing presence of queer persons in society. They won’t have an irrational stance towards immigration where they imagine a viable wall can be built stretching across our southern border, keeping out a brown horde they imagined. They won’t be so keen on passing draconian abortion laws. If another Black person is again elected president, it won’t suggest to them that they are losing “their” country.

Trends suggest that younger white working-class Americans, as well as their older counterparts, are willing to trade in some of their wages of whiteness for real economic benefits.

This has the potential to improve the economic fortunes of all Americans.

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'Evades me': Lawmaker won’t answer if feeding low-income students is 'just a good thing?'

Tennessee Republican state Rep. John Ragan repeatedly appeared unwilling or unable to answer if feeding low-income children is in itself good, when questioned about his remarks suggesting federal funds used to feed low-income children should be refused if they cannot be shown to improve the students’ performance.

Eight lawmakers appointed to the state’s newly-created Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding have been tasked by the Speaker of the House and Lt. Governor, both Republicans, to find a way to reject at least $1.8 billion in federal funds for education. Tennessee would be the first state in the nation to do so.

“Is there any circumstance where feeding low income kids would be a bad thing?” Rep. Ragan was asked Wednesday by The Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site founded by former Democratic congressional candidate Justin Kanew.

After pausing, Ragan replied, “I’m sorry, the purpose of your question evades me.”

Ragan was also asked, “Don’t you think feeding kids is good in general?”

“I’m sorry, that’s nothing to do with what I asked about” earlier in the week, the Republican lawmaker replied.

But as The Tennessee Holler shows in the video below, Ragan questioned if taking federal funds was worthwhile if students’ performance did not increase.

“We get this money, that’s supposedly aimed at the most needy students and the lowest performing students. What’s the measure of improvement for this money coming in? How much has it improved the performance of these students?” Ragan had said on Tuesday.

Later in the video, the lawmaker was asked, “what is the emphasis on school lunches then if not, you know, tying food to student performance, then, where do your questions around the lunches come from?”

Ragan, appearing to answer that question, says: “The question revolves around the tie was brought up today among federal funding sources, whether or not one is tied to another, whether or not we have efficiencies in one that can be transported across to another one, or inefficiencies, inefficiencies that can be resolved.”

Again, asked, “Isn’t feeding low income kids just a good thing period?” Rep. Ragan refused to answer the question directly, but pivoted to “data.”

“The reason I asked the question” about performance, Ragan replied, “was to gain data so that we had a feel for how much money goes into that program and if we can make it more efficient, that is to say, eliminate waste – you ignored the questions I asked about waste – if we can eliminate waste, I would take that money and put it towards one of the other programs to make more, and or increase the program. You can’t segregate those things apart. When I ask for data it’s to be able to make decisions, analyze the data.”

“The implications you raised over questions are meaningless because the questions are to get information,” Ragan concluded.

Watch The Tennessee Holler’s video below or at this link.

— (@)

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Tennessee Republican argues federal funds to feed schoolchildren should be performance-tested

A Tennessee Republican state lawmaker is arguing federal funds to feed school children from low-income families should not be accepted unless it can be proven that the program will increase test scores.

GOP Rep. John Ragan, who has a history of targeting school students from low-income households, told the legislature’s Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding he was concerned about “tying ourselves to the federal government,” and inquired about the amount of “waste” in the federal program, according to a video clip posted by The Tennessee Holler. The Working Group’s purpose is to determine how the State of Tennessee can reject $1.8 billion in federal education funds.

“The question that is, in the top of my mind, is how – we get this money that’s supposedly aimed at the most needy students and the lowest performing students. What’s the measure of improvement? For this money coming in? How much has it improved the performance of these students?

Rep. Ragan also claimed, “if we are tying ourselves to the federal government by accepting their money to do this thing, then it would seem to me that we as a state should be looking for the improvements that this money is purportedly going to make. Otherwise we’re just throwing money at something and being potentially wasteful.”

“Yesterday,” Ragan continued, referring to a prior meeting, “a question was addressed concerning the nutrition program related to the waste that’s involved in that. To my knowledge, there is no measurement of that waste.”

Tennessee is exploring becoming the first state in the nation to reject $1.8 billion in federal education funding.

The Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding was appointed by embattled House Republican Speaker Cameron Sexton and Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, and is comprised of six Republicans and two Democrats from both the House and Senate.

Its purpose is to “review what funding state and local governments in Tennessee receive from the federal government, how the funding is used, whether the state could provide the same services, and whether it would be feasible to reject the funds,” according to The Tennessean. “Tennessee receives $1.8 billion in Title I, IDEA, and other federal program funding each year, which support low-income students, students with disabilities, and school lunch programs.”

But The Tennessean also reports the Working Group’s members have been tasked not with whether to reject the funds, but “with recommending a strategy for how to reject the federal funds.”

Democratic Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is running to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), was the target of Speaker Sexton who tried but failed to expel her earlier this year from the legislature. (Sexton successfully had expelled two Black Democrats, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who later were returned to the legislature by voters.)

Responding to the video clip of Rep. Ragan, Johnson, a retired special education teacher, wrote on social media: “Sure, because how do we know kids with food in their bellies perform better? (there is research for that.) How do we know kids with speech problems improve w/speech therapy? (Research for that too.) Guess 7 yr olds need to prove to him they’re working for those meals.”

In 2020 Rep. Ragan targeted school students whose families were behind on paying their lunch bills. Ragan’s amendment, which passed the House according to The Tennessean, “Allows schools to deny students who don’t qualify for free or reduced lunch the opportunity to participate in school events and activities, to graduate, or to receive a diploma if they don’t use their own work money to pay off the lunch debt.”

It also “Requires schools to tell parents and guardians they may be reported to the Department of Children’s Services for investigation of child abuse or neglect related to the accumulation of meal debt,” and “Removes the word ‘stigmatize’ from the line saying schools shall not ‘publicly identify or stigmatize a student who cannot pay for a meal.'”

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'It’s a serious crime': Moms for Liberty school board hopeful urges police to probe and arrest librarian

A Florida woman is calling for police to investigate and arrest a librarian over a young adult novel, Miami New Times reports.

Per the report, right-wing group Moms for Liberty member Jennifer Tapley, a 2024 Santa Rosa County school board candidate, "tells officers that a school librarian kept the contested literature on the shelves at Jay High School despite complaints about its content."

In body cam footage from October 25, which Popular Information journalist Jedd Legum obtained and published to YouTube, Tapley can be seen talking to an officer in the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office lobby saying, "The governor says this is child pornography. It's a serious crime...just as serious as if I handed a Playboy to her right now, right here, in front of you," as she points to a girl standing next to her.

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The newspaper notes "according to a Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office report obtained by Legum through a public records request, the sheriff's office quickly referred Tapley's report to the Santa Rosa County School District before closing its case."

In the video, the officer can also be seen exiting the sheriff's office after engaging with Lapley, and then speaking with a fellow officer in the parking lot, telling him, "Now look at this law.... It's not our thing, it's a school district thing. They're saying that a crime has been committed...is being committed in all of these schools."

The other officer then brushes off the claim with a smirk.

According to the report, "HB 1069, a 2023 Florida law cited by Tapley in her meeting with deputies, requires public schools to remove a book within five days of receiving a challenge if the challenger claims the book has pornographic or sexual content. The book has to stay out of circulation until the challenge is resolved."

Miami New Times reports:

The book in question is Storm and Fury, a popular young adult novel by Jennifer L. Armentrout that features an 18-year-old main character and a battle between gargoyles and demons. It includes several passages with sexual themes, including one makeout session that almost escalates to sex. Barnes and Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. While the school district’s website has a list of challenged books, Legum notes that he did not locate Storm and Fury among them.

The newspaper notes, "As previously reported by New Times, Florida was recently named the number one state in the country for school book bans."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Members of Moms for Liberty in Florida report Librarians to Policeyoutu.be

Miami New Times' full report is available at this link.

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'Like nothing I’ve ever seen': How education is fueling Pennsylvania’s 'most high-stakes election' yet

Education experts are lauding Pennsylvania's upcoming school board elections as the most critical the state has seen in years, Politico reports.

"This campaign is like nothing I've ever seen," ex-Republican and Central Bucks incumbent board member Karen Smith told the news outlet. "I have 50 volunteers who are doing everything from door knocking, to making phone calls, to making signs. The amount of money that’s being spent on this race, the amount of volunteerism is like nothing we've ever seen here before. But then the negativity, the vitriol, the intensity, and the lying is like nothing I’ve ever seen or could have imagined."

Politico reports:

A venture capitalist put up hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend conservative control of his hometown Philadelphia-area board and support other school campaigns. A Republican political committee is supporting candidates in Cumberland County, a red-leaning area west of Harrisburg where Democrats made gains during recent gubernatorial and presidential elections.

Local chapters of Moms for Liberty, a national group that's grown into the biggest name in Republican school politics, and the conservative 1776 Project PAC have endorsed candidates in counties throughout the state.

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Additionally, the report notes "A recent Brookings Institution analysis concluded Pennsylvania was one of Moms for Liberty’s biggest strongholds outside of Florida and New York, following the group's raucous summertime rally with GOP presidential candidates in Philadelphia."

Nonpartisan group Education Voters of Pennsylvania Executive Director Susan Spicka told Politico, "For children in Pennsylvania, this is the most high-stakes election of their entire lives. Because once you get five people on a school board who are going to operate as a bloc, they can do pretty much anything they want."

However, a local GOP operative told Politico they worry that "some board candidates are running their races in an overly partisan way."

Former Moms for Liberty Pennsylvania state coordinator Lois Kaneshiki said she doesn't think the school board campaigns "should be run like a state house or a state senate campaign."

She added, "If you run them too partisan, you're going to lose. You've got to run them differently, and the left understands this. They are very good at it, and I would say we are not."

Still, Stephen Mass, the GOP school board candidate running again Smith told Politico, "The bad part is we get riled up a little bit too much. I don't know why it's gotten that vicious. The good part is people are paying attention. They should be. It's unfortunate that it's come with a lot of real negativity and divisiveness."

Progressive Change Campaign Committee director of candidate services Hannah Riddle told the news outlet, "We'll learn a lot from Pennsylvania. We'll learn a lot not just on what to expect in school board races next year, but what to expect up and down the ticket as well."

Politico's full report is available at this link.

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A Texas billionaire’s associates are trying to sink a school tax election via their dark money nonprofit

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Allies of influential Texas billionaire Tim Dunn are pushing ahead in Austin with efforts to create a private-school voucher system that could weaken public schools across the state. Meanwhile, Dunn’s associates in his hometown of Midland are working to defeat a local school bond proposal that his district says it desperately needs.

Dunn, an evangelical Christian, is best known for a mostly successful two-decade effort to push the Texas GOP ever further to the right. His political action committees have spent millions to elect pro-voucher candidates and derail Republicans who oppose them. Defend Texas Liberty, the influential PAC he funds with other West Texas oil barons, has come under fire after The Texas Tribune revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes for an October meeting and that the organization has connections to other white nationalists.

Less known are Dunn’s efforts to shape politics in his hometown of Midland, which will come to a head next week. On Tuesday, residents in the Midland Independent School District will vote on a $1.4 billion bond, the largest in its history, after rejecting a smaller measure four years ago. A dark-money organization whose leaders have ties to Dunn’s Midland oil and gas company, as well as to a prominent conservative public policy organization where Dunn serves as vice chairman, have become among the loudest voices against the bond.

On Sept. 21, less than two months before the Midland bond election, three Midland residents with deep connections to Dunn and his associated public policy organization registered a “social welfare” nonprofit called Move Midland.

The nonprofit is headed by Rachel Walker, a public affairs manager for Dunn’s oil and gas company, CrownQuest Operating LLC, according to public records. A second member, Ernest Angelo, is a former Midland mayor and board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that Dunn has helped lead for more than two decades. The third member of the nonprofit’s board is Elizabeth Moore, a former West Texas development officer for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Within weeks, the nascent nonprofit had a website, campaign signs and a social media presence as its directors appeared on local radio shows and in community debates to oppose the bond. In the local newspaper, another former mayor urged residents to visit Move Midland’s website for insights about the election. That former mayor, Mike Canon, had run for the Texas Senate in 2018 to unseat Kel Seliger, a prominent Republican who opposed vouchers. Another PAC funded by Dunn, Empower Texans, provided the bulk of his war chest, nearly $350,000, in a losing effort.

Move Midland and its directors have not called attention to their relationship to Dunn and his entities in public appearances. Biographies of the three directors on the nonprofit’s website make no mention of Dunn, CrownQuest or the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Dunn serves as vice chair of the board.

Walker and other members of the group did not respond to voice messages, emails, Facebook messages or requests made through the Move Midland website.

Dunn likewise did not respond to specific questions regarding the Midland bond and the role of his various entities. Defend Texas Liberty has condemned Fuentes’ “incendiary” views and replaced its president, but has not provided any details about its association with the white nationalist. Dunn has reportedly called the PAC’s meeting with Fuentes a “serious blunder.”

During a debate hosted by the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Walker said that the group is “more than just me. There is a group of informed and involved Midlanders involved in this organization. And we have every right to speak on this issue, because we are taxpaying citizens, just as the rest of the involved and informed community does.”

Walker has said that the group would be open to a scaled-down version of the bond in the future, but that should come when “our taxpayers feel like they have trust in the system, and right now, they just have an overwhelming distrust of how MISD is spending their tax dollars,” she told Marfa Public Radio.

Because Move Midland was formed as a nonprofit and not a political action committee, it is not required to disclose the sources of its funding. Organizations that engage in campaign activity but don’t disclose where their money comes from are typically considered “dark money” entities. A small number of states, including New York and Connecticut, require disclosure of donors who contribute to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that engage in lobbying or make political contributions.

The IRS allows such nonprofits to shield the identities of donors as long as political activity doesn’t constitute the group’s primary activity, though it rarely takes action against nonprofits that violate its rules.

According to its website, Move Midland is “dedicated to making Midland better” and plans to tackle various community issues. The bond election represents the group’s “current area of focus.”

Bond supporters, including a large chunk of the Midland energy sector, say it is crucial to relieving overcrowding and modernizing outdated facilities.

Supporters also have raised questions about the timing of Move Midland’s creation and expressed frustration that its donors are shielded from public view, unlike funders of traditional PACs.

“It seems disingenuous and also unfair and very odd that you would not disclose who’s behind it when as a PAC, they would have to,” said Josh Ham, a volunteer with the pro-bond PAC Energize Midland Schools.

Texas Ethics Commission records show the Energize Midland PAC has received more than $530,000 in contributions, most of it coming from Midland energy companies, which hail the election as an opportunity to cultivate a more robust labor force.

That far outstrips the $10,252 raised by Midlanders for Excellence in Education, a local PAC that opposes the bond. According to campaign finance reports, Midlanders for Excellence in Education has used much of that money to pay for signs and radio advertising.

Walker, the Move Midland leader, reported spending $33,432 to oppose the bond, including payments for direct mailings, text messages and yard signs. Texas law requires nonprofits that engage in independent campaign activity to disclose campaign-related expenditures to the state, but like the federal government, it does not require such groups to disclose the source of their funding. It is unclear if Dunn has given money directly to the group.

Ham said that he does not know who is funding Move Midland, but that its sudden appearance after two years of bond planning makes him question the motivation behind the effort. “To have someone just come along overnight and pop up with just a couple of talking points and with no real support is disappointing,” he said.

Dunn has not been quiet about his concerns over the bond. In an Oct. 15 commentary in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Dunn accused bond supporters of not being forthcoming with voters about the bond’s tax impact. The district says the bond won’t raise tax rates because the new rates adopted in September were set lower than the previous year’s and included the bond’s impact. Dunn argued that the bond will soak up the $18 million in statewide property tax relief recently approved by the Legislature and that tax rates would be even lower if not for the bond.

While Dunn’s oil companies operate in multiple states, they control mineral properties that, combined, owed more than $1.3 million in estimated property taxes to the school district for 2023.

Dunn called claims that the bond won’t result in a tax rate increase “somewhere between materially misleading and factually false.”

In fact, Dunn noted, the actual ballot language Midlanders will find when they go to the polls will include the clause, “This is a property tax increase.”

Public policy organizations connected with Dunn played a central role in ensuring that the phrase is attached to every single school bond ballot measure in the state, regardless of the bond measure’s actual impact on local taxes.

The phrase, tucked into a 308-page bill in 2019, didn’t make headlines at the time, but those six words have since had an outsize impact on school bond passage rates. According to Dax Gonzalez, director of governmental relations at the Texas Association of School Boards, the phrase is at least partly responsible for the decline in school bond passage rates in subsequent years.

From 2000 to May 2019, about 75% of all school bond proposals passed, according to data from the state’s Bond Review Board. That passage rate has dipped to 64% since November 2019, which bond supporters have attributed to the new ballot language and pandemic-related worries. In elections this past May, that number rebounded to 78%.

“I really do believe that the sole purpose of that language is to decrease the amount of bonds that pass,” said Gonzalez.

Earlier this year, Dunn-backed entities marshaled opposition to attempts favored by public education supporters to give districts more flexibility in the required ballot language in cases where bonds don’t result in tax rate increases. None of the bills made it out of committee.

Dunn has weighed in on local Midland politics before. In 2019, Dunn cast doubts on the Midland school district’s $569 million bond proposal in an op-ed in the local newspaper in which he wondered whether school district officials were “sufficiently committed” to improving the quality of students’ education.

Although officials initially announced the bond had passed on election night, the bond proposal ultimately lost by 26 votes after Midland County election workers discovered a box of unopened ballots weeks after the election.

A few months later, Dunn threw his support behind a sales tax increase for the Midland County Hospital District, explaining in a newspaper column that “high property taxes violate a founding principle of America: private property ownership.”

Sales taxes, Dunn argued, “are the only broad-based, transparent and optional forms of taxation.”

The sales tax increase passed handily in July 2020.

A shift from property taxes to sales taxes at the state level has long been a goal of the various public policy organizations associated with Dunn. According to Texas Comptroller estimates analyzed by the Tribune, sales tax increases cost poor Texans more than wealthier ones, making it a regressive tax.

For some bond supporters, Dunn’s opposition to the current bond proposal is a reflection of his embrace of vouchers for private schools.

“Having a vested interest in a private school, while politically funding an agenda that includes private school vouchers, appears to present a pretty clear conflict of interest for Tim Dunn,” said Reagan Hignojos, a former Midland school board candidate and bond supporter. “These private schools would not be held accountable or be transparent by the same standards of public schools.”

Dunn is the founder of Midland Classical Academy, a private school that offers its approximately 600 K-12 students a “Classical Education from a Biblical Worldview,” according to its website. The school explains that through this lens, “human civilization is rightly understood to have begun in the garden with Adam and Eve.” The school believes in interpreting the Bible in its literal sense, which it takes to mean that marriage can only be between a man and woman and that there are only two genders.

Dunn’s school is currently unaccredited, however, according to data provided by the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. Under legislation proposed by Texas lawmakers, including several state senators who have received campaign funding from Dunn and his associated PACs, private schools would need accreditation to be eligible for taxpayer dollars.

Dunn has not weighed in on whether his school would pursue voucher payments, and in 2014 he explained the lack of accreditation, writing that the requirements “deal mainly with processes and credentials rather than focusing on an excellent academic and student life opportunity.”

The school did not respond to questions about any potential accreditation or voucher plans.

According to its 2021 IRS filing, the most recent available, the school had $10.4 million in total assets and revenue of $6.3 million, a 66% percent increase compared to what it earned in 2020.

Dunn and his family own five million-dollar homes on land adjacent to Midland Classical Academy, where property taxes go to Midland ISD.

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Florida newspaper rips DeSantis’ blatant 'cronyism'

Gov. Ron DeSantis has made a concerted effort to give the New College of Florida — a liberal artists institution in Sarasota — a MAGA makeover, much to the chagrin of progressive New College students and professors.

In an editorial published on October 26, the South Florida Sun Sentinel's editorial board slams DeSantis' college and university policies — focusing on the "cronyism" involved in some trustee appointments. Some of DeSantis' allies, the board complains, don't even live in Florida.

"Working remotely has become immensely popular since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is ridiculous that two of the University of Florida's new highest-ranking and highest-paid officers will continue to reside in the Washington, D.C. area, some 775 miles from Gainesville," the Sun Sentinel writers explain. "UF President Ben Sasse, himself a former Washington insider, has made himself an avatar of cronyism by appointing those people, who worked for him when he was a U.S. senator from Nebraska. Cronyism is flourishing in Florida."

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

The board continues, "Two of New College's new right-wing trustees have never lived in the state, and its new permanent president, Richard Corcoran, is a former (Florida) House speaker who passed on running for governor in 2018 — leaving room for Ron DeSantis, who appointed him commissioner of education once Corcoran was term-limited out of the (Florida State) Legislature two years later."

Conservative former Sen. Sasse (R-Nebraska) isn't known for having ultra-MAGA views. In fact, he has been vehemently of former President Donald Trump at times. And when Sasse chose academia over the U.S. Senate and successfully applied for the position of University of Florida president, it showed how uncomfortable he was with Trumpism.

But Sasse, as UF president, is drawing criticism for "cronyism" along with DeSantis.

The Sun Sentinel's editorial board notes, "Raymond Sass, who was Sasse's Senate chief of staff, is UF's vice president for innovation and partnerships, a new position…. (Sass) won't have to reside at the university to do it. Sass will work remotely from Maryland, the (Independent Florida) Alligator said."

Read The South Florida Sun Sentinel's full editorial at this link (subscription required).

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