by Susan Van Gelder

The past year of battles in defense of public and higher education leads us to focus on ideas which restore principles and practices for genuine human and social growth. Those struggles and the plans for education outlined in Project 2025 have sparked resistance and visions of education for the free development of humanity, rather than for profit and the suppression of human potential.

Every level of education in America, pre-K through PhD, was under MAGA attack in 2025—from funding cuts which closed Headstart programs to universities pressured to eliminate DEI or lose research funds. The plethora of rightist philosophy-motivated administration moves against higher education, state and local K-12 school districts and even individual teachers, staff, parents and students shows how Trumpism works to instill fascism and Christian Nationalism from the cradle on up.

Local schools and educators now suffer in a landscape of withheld funds and a parents’ rights movement geared up for miseducating their own children and ruthlessly wresting control in school board elections. Parents and politicians who ban books and micromanage curricula aim to force teachers to disregard inconvenient evidence-based facts in history, science and literature. Educators, schools, school districts and states face punishment if they fail to follow politically re-written curricula or resist restrictions even on what they write, post or say outside of school.

WEAPONIZED POLITICS

In December, University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky appealed her zero grade on a class paper. Mel Curth, her instructor, a psychology graduate teaching assistant, wrote: “Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs…[but for] a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive…

“You are entitled to your own personal beliefs… I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses…” Another instructor wrote: “This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment… in an academic course you support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning.”

Fulnecky appealed, not through the Psychology Department but by contacting Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, University of Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz Jr. and the right-wing Teacher Freedom Alliance. Pressure was applied to the university administration, who fired Curth in January. Curth is appealing her dismissal.

SABOTAGE TO A SCHOOL BOARD

Last year in Gardiner, Maine, as officials considered a grant to open a health clinic at the high school, some parents’ rights groups spread false information that it would provide puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to Trans students. The proposal soon became a flashpoint for locals and out-of-state conservative activists who harassed school board members and anyone else who supported the clinic.

One well known right-wing activist, Alvin Lui of Gardiner, Indiana, runs “Courage Is a Habit,” which recently raised $200,000, mostly for his salary. A student leader learned that Lui posted her mother’s work email and phone number online and sent her employer a threatening email over her support of the health clinic.

A six-month Kennebec Journal/Centralmaine.com investigation found that this was part of a larger, widespread effort to remake public education by funneling millions of dollars from prominent Republican donors to conservative influencers, activists and local politicians in towns around the country.

“After conducting dozens of interviews, viewing hundreds of hours of school board testimony and sorting through thousands of pages of records,” they found:

• National groups, some linked to major conservative donors and policymakers, have aided a coordinated effort to stack Maine school boards with conservative candidates who support religious learning and oppose pro-LGBTQ+ and diversity policies.
  
• “An active network of conservative outlets, social media groups and influencers draw outsized attention to hot-button issues like diversity and transgender rights, encouraging local resistance and amplifying fights…
  
• “Once conservative candidates win seats on school boards, they are instructed to intentionally stir up chaos and disrupt the district’s work.” Community members who oppose them have faced harassment. Experts say all this undermines trust in the public education system and that “a clear link exists between Christian nationalism and parents’ rights organizations.”

After six months of bitter community wrangling, the board approved the clinic, six to five.

“Don’t worry,” the conservative board member bragged, “We’ll be moving to rescind it in another month.”

CHARTER SCHOOL CO-LOCATION = HOSTILE TAKEOVER

Last year, Florida passed a law “allowing charter school organizations to occupy ‘unused’ space in public school buildings,” Florida Policy Institute’s Norin Dollard told Our Schools:

“Once the charter occupies part of the public school it operates rent-free, and the public school district becomes responsible for much of the charter’s costs, including services charters don’t customarily provide, such as bus transportation and food service, as well as for services like janitorial, security, library, nursing, and counseling. Even any construction costs the charters incur might have to be covered by the public school. Most charter school teachers are non-union and some are not required to possess state certification.”

Hundreds of charter organizations have already sent letters of intent to occupy space, beginning in 2027. Advocates say one of the largest groups—Schools of Hope—“is an amazing opportunity to expand parent choice,” but Dollard said, “unofficially, this is an incredibly lucrative business opportunity.”

“Grassroots groups such as “Families for Strong Public Schools” have held events to educate the public about the negative impacts of charter colocations. A coalition including the United Teachers of Dade, NAACP Miami-Dade Branch, the Miami-Dade County Council of PTA/PTSA, and others has formed to protest charter colocations. And a senator in the state legislature has introduced a bill to repeal the Schools of Hope expansion.”

Under the banner of “Schools of Nope” the opposition “is organizing call-ins and an email campaign targeting state legislators. Opposition organizers like Families for Strong Public Schools Director Damaris Allen said, “Either we win this fight, or it’s the death of public schools in Florida.”

“SCHOOLS AS PART OF THE COMMUNITY”

Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union are gearing up to expand the District’s pilot Sustainable Community Schools from 20 to 70 schools in the next two years. “High-needs campuses and partner nonprofits received about $500,000 a year to expand family outreach and voice, wraparound student services in partnership with non-profit service organizations, and after-school programs.”

School leaders say the initiative has been game-changing, paying for key staff, improving campus cultures, and forging stronger bonds to families and neighborhoods. Studies of the model nationally have shown promising gains in attendance, academics, and students’ sense of belonging at school. Other studies have shown underwhelming results, “drawing an unsurprising conclusion: It’s all about how the model is implemented.”

“However, several schools with consistent leadership through the seven years of the program, teacher and staff buy-in, and a clear vision have seen significant improvements and stabilized enrollment.” At Brighton Park Elementary, school leaders say thinking differently is key. “So much of community schools is about shifting your mindset and about how you approach the model,” said Principal Sara Haas.

OUT OF THE ASHES—OLD PRINCIPLES, NEW MODELS

All of the previous examples written about above are being duplicated nationwide, including Sustainable Community Schools programs. What’s important is the concept of sustainable community schools, a mindset radically different from the traditional K-12 education model. These schools are founded on holistic principles for educating children within their real worlds while teaching well beyond the school’s geographic or social boundaries. They model complex collaboration between parents and community members, economic and social organizations, and the public school district. This collaboration creates strong antidotes to top-down management, one-size-fits-all standards of achievement and career focus. There are a lot of “moving parts” for successful outcomes and values for education that reinforce positive human relationships among parents and staff, and encourage students to develop to their human potential.

In times of great social change, education has advanced from its medieval past in elite, theocratic islands alienated from their wider communities. Nineteenth-century English factory worker reformers demanded basic education for child laborers, as Marx described in Capital. The Civil War and Reconstruction led Black citizens to establish free public education in the U.S. Conversely, intensified capitalist industry in the early 1900s gave rise to traditional U.S. public education; to prepare workers to function obediently in modern factories. The Civil Rights Movement generated Freedom Schools in South USA and along with Women’s Liberation taught America hidden histories and revealed hidden figures.

Now, as Jesse Hagopian writes in Truthout:

“The right is not merely banning books or intimidating teachers; it is carrying out what scholar Henry Giroux calls the violence of organized forgetting—a systematic effort to erase histories that expose the foundations of capitalism, white supremacy, and empire.…[It is] a calculated effort to sever young people from the long history of resistance…

“Against this project of forgetting, educators across the country have responded with organized remembering…act[s] of repair.…a refusal to normalize mandated lying to children about the past.”

In 2026 right-wing funders and parents’ groups around the country stampede for what Hagopian calls “truthcrime laws” (Hagopian, Jesse: Teach Truth, Haymarket Books, 2025) in state legislatures and school boards. These laws ban books and mandate sins of omission—incomplete and dishonest teaching about the past. Even without such laws which carry penalties for disobedience, right-wing parents’ groups often carry out extra-legal harassment, doxxing and violent threats. Everyone, not just educators who can resist these laws, is called upon to take action. It is equally vital to support truthful educators and their organizations in their resistance, be it large or small.