Schools

Chalkbeat - As principal of Dunaire Elementary School, Sean Deas has seen firsthand the struggles faced by children living in extended-stay hotels. About 10% of students at his school, just east of Atlanta, live in one.The children, Deas said, often have been exposed to violence on hotel properties, exhibit aggression or anxiety from living in a crowded single room, and face food insecurity because some hotel rooms don’t have kitchens.“Social trauma is the biggest challenge” when students first arrive, Deas said. “We hear a lot about sleep problems.” To meet students’ needs, Deas developed a schoolwide program featuring counselors, a food pantry, and special protocols for handling those who may fall asleep in class.

“Beyond the teaching, there’s a social part,” he said. “We have to find ways to support the families as well.”

Extended-stay hotels are often a last resort for low-income families trying to find housing. Nationally, more than 100,000 students lived in extended-stay hotels in 2022, according to the Department of Education, though officials say that is likely an undercount. Children living in hotels are considered homeless under federal law, and in some Atlanta-area counties about 40% of homeless students live in this kind of housing, according to local officials.

American Prospect -  Education spending in North Carolina is about to go way up, thanks to lawmakers’ largesse. But the extra funds—close to half a billion dollars—won’t go to the public schools attended by the vast majority of children in the state, or to hike teacher pay, despite a worsening shortage. Instead, the huge influx of cash will go to pick up the tab for private school tuition, including for well-off families, a priority for North Carolina’s Republican supermajority. In fact, according to recent state analysis, funding for the state’s public schools will drop by nearly $100 million as a result of voucher expansion. While Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, legislators are expected to override him.

As one school district leader stated, “It feels like to me that there’s a desire to suffocate traditional public schools to justify their demise.”

North Carolina’s tilt toward school privatization is all the more remarkable given that the state was, until relatively recently, a model for the kind of education-as-human-capital vision that united both political parties. Starting in the 1980s, governors of both parties plowed money into public schools, teacher salaries, and community colleges, with the aim of supercharging the state’s economic development.

Today, the story couldn’t be more different. The GOP candidate for governor, current Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, is a vocal proponent of school vouchers and has encouraged North Carolina parents to remove their children from public schools, citing alleged agendas in the classroom. “Do not turn your children over to these wicked people,” Robinson told attendees at a church service.

A growing number of parents seem to be listening. North Carolina, which once had the highest percentage of students enrolled in public schools in the nation, has seen private school enrollment soar in recent years.

In recent years, education policies in states red and blue have diverged dramatically. Red-state lawmakers have donned the mantle of culture warriors, imposing limits on what teachers can talk about and what kids can learn, mandating so-called patriotic education, and injecting religion into public school curricula. Conservatives have banned “critical race theory” in schools and intimated that teaching students about LGBT history is a pretext for “grooming” children. Oklahoma is now requiring that public schools teach the Bible as an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Louisiana is requiring displays of the Ten Commandments in every classroom, and Texas has inserted Bible stories into its elementary school curriculum.

But the explosion of so-called universal school vouchers is likely to have a far more profound impact on the lives of young people in red states than these culture-war hot buttons. As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.