All in One Op-Ed From the South Seattle Emerald

Update:

You just can't make this stuff up - here's the end game from the guy that Trump wants to head the Pentagon. From People for the American Way:

When Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, concerns were raised immediately about Hegseth's undisguised Christian nationalism. 

During the discussion about Hegseth's book "Battle For The American Mind," Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of "classical Christian schools" to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an "educational insurgency" to take over the nation. 

"I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America," said Sumpter. 

"That's what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation," Hegseth agreed. "Policy answers like school choice, while they're great, that's phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp."

end of update

 

Graham Hill Elementary parent Rebekah Binns nails both the "well-resourced schools" plan AND how it ties into Project 2025. Don't know if you noticed but Trump repeatedly said he didn't know about Project 2025 and yet now he appoints a guy who wrote a section of it. 

Here's the op-ed in its entirety (with some editorial from me including bold):

“Right-sized schools” is a concept that has spread across this country faster than COVID during the first week of kindergarten, with districts claiming small schools are too expensive, that they should be closed to save money, that school capacity should be based on building “utilization” to “optimize” resources, all in the best interests of students. We saw this here in Seattle with the “Well-Resourced Schools” debacle proposed by Superintendent Brent Jones on Sept. 11. Jones proposed closing 17–21 schools in a misguided attempt to regulate school size to 450–550 students. “Wouldn’t it be great if every student got art, music, and PE?” he told us.

Seattle Public Schools has bought into the idea of “right-sized” schools.

The reality is that “well-resourced schools” means twice the number of students in the same-sized buildings with reduced staffing, packaged in fluffy language to make us think we’re getting something good out of a very bad situation. 

Here’s what the district doesn’t seem to realize: This is exactly what Project 2025 wants.

Project 2025 (the conservative policy manifesto to reshape the federal government under Trump’s second term) aspires to eviscerate public education in our country by slashing the Department of Education, eliminating Title 1 funding (support for low-income students), and cutting protections for students with disabilities, all while providing funds to families for “school choice” in the way of charter schools, religious schools, and other private educational institutions.

Private, religious, and charter schools do not have to accept all students. They do not have to educate students with disabilities. They do not have to honor a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation. They do not have to admit families who cannot pay the cost of private school after the subsidy from the state.

This future is bleak.

This future has two sets of schools:

School Set A: Smaller private/religious/charter schools that can hand-select students who already speak English, who are without disabilities, and who come from wealthier families that match the school’s religious/ideological/educational philosophy.

School Set B: Barely publicly funded 500+ student elementaries nationwide without funding to support anything beyond keeping students safe (we hope), serving primarily Black, Brown, and low-income families and those who do not feel safe in these private, more conservative institutions.

Her assessment of School Sets A and B is absolutely correct. She only left out homeless kids who, of course, will go in Set B.

Here in Seattle, almost all private and charter elementary schools provide a “smaller school” experience, with none over 320 students. Why are we creating yet again two sets of schools in Seattle — one for the haves and one for the have-nots?

The Seattle School Board and districts across the country must wake up and realize they have been suckered into believing in this “right-sized school” propaganda, none of which is backed by science or even by our own history. The Seattle School Board and others must fight back against the insidious nature of Project 2025. It has no place in our schools.

You can’t do better until you know better. Now you know.

BOOM!