Preparing for the return of President-elect Donald Trump, the Los Angeles school board is moving quickly to reaffirm the nation’s second-largest school system as a sanctuary for immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community and to offer a new high school course delving into current political events. .
Those efforts are evident at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting in four emergency resolutions sponsored by board President Jackie Goldberg during her last regular public board meeting before her retirement.
“We’re not going to run in fear,” she said of Trump. “We will fight you every moment.”
“This is my last shot,” she said.
One resolution aims to “reaffirm our commitment to immigrant students, families and staff,” as its title suggests, and also to update the district’s existing policy to “enforce the respectful treatment of all persons to include gender identity and gender expression.
The resolution describes the 2024 presidential race as resulting in “the election of the candidate who campaigned on an anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.”
Trump has promised the mass illegal deportation of immigrants to the United States as one of his top priorities, accusing them of increasing crime and taking jobs from citizens. In a social media post Monday, he confirmed a report that he would order the military to be involved in evictions amid a declared national emergency.
Public schools are required under federal law to enroll any student within their jurisdiction, and in California, school officials are not allowed to ask questions about their immigration status. Many families have mixed immigration status – some family members are in the United States legally, but others are not.
The resolution references “a documented increase in anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in the United States,” stating that “these narratives divide communities, increase risk factors, and compromise mental health and academic engagement.”
While it notes that LGBTQ+ students are already explicitly protected by the school district’s nondiscrimination policies, the resolution would extend those protections to students’ family members as well as employees and their families.
“Lesbian and gay kids and trans kids and non-binary kids are really going to hear a lot of crap in society as a whole,” Goldberg said. “And we just want them to know we support them.” We support their parents. We support their teachers. We support cafeteria workers, everyone who works for and with us, and all children and their families. We can’t necessarily stop the fanatics from being what they are, but we’re not going to leave you to face it alone.
Under the banner of parents’ rights, Trump wants to end school board policies that limit the ability of school staff to notify parents if their child changes gender identity or pronouns at school.
Trump recently voiced strong support for this vision of parental rights at a conference hosted by the conservative group Moms for Liberty.
“I think some board members don’t like kids very much,” he said at that meeting. “We must give rights back to parents.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July protecting teachers from retaliation if they support the rights of transgender students and banning “forced disclosure” rules in K-12.
A second Goldberg resolution addresses shelter for immigrants. It also reaffirms existing policy and also takes aim at Trump, calling him “a candidate whose previous administration created a brutal immigrant family separation policy that caused irreparable harm to thousands of immigrant children and parents.”
Trump has defended the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents, calling it an effective deterrent to immigration.
The school system did the same thing by declaring sanctuary schools in 2017, at the start of Trump’s first term, establishing Los Angeles Unified Schools as “safe zones for families threatened by immigration enforcement.” . The previous resolution prohibited district personnel from “voluntarily cooperating with any immigration enforcement action, including sharing information about the immigration status of students and their families with any immigration enforcement officer.” ‘immigration’.
The new resolution would direct Los Angeles Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho to develop a plan within 60 days that would include “training for all teachers, administrators and other staff on how to respond to federal agencies and any immigration personnel who request information about students , families and staff, and/or attempts to enter school property, as well as a thorough effort to communicate the district’s sanctuary policy and plan to all families in the district in the language that they speak.
It is estimated that approximately 1 in 5 students learn English; many of them are immigrants, even if they are not necessarily living in the country illegally.
A third Goldberg resolution targets the education portion of Project 2025, a think tank that sets policy goals for a second Trump administration. In terms of education, there is strong but not complete alignment between Project 2025 and Trump’s statements on education.
The 2025 plan places a strong emphasis on giving parents the right to use their share of public education funds to subsidize private school tuition, a goal Trump supported during his first administration. The policy framework also calls for “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.” Its supporters say they want to remove liberal politics and indoctrination from classrooms.
Critics see the policy proposal as an attempt to whitewash history, limit the diversity of perspectives and shut down discussion of controversial topics.
The Goldberg resolution promises: “We will do everything in our power to protect and defend students, families, and staff from the harms of Project 2025, and to defend the right of all students to a public education.” .
Under the resolution, Carvalho would present, within 60 days, a report with “a comprehensive overview of all Project 2025 policies that impact public education and public school students, families and staff, and a detailed overview of the district’s plan to defend.” public education and the students, families and staff we serve.
The fourth Goldberg resolution takes aim at recent widespread efforts to remove discussions of controversial topics or current events from classrooms.
The resolution states that for students to be “ready to face the world,” they must become “critical thinkers, capable of understanding current events, of understanding the impact of events on our politics, of knowing the effects of proposals specific policies, and be able to understand all aspects of key policy issues.
Additionally, “it is the responsibility of the district to prepare students to be able to distinguish between information and opinion in an increasingly fractured information environment filled with misinformation, polarization and dubious sources. »
England and France, Goldberg said, “begin what I would call political education in the upper grades of primary through high school, and their children have a much better understanding, in my opinion, of what is going on.” goes into modern and contemporary political questions. .”
One example, she said, is “what can Trump actually do, and what things does he say he can do but really can’t do.”
Within 160 days, Carvalho is expected to report “on the feasibility of creating a course on contemporary political issues” for the high school level and whether it could be required for graduation.
The personnel analysis would also look at “what degrees and professional development would be needed to ensure the district has the workforce to implement this new course, and what grade(s) would be most appropriate for students to take this course.
Necessary changes to the curriculum at all levels would also be explored to prepare students for high school courses in this field.
