{"id":29871,"date":"2023-11-13T13:34:39","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T21:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=29871"},"modified":"2023-11-13T14:13:43","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T22:13:43","slug":"why-not-let-students-run-californias-school-boards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/11\/13\/why-not-let-students-run-californias-school-boards\/","title":{"rendered":"Why not let students run California\u2019s school boards?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>Joe Mathews<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nov. 12, 2023 (SFChroncile.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Largo
Largo High School English teacher Jennifer Wilson protests book banning at a Pinellas County School Board meeting on Feb. 14 in Largo, Fla. Dirk Shadd\/Tampa Bay Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

California kids, do you follow the news about the culture wars over local school boards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you do, you\u2019ll see these wars portrayed as political contests between groups that want to take education in different directions: progressives and right-wingers, and fights between parents\u2019 groups and teachers unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you won\u2019t hear much about the role of students in these debates. Because there isn\u2019t one. School boards are meetings of adult politicians where kids are rarely ever heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a big reason why you\u2019re being left out. The adults in your lives, for all their performative battles over your schools, share a unity of purpose in the education wars:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They all want to trample on your already very limited rights as students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They just attack you from different flanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the right, conservative parents and their political allies seek to take away your right to read what you want. Groups with Orwellian<\/a> names \u2014 like Moms for Liberty \u2014 are pursuing bans on books and curricula. (Note to kids: \u201cOrwellian\u201d refers to George Orwell, the sort of satirical author that grown-ups, right and left, are trying to keep out of your hands<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banning books limits what your teachers can teach, and which of your questions they can answer. The right is particularly interested in limiting what teachers can tell you about the most hot-button topics like race and sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In related actions, the right is also demanding that teachers violate your privacy and make official reports, including to your parents, if you dare deviate from old-fashioned gender norms<\/a>. Why can\u2019t these adults get their own lives? Figuring out your identity is hard enough \u2014 between gossipy classmates and social media \u2014 without adults and administrators being required to inform on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, to their credit, the left is fighting these intrusions on your privacy. But the left has its own ways of trying to limit your freedoms and your educational horizons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You remember that teachers unions and Democratic politicians violated your right to an education by closing the schools for too long during the pandemic. Those same state and local leaders haven\u2019t done enough to help you recover the learning you lost in the pandemic, even though most of you are testing below grade level<\/a> and many of you are chronically absent from school<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And inside your schools, the left is determined to keep you on its prescribed path by limiting your choices of study. Progressive politicians defend outdated traditional school curricula while adding new requirements that match their political preferences \u2014 labor rights or ethnic studies. Meanwhile, schools rarely provide the technology courses so many of you want. Unbelievably, just 40% of high schools in California, home of Silicon Valley, even offer computer science<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t a budget problem. Spending on schools is way up, but the new money ends up going to the salaries of adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More from Joe Mathews<\/p>\n\n\n\n