Targeted attacks on American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and race/racism education have caused these schools to lose their lives in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major U.S. universities. The company suffered an estimated loss of $3.2 billion.
The study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the economic impact of right-wing political campaigns targeting school districts and school boards across the country. In the wake of the pandemic, these campaigns first sought to limit the ways American schools educate students about racism, but have since become more controversial among parents over school policies regarding transgender students and LGBTQ+ rights. Gradually they moved on to spreading fear.
Researchers from UCLA, UT Austin, UC Riverside, and American University surveyed 467 public school superintendents in 46 U.S. states to find out which direct and indirect ways to address these volatile campaigns. I asked about the cost. These costs range from out-of-pocket costs to hire an attorney and additional security costs to addressing misinformation on social media, addressing parent concerns, and focusing on school district teaching on racism. This includes everything from staff time devoted to responding to overwhelming public records requests. , Gender and Sexuality.
Campaigns focused on public school policies regarding transgender students include ridiculous and false claims that schools are trying to change students’ gender or that they are being “taught” to be gay There were many things. This misinformation has led to harassment and intimidation of individual teachers, school board members, and administrators, with some of that anger coming from within the local community, as well as angry phone calls, emails, and social media posts. was flooded by conservative media viewers across the country.
In addition to the economic costs of responding to these targeted campaigns, the study also revealed another trend, the researchers said. “Pedophilic attacks on public servants were heard over and over again from people in completely different parts of the country: rural, urban, suburban. This shows that this is indeed a nationalized conflict campaign. “This tells us a lot,” said John Rogers, a professor of education at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of the study. Both school board members and the superintendent “were called out as sexual predators so often that it was really scary,” Rogers said.
Superintendents from across the country told researchers how these cultural struggles have affected their schools and reduced resources that could be devoted to education.
A Rocky Mountain School District superintendent told researchers that he faced intense public backlash after trying to protect the privacy of transgender students. The district had to divert funds from a planned professional development program for teachers to pay for outside consultants to handle public relations, communications and legal issues, the superintendent said. He said five educators left the district and school staff felt “targeted in a social war.”
A Southern school district engulfed in debates about critical race theory and book bans began requiring community members to pass through metal detectors to attend school board meetings, and “additional security personnel, Spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on communications experts and lawyers. the superintendent estimated.
In a western school district, a new “extremist” school board backed by Moms for Liberty and other outside groups began accusing schools of “indoctrinating children about sex,” leading to It had to spend $100,000 to hire “armed, plainclothes, off-duty officers.” , an additional $500,000 in legal costs and staff time spent responding to the dispute totaling $1 million, the superintendent said.
He estimated that the district’s 20 employees spent 20 hours a week “responding to media inquiries, addressing misinformation and falsehoods, responding to public records law requests, etc.”
“The financial cost to the district is significant, but so is the cultural cost of not standing up to extremism,” the superintendent said.
Rogers and other researchers found that the average school district that experienced relatively low levels of political conflict in the previous school year spent about $250,000 to address direct and indirect costs and staff turnover. districts with the highest levels of conflict faced. It will cost more than $800,000.
Much of that money, they said, came from “separation costs” to replace staff who left or took early retirement due to personal attacks and widespread declines in school morale. The funds school districts have had to spend responding to political attacks “have a significant impact on the quality of education available to students,” the report concluded.
Nationally, each school year costs an estimated $3.2 billion. The researchers noted that this is a significant amount of money, with just under $2 billion “could expand the national free breakfast program’s budget by 40%,” or “additional counselors and psychologists.” He estimated that it would be possible to hire Every public high school in the United States.”
Rogers spoke further with several superintendents and said many of them “feel like they’ve reached their limit.”
It wasn’t that they were being challenged because they weren’t doing their job correctly or following a vision that someone else set. They were called pedophiles, staff members were called pedophiles, school board members,” he said.
The researchers’ $3.2 billion cost estimate only considers the economic costs of these school-focused campaigns, not the broader emotional toll on students, teachers, and administrators. . A national survey found that half of school superintendents have experienced personal harassment and one in 10 has received violent threats. Superintendents told researchers that an increasing number of their staff members are taking medication for mental health issues.
“What people don’t talk about is how scared everyone is,” one Northeastern superintendent told researchers.
Researchers noted that while disagreements, arguments, and dealing with angry parents are normal in local public school operations, the political campaigns schools have faced in recent years are anything but normal. . Much of it has been caused by “a small number of individuals active on social media and at school board meetings” and fueled by misinformation.
The school-focused campaign began with claims that elementary and middle schools were harming white students by teaching critical race theory, and later moved to attacks on school policies toward transgender students. It was organized nationwide and raised the following “common points”: Rogers said the cause was traced to conservative foundations and right-wing legal groups, and was heavily amplified by right-wing media coverage.
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon emphasized this Republican strategy early on in a May 2021 podcast, saying, “The path to saving the country is very simple. It just goes through the school board.” said.
Mr. Rogers said the purpose of the campaign was to “incite divisiveness and energize certain groups of voters in order to cause confusion.”
