Just News 4.10.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Three unions unite in massive LAUSD strike threat: What’s at stake for workers, families

Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

The looming strike next Tuesday at Los Angeles public schools brings together three unlikely allies that, together, plan to bring the nation’s second-largest school system to a standstill and exert formidable pressure to reach a favorable settlement. The three unions are United Teachers Los Angeles, Local 99 of Service Employees International Union and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles — all with contracts that stalled well short of an agreement. Together they represent about 70,000 of the school system’s 83,300 employees and they hold nearly all key positions at campuses — principals, teachers, food workers. There is no question that schools would be closed if any two of the three unions walk out, district officials have confirmed.

Affordable teacher housing is scarce. This group is trying an innovative solution in Oakland

Ashley McBride, AP News

Before Melanie Turner joined Oakland’s Rooted program, she was house hopping and couch surfing, moving between the homes of families and friends with her preschool-age son in tow. Pursuing a career in education while trying to afford a place to live in Oakland took a toll. “It was a hard reality for me to grasp as a parent that I was not able to provide for my child in the way that I expected to,” she said. Then she found the Rooted marketplace, which offers teachers and school staff housing at discounted rates in buildings across the city. On Thursday, Turner spoke from the rooftop deck of her apartment building, which was recently purchased by the nonprofit Oakland Fund to become affordable housing exclusively for educators.

The right is destroying LGBTQ+ education. But gay union leader Randi Weingarten has a secret weapon.

Molly Sprayregen, LGBTQ Nation

When Randi Weingarten feels hopeless, she remembers herself as a closeted kid in the 70s. That girl, she told LGBTQ Nation, would never in a thousand lifetimes have thought she’d someday stand before the love of her life – already a decade into her tenure as the first lesbian president of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions – and legally say, “I do.” But on March 25th, 2018, that’s exactly what she did. Living a life that her younger self could not even have conceived helps the longtime union powerhouse and leader of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) muster the faith to fight through the moment we’re in now, when the Trump administration and others on the extreme right have waged a bitter war against inclusive and truthful education.

Language, Culture, and Power

Minnesota districts ask judge to restore limits on immigration enforcement near schools

Steve Karnowski, AP News

Attorneys for two Minnesota school districts and the state’s main teachers union asked a federal judge Wednesday to block a Trump administration change in policy that gave immigration authorities a freer hand to conduct enforcement actions in and near schools. The Department of Homeland Security last year rescinded longstanding nationwide restrictions on immigration enforcement in or near “sensitive locations” such as schools and school bus stops, churches and hospitals that effectively made them off limits except in rare circumstances. The Fridley and Duluth school districts, and the Education Minnesota union, sued to block the new policy in February, at a time when the Department of Homeland Security had sent around 3,000 federal officers into the state for Operation Metro Surge. Federal agents involved in the crackdown killed two citizens in Minneapolis in January. 

ICE operations cause deep psychological trauma for students, declining enrollment and diminishing job paths

Sophia Rodriguez, Hechinger Report

Educators nationwide are grappling with the impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the homes of their students. Teachers face crying, worried children after their family members have been taken away. Traumas like these have long-term effects on the mental health, well-being and future opportunities of children in immigrant families. Yet, over the past few months, urban, suburban and rural communities have experienced a surge in ICE presence, arrests and deportations — affecting thousands of school-age children. It is crucial that we do more to protect these kids.

“Bitter Root” Grapples with the Horror of American Racism

Etienne C. Toussaint, Current Affairs

The boys were fighting again. Not all three, just the six-year-old and the four-year-old, tussling over an action figure one had snuck into the convention center. The two-and-a-half-year-old pulled me in the other direction. He wanted everything. Every vendor table held another treasure to grab, another shiny thing that should be his. I watched him like a hawk. We were at Heroes Con 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the nation’s premiere comic book conventions. It was mid-June, more than four months before Halloween, but the boys wore their costumes anyway for the two-hour drive up from South Carolina—Superman, the Hulk, and Captain America.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

The Los Angeles Community Schools Model

Alex Caputo-Pearl, Jacobin

As we fight authoritarianism, we cannot cede government to a struggle between MAGA and corporate Democrats. Fifty years of bipartisan neoliberal reforms have hollowed out the public sector, cutting funding and shutting working-class communities out of shaping institutions important to them. Authoritarians blamed these institutions’ failures on immigrants, black people, Muslims, and LGBTQIA people. Reversing authoritarianism requires that public institutions be run by the people. This means protecting vital working-class institutions that can serve as hubs for organizing and building experiments in co-governance in which movements and government work in tension and collaboration to improve working people’s lives.

“The Alarm Bell”: Arizona’s Drop in SNAP Participation Signals Potential Nationwide Impact of Trump Legislation

Nicole Santa Cruz, ProPublica

More than 400,000 Arizonans have lost their SNAP benefits since July — the largest decline in the nation by a wide margin — as an underfunded state agency administered changes called for in President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The drop represents nearly 47% of the state’s participants in the program better known as food stamps and includes about 180,000 children, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers the program.

LGBTQ youth say school feels more hostile due to political climate

Vani Sanganeria, EdSource

LGBTQ youth report that their school climate felt more hostile during the 2024–2025 school year due to an anti-LGBTQ+ political climate, with trans and gender-expansive students disproportionately affected by harassment and discrimination, according to Glisten’s National School Climate Survey. Glisten, an LGBTQ rights advocacy group, surveyed 2,800 LGBTQ students across the U.S between April and October 2024, and organized focus groups in June and July of 2025 with 36 students who were underrepresented in the previous sample. The survey also found that two-thirds of students reported feeling unsafe due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and that nearly two-thirds of students faced verbal, physical or online harassment because of their sexual orientation or gender. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ students of color also said they faced harassment due to race or ethnicity.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

From paperwork maze to centralized tool: Mamdani launches new child care provider permitting site

Lizzie Walsh, Chalkbeat

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday the launch of a new, centralized permitting tool for prospective child care providers. Part of the administration’s broader push to expand access to care, the website replaces a “fragmented and outdated” application process that has long made it difficult for providers to open new child care centers, according to a press release. The child care provider dashboard lets providers submit documents, centralize communication with the Health Department, schedule inspections, and track new center application status in real time. The dashboard requires a login account for each separate center application, though centers that have already been approved through the earlier licensing process will not have to register.

We teach at a Florida university that agreed to cooperate with ICE – and we worry that it is making our students feel less safe 

Anindya Kundu and Ryan W. Pontier, The Conversation

Since March 2025, at least 15 Florida public universities and colleges, including the University of Florida and Florida State College at Jacksonville, have signed memorandums of agreement for their campus police departments to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These partnerships authorize ICE agents to expand the role of campus police officers so they can receive training and “perform certain functions of an immigration officer.” The agreements give campus police officers the federal authority to question students who are believed to be immigrants about their legal right to be in the country. Campus police officers can arrest students if the officers have “reason to believe the alien to be arrested is in the United States in violation of law.” Campus police can also check federal immigration databases to see students’ immigration status.

Colleges are trying to boost student voting. A Trump probe freezes data for that work

Hansi Lo Wang, NPR

After the 2022 midterm election, a gap appeared to be shrinking on U.S. college campuses. The turnout rate for student voters at community colleges was catching up with the rate at public four-year institutions, data suggested. What was a gap of 9 percentage points for the 2020 election had shrunk to just 3 in 2022. “This told us that we needed to be doing more to support community colleges in their efforts to engage their students,” says Clarissa Unger, executive director of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, a nonpartisan network focused on boosting civic engagement on campuses. “We would love to be able to see the 2024 data to see if those extra efforts to support community colleges did help [fully] close that gap,” Unger adds.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Death, displacement and military duties: children plunged into crisis by Middle East war

William Christou in Beirut, Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem, Oliver Holmes, The Guardian

Millions of children have been plunged into crisis by the war in the Middle East, with reports of child soldiers in Iran, mass forced displacements in Lebanon and the killing of hundreds of minors. According to the UN agency for children, Unicef, more than 340 children have been killed and thousands injured since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, which has retaliated with bombings across the region. The highest reported child casualty event occurred on the first day of the war when a US missile strike on a school in Iran killed at least 160 children and teachers.

Trump administration ends some civil rights settlements backing transgender students

Kanishka Singh, Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday it was terminating resolution agreements ‌backing transgender students that prior administrations had reached with some school districts. The U.S. Education Department said it was terminating six resolution agreements reached through what it called the manipulation of Title IX. The Title IX civil-rights statute bars ​the denial of benefits or discrimination in education “on the basis of sex.” Since taking office, Trump ​has cracked down on schools and colleges with executive orders and threats to ⁠freeze federal funds over issues like transgender rights, climate programs, diversity initiatives and pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Disillusioned College Grads Turning to the Labor Movement

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, The New Republic

Starting in about 2005, something nearly unthinkable began to happen: The lifetime value of a college degree began to decline. Up until then, and really for quite a while afterward, a degree was considered a smart bet on a person’s future income and prospects. Possessing a college degree (any degree!) generally meant higher income. At the late date of 2013, Barack Obama called higher education an “economic imperative.” Once upon a time, very few people got college degrees. About 6 percent of the population in 1950 had one (which itself, thanks to the GI Bill, was a remarkable high). College was, at some level, affordable, and by 2010 degree holders received a glorious 75 percent pay bump. And if you didn’t go to college, no sweat: Nondegree holders had plenty of options for work that paid OK, too—for instance, in skilled trades like electrical work or union jobs in hospitality.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Texas students urge education board to focus on inclusion over politics in social studies overhaul

Jaden Edison, Texas Tribune

State officials, activists and educators have largely shaped public dialogue about Texas’ social studies overhaul, but young people added their voices to the conversation Tuesday, calling for instruction that includes diverse perspectives and challenges them to think critically. The majority-Republican education board began last year to redesign Texas’ social studies standards, which outline what students need to learn by the time they graduate. The board plans to finalize the standards this summer, with classroom implementation expected in 2030. Up to this point, a majority of the board has approved plans to center Texas and U.S. history in social studies while deemphasizing world cultures, world history and geography. A panel of nine advisers has helped guide the process, almost all of whom have no K-12 classroom experience in Texas and several of whom have ties to conservative activism.

Father George Ford, The Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, and the Catholic Progressive Corpus Christi School in Morningside Heights, New York City

Rosa Bruno-Jofré, Teachers College Record

The article examines the vision of education sustaining Corpus Christi School, located across from Teachers College in New York City, between the 1930s and early 1950s, and Father George B. Ford’s crucial partnership with the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa. The analysis is grounded in Quentin Skinner’s theory of intentionality and reference to context. It addresses the relationship of Corpus Christi School with Teachers College and Columbia University and the school’s distinctive features: its use of the project method, its social reconstructionist approach, and its way of “reading” John Dewey and William Kilpatrick. It discusses Ford’s theological vision inspired by early Christianity and his ecumenical position, as well as his intricate web of political, religious, and social relations. Also included is a social network analysis.

AI for the People

Rep. Ro Khanna, The Nation

he AI revolution is destined to transform human society in ways that most of us cannot begin to fathom. The changes to come will be every bit as daunting as what the world saw in the industrial and digital revolutions. Yet our policymakers are ill-prepared—and, in the case of our president, dramatically unwilling—to ensure that these changes benefit everyone rather than a tiny cabal of hyper-wealthy tech oligarchs. To meet this challenge, we must develop a new social contract that begins with the basic premise that artificial intelligence must serve humanity, not the bottom line of a billionaire class that seeks to become a trillionaire class at our expense. We cannot allow technological overlords to build a society where AI “progress” is defined by their wealth rather than by our democracy.

Other News of Note

Intersectional Organizing for Movement Building across California

The People’s Think Tank

In the re-election year of the first Black president, a rare opportunity emerged to advance the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline: Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlyn Ali convened field hearings on the status of boys and men of color across the U.S., marking a federal shift from a focus on personal failure to systemic inequities. For California’s grassroots organizations already fighting school pushout, criminalization, and the school-to-prison pipeline, this was a chance to expose the deeper racialized structures at play. At the Western Regional Office hearing in Los Angeles, testimonies from queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and API youth, their parents, and their advocates wove a powerful and painful narrative: these weren’t isolated stories but interconnected patterns revealing the ongoing legacy of racism and anti-Blackness in public education, pointing to the need for systemic transformation.