Just News from Center X – September 4, 2026

9.4.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

This principal evacuated 900 students before flooding swept away their school in Nepal

Shonal Ganguly and Sheikh Saaliq, AP News

Rajendra Dawadi was inside his classroom when a colleague rushed in with a warning: Floodwaters were racing through Nepal’s Trishuli Valley, tearing apart homes, bridges and entire villages. Then a teacher received another warning by phone. Moments later, a parent arrived to take her child home. The danger had not yet been confirmed, but Dawadi, the principal, had little time to act. He rang the school bell and ordered his students and staff out of the building and toward higher ground. “I immediately decided to stop … school” and get the children out, he told the Associated Press. As he followed them to a nearby hill, the floodwaters rose behind him. From the safety of the hillside, he turned to watch the school where he had once been a student — and where he had spent years teaching — disappear beneath a torrent of water, mud, boulders and debris. Two staff members could not make it and remain missing.

Trump’s Head Start Overhaul Borrows a Playbook That Already Failed

Peter Edelman and Lelaine Bigelow, Time

When he launched the War on Poverty in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke of the “millions of Americans…who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed.” The ensuing years would see the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, the launch of Head Start. This era also ushered in the establishment of a permanent national food assistance program and a dramatic expansion of federal support for education and housing. These policies and programs were all rooted in the principle that the federal government has a responsibility to help families meet their basic needs and, ultimately, thrive.

The Trump Administration’s Depraved Exploitation of Immigrant Children

Jessica Pishko, The New Republic

On June 11, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed close to tears as he described what the Trump administration has deemed the mass trafficking and abuse of children. Under the Biden administration, Mullin asserted that “absolute horrific things” occurred. “Some of these kids claim that they were raped six to seven hundred times,” he said. “We’re going to rescue as many kids as we can possibly find…. As a father of six with three young girls, I will do whatever I have to do.” Mullin was not referring to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, but rather to a widespread conspiracy-driven theory about hundreds of thousands of “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs, who entered the United States during the Biden administration and are falsely described by the Trump administration as missing and potentially trafficked.

Language, Culture, and Power

Public Education for Noncitizen Students: Understanding Plyler v. Doe [Fact Sheet]

American Immigration Council

In June 1982, the Supreme Court issued its decision in a case known as Plyler v. Doe, a landmark constitutional decision holding that states cannot deny K-12 students’ public education on account of their immigration status. By a 5-4 vote, the Court held that a Texas statute that withheld funds for the education of undocumented children violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reasoned that any resources that might be saved by excluding undocumented children from public schools were far outweighed by the harms imposed on society at large from denying them an education. For more than 40 years, Plyler has ensured access to education for children regardless of immigration status, but recent legislation considered by several states continues to threaten that right. 

As federal immigration arrests rise in New Jersey, teachers share strategies to help students

Jessie Gómez, Chalkbeat

As New Jersey students head back to school, teachers say they are preparing for a school year shaped by uncertainty for immigrant families. The impact of stepped-up immigration enforcement is showing up in classrooms, particularly in schools with larger immigrant populations. Immigration enforcement isn’t a new topic for students, but teachers say the situation is now taking a heavier toll, even as they try to create a sense of normalcy in school. Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New Jersey rose by nearly 150% from May to July, and reached the highest level for any month in at least four years. The number of deportation orders and voluntary departures also increased in New Jersey courts from May to June.

Q&A: Teacher of the Year creates safe zone amid ‘culture of fear’

Julie O’Connor, NJ Spotlight News

Raised in Newark’s Ironbound by Portuguese immigrants, schooled by feminist nuns, Carla Ferreira knew early on that she wanted to teach. She took the scenic route, though: by way of Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge and Rutgers, publishing poetry and stacking degrees. English, education, creative writing. Then, last year, she returned to a high school classroom in the working-class neighborhood where she grew up. It’s a place that inspires not only her poetry, but also her drive to dream big, climb high, then come back home to help the next kid. “None of that would have happened if my teachers hadn’t believed in me, because I certainly did not carry that same belief in myself,” she told NJ Spotlight News. 

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Nearly 2.5 Million Children Have Lost Medicaid and CHIP—So Far—During Trump’s Second Term

Brad Reed, Common Dreams

Nearly 2.5 million children living in the US have lost access to Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to data published on Monday by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. In total, five states have seen children’s enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP fall by 10% or higher since January 2025, with Indiana seeing a drop in enrollment in those programs of more than 23%.

States turn to parents to fill a home care workforce gap

Madison Hopkins, Hechinger Report

Before Kris and Matthew Ferderer could take their 9-month-old daughter, Elliott, home for the first time, they had to receive specialized training to manage her oxygen equipment, feeding tubes and a catheter that delivered medication directly to her heart. Elliott, now 6, was born with a rare heart defect requiring a transplant before she was old enough to roll over. Complications caused seizures and two strokes, leaving her with cerebral palsy and limited mobility. She also lost blood flow to her right foot the night of the transplant, resulting in the loss of her toes and heel.

California city faces backlash after gun store opens near preschool

Noe Padilla, USA TODAY

News from Goleta, a quaint coastal city in Southern California, rarely leaves the borders of Santa Barbara County; but due to the city government’s recent decision to allow a local gun store to open adjacent to a daycare, the community’s frustration is now being heard throughout the state.

No notice appeared on the city’s website. Nor was there a public discussion over whether a local gun shop, Goodland Guns, could relocate next to a preschool, Here We Grow Early Learning Center, which serves infants and preschoolers. Residents instead learned about the shop’s planned move from Old Town through word of mouth after some folks noticed signage near the preschool.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Trump Administration’s War on DEI in Universities Closes Off Students’ Learning Opportunities

Sara Gabler, The Progressive

Education is a right. Not just for the rich and white. We’re defending DEI,” chanted University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) students on a bitterly cold afternoon in February 2026. They were protesting the proposed merging of eight of its student centers—intended for women, Black students, Latine students, Southeast Asian students, LGBTQ+ students, veterans and military-enrolled students, commuters, and first-generation college students, respectively—into a single resource hub. Protesting students were concerned that the move would dilute the culturally-specific services each center provides and diminish these students’ sense of belonging on campus. During the protest, UW–Milwaukee student Juan Luis Flores put the proposed consolidation in the context of the school’s 5 percent tuition increase: “You cannot have more money this year taken directly from student pockets and then claim you do not have the money to fund these centers.”

‘I made a promise to myself’: How higher education is transforming lives in Wyoming prisons

Maya Shimizu Harris, WyoFile

One spring afternoon when the sun beamed down on the Wyoming Women’s Center, a prison in Lusk, six students sat in a fluorescent-lit room with laptops open before them. A brown and gold University of Wyoming banner with a cowboy on a bucking bronc hung on the far wall. “So, who’s going first?” asked Rob Colter, a gray-bearded UW philosophy professor. “Final presentation. Create your own festival.” One of the students, Taylor Nicks, snapped her fingers in approval. “First victim,” Colter said, waiting for a volunteer. It was their last day of class on heavy metal philosophy, and a few months before graduation. The course was one of many the students, who wore their orange prison uniforms to class, took to earn their four-year bachelor’s degrees in general studies from the University of Wyoming. Earlier this month, the six women finally reached that finish line, making them the first cohort in Wyoming to earn bachelor’s degrees through a university program called Pathways from Prison.

Parents Spend $95K on Gap Years to Give Their Kids an Edge [Video]

Sarah Foster, Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg’s Sarah Foster joins Scarlet Fu and Tom Keene on “Bloomberg Money.” Gap years are becoming more appealing as families question whether a college degree alone is enough to stand out, with some programs costing more than a year of tuition. 

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Black Women and the Power of Learning: An Interview with John Frederick Bell

Mickell Carter and John Frederick Bell, Black Perspectives

In today’s post, Mickell Carter, an editorial assistant at Global Black Thought interviews John Frederick Bell about his article, “Speaking of Learning: Education, Epistemology, and the Discourse of the Female Talented Tenth,” which examines the role of education as a heuristic in late 19th-century Black feminist thought as expressed by the six Black women speakers at the 1893 World’s Congress of Representative Women. Against the backdrop of Jim Crow’s rise, these leading members of the “Female Talented Tenth” used ideas and experiences of learning to define their character, demonstrate their potential, and articulate their visions of reform. While prior scholarship emphasizes education as a source of Black women’s empowerment, this article considers the tension between liberal education and racial retrenchment and analyzes how the Female Talented Tenth navigated this conflict in their discourse.

‘Deeply Disappointed’: Mississippi School District Released From 60-Year Desegregation Order, Leaving Black Residents Bracing for What Comes Next

Jill Jordan Sieder, Atlanta Black Star

Some Black leaders and residents in Rankin County, Mississippi, are pushing back against a federal judge’s decision last month to release the state’s second-largest school district from a desegregation order dating back to 1970. Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who represented plaintiffs in the case, condemned the July 28 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson to terminate federal oversight. They argued that troublesome racial disparities in discipline, gifted program access, and staff hiring persist within Rankin County public schools.

In her ruling, Judge Johnson found that the district had satisfied its constitutional obligations to dismantle intentional racial discrimination. By granting unitary status in core areas —including student assignment, staff hiring, academic quality, and extracurriculars — the court ended nearly 60 years of judicial oversight and closed the case.

Who Gets Held Back?

Eric Sagara, Ariel Gilreath, and Carli Brosseau, The Assembly

More than a decade of data from schools across the U.S. shows stark divides in who is held back: Boys are more likely than girls to repeat a grade, and Black boys are held back at nearly three times the rate of white boys. Overall, schools are holding back fewer students than they were more than a decade ago, according to data from 2011-12 to 2021-22 analyzed by Big Local News at Stanford University, in partnership with The Hechinger Report. Despite retention rates falling, the gap between Black boys and white boys stayed consistent. (The Office for Civil Rights, the only source for consistent data across all states, is now eight months behind in releasing new data.)

Democracy and the Public Interest

Censorship As Segregation: Book Bans and the Return of “Separate But Equal”

Morgan Thomas, Cornell Law Review

The year is 2021. Parents are riddled with strife over their children learning about white supremacy, “critical race theory” is America’s new buzzword, and 1,648 books have

been banned. Of those books, 40% featured protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color, 21% of the titles directly addressed issues of race and racism, and 10% of the

titles included themes related to constitutional rights and activism. But how did we get here? In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, mass protests spread across the United States as citizens demanded that the nation confront its racism. In response, Republican lawmakers co-opted the term “critical race theory,” misapplying it to any issue related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A New Leadership Paradigm: Superintendent as Civic Leader

Jennifer Cheatham, AASA

Russell Booker, who spent 10 years as superintendent in Spartanburg School District 7 in South Carolina, remembers clearly the moment he realized his role had changed. When the school board recruited Booker from a nearby district to lead the schools in his hometown, the mayor was one of the first people he was asked to meet with. When they sat down, the mayor said, “Russell, you have the chance to do something really special in this community. We need you to be more than just a school superintendent here. As the city goes, so goes the school district. As the school district goes, so does the city.”

Understanding the tech giants’ oversized influence in American schools [Audio]

Terry Gross, Fresh Air

Big tech companies like Apple and Microsoft use devices, training and conferences for teachers and students to embed in schools. The New York Times’ Natasha Singer discusses the impact in Coding Kids.

 

Other News of Note

This Day in History: Arkansas troops block “Little Rock Nine” from entering segregated high school

History Channel

Arkansas governor Orval Faubus enlists the National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Central High School in Little Rock on September 4, 1957. The armed troops surround the school, while an angry crowd of some 400 whites jeer, boo and threaten to lynch the frightened Black teenagers, who flee shortly after arriving. Faubus took the action in violation of a federal order to integrate the school. The conflict set the stage for the first major test of the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in educational facilities is unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

Legacy of the Little Rock Nine: Featuring Ernest Green & Melba Pattillo Beals, PhD [Video]

Youtube

Legacy of the Little Rock Nine: Featuring Ernest Green and Melba Pattillo Beals, PhD chronicles the story of the first 9 African American students to attend the all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Learn how powers of local & national government battled integration 3 years after the landmark, Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka ruled segregation unconstitutional. Hear from students, Ernest Green, the first African American to graduate from Central High School, and Melba Pattillo Beals, PhD, who penned her inspirational memoirs in her best selling books Warriors Don’t Cry, March Forward Girl and I will Not Fear. Learn about their trials & triumphs while fighting for a quality education with equal opportunities.