The Guardian - "US public schools burned up nearly $3.2bn fending off rightwing culture attacks - report"

[Ramsey Barner]

Attacks targeting American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and education about race and racism cost those schools an estimated $3.2bn in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major American universities.

The study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the financial impact of rightwing political campaigns targeting school districts and school boards across the US. In the wake of the pandemic, these campaigns first attempted to restrict how American schools educate students about racism, and then increasingly shifted to spreading fear among parents about schools’ policies about transgender students and LGBTQ+ rights.

Researchers from UCLA, UT Austin, UC Riverside and American University surveyed 467 public school superintendents across 46 US states, asking them about the direct and indirect costs of dealing with these volatile campaigns. Those costs included everything from out-of-pocket payments to hire to lawyers or additional security, to the staff member hours devoted to responding to disinformation on social media, addressing parent concerns and replying to voluminous public records requests focused on the district’s teachings on racism, gender and sexuality.

The campaigns that focused on public schools’ policies about transgender students often included lurid false claims about schools trying to change students’ gender or “indoctrinating” them into becoming gay. This disinformation sparked harassment and threats against individual teachers, school board members and administrators, with some of the fury coming from within local communities, and even more angry calls, emails and social media posts flooding in from conservative media viewers across the country.

More at link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/23/public-schools-culture-war-cost

[Think. Again.]

1. K&R

We need to get rid of the republican party.

[Lonestarblue]

2. The future of public education in the US is grim.

Fewer younger people are preparing for jobs as teachers, and many experienced teachers are retiring or just leaving the profession because of the Republican war on them and education. The Republican goal seems to be to destroy public education because that is what has allowed minorities to succeed. They also want to indoctrinate all children, not just their own, in their extremist religious views of racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+. Their goal is religious academies paid for by taxpayers. Forcing public schools to spend more and more money on lawyers and other non-education expenses is their usual way of creating problems and then demanding that the public support their solutions because the one they destroyed isn’t working.

[Timeflyer]

3. You said it--"their goal is religious academies paid for by taxpayers."

Bankrupt public school systems, and free those sweet, sweet taxpayers dollars to flow into privatizers pocket. The rich win again.

[mdbl]

4. What a colossal waste of money