Trump’s School (in)Security Agenda: How the Next President Could Roll Back Students’ Rights
There’s an innate tension between school safety and students’ civil rights. The 74’s Mark Keierleber keeps you up to date on the news you need to know
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Trump’s back — and so, too, is the president-elect’s influence on policies that affect the safety and well-being of America’s students.
From gun-toting math teachers to federal rules that decide which bathroom a kid can use, the student safety and civil rights issues that are central to the School (in)Security newsletter could be in for some major changes.
Here are 11:
- The return of an architect of the family separation immigration policy during the first Trump administration. | Wired
- An effort to end the constitutional right of citizenship for children born in the U.S. regardless of their parents’ immigration or citizenship status. | NBC News
- A rollback of civil rights and anti-discrimination protections for transgender students. | Associated Press
- A shakeup at the federal government’s primary cybersecurity agency, which has taken a leading role in school cyberattack prevention. | The Wall Street Journal
- Efforts to unwind bipartisan firearm restrictions approved in 2022 following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. | The Trace
- Policies that address school violence through a renewed focus on suspensions and “hardening schools” with measures like campus-based police and metal detectors. | Education Week
- Efforts to strengthen protections for students accused of sexual misconduct. | Los Angeles Times
- A promise to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education — and the potential return of policies enacted during the first Trump administration that scaled back investigations into discrimination based on students’ race, sex or religion. | The 74
- A vice president who said school shootings — which have surged exponentially in the last decade — are a “fact of life” and that schools are “soft targets” if you are a “psycho and you want to make headlines.” | USA Today
- Efforts to reform anti-discrimination rules to remove “disparate impact” liability, including for racial disparities in school discipline. | Harvard Business Review
- Efforts to eliminate federal funds for schools that recognize students’ transgender identities and grant equal access to bathrooms and locker rooms. | The New York Times
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In the news
To school shooting survivor David Hogg, Democrats’ failure to motivate voters rests on the shoulders of one constituency above all: Boomers. I recently profiled Leaders We Deserve, a well-financed political action committee designed to elevate Gen Z and millennial progressives. Here’s how they fared on Nov. 5. | The 74
Notorious swatter confesses: An 18-year-old from California has pleaded guilty to making 375 swatting calls throughout the U.S., including false police reports of school shootings and bombings. | Los Angeles Times
Federal authorities indicted two suspected cybercriminals accused of breaking into a cloud computing platform and exposing the data of major corporations and the Los Angeles school district. | Cyberscoop
A federal judge has temporarily halted a new Louisiana law that would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. | NBC News
A drop in the bucket: The Federal Communications Commission said demand for a $200 million school cybersecurity pilot program far exceeded its capacity, with 2,734 applications requesting a total of $3.7 billion. | K-12 Dive
The Providence, Rhode Island, school district acknowledged in a letter to families that a recent cyberattack compromised sensitive student information — but only after I published an investigation into the extent of the breach. | Boston Globe
‘A culture of bullying:’ Federal authorities have opened a civil rights investigation into a New Jersey school district where school resource officers are accused of failing to protect an 11-year-old student from harassment before she died by suicide last year. | K-12 Dive
The 28-year-old athletics director of a New York school district has been arrested in an extortion case, accused of demanding that a 17-year-old student send him sexual photos over Snapchat under a threat of exposing personal information about the minor. Lohud
ICYMI @The74
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New Research: Immigrant Students Boost English Learners’ Academic Performance
Florida Removed More Library Books Than Any State Last Year
Emotional Support
George, the four-legged companion of education consultant David Irwin, found the perfect lobster costume for Halloween a decade ago and hasn’t looked back.
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