APT President Dr. Elise Marks delivered the following remarks to the Board of Education on March 26, 2025
At the first School Board meeting of 2025, I mentioned the serious concern that we might soon face the dismantling of the federal Department of Education. Sadly, that’s already coming to pass. The president has signed an executive order directing the new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the department.” Already, nearly half of Department of Education staff have been fired without cause.
Americans who care about education are pushing back: as of yesterday, multiple lawsuits were filed in Massachusetts federal court by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors, the NAACP, and the National Education Association — of which APT is part — to block the administration’s move, on the grounds that the department cannot be closed without the consent of Congress. It will take some time to see if those lawsuits succeed, and to see if Congress will bend to the demand to close the department.
I believe all of us in this room, and I believe most residents of Piedmont, understand the importance of federal support for our nations’ nearly 100,000 public schools. We understand that education is the pathway to a better life for American citizens, and the cornerstone of a healthy democracy. But even among teachers, there are few of us today who really remember what American education was like before the work currently undertaken by the Department of Education.
Before the Department was created in 1979, we had a national Office of Education, founded in 1868, but it mostly gathered data on the effectiveness of education overall across the country. It wasn’t until the 1960s, when I was still in elementary school, that we as a nation began to recognize the depth of inequity in American public schools, inequity that could not be effectively countered without a cabinet-level office.
Brown vs. the Board of Education had only recently passed (1954), and many schools were still effectively segregated by race. Some Native American students were still being pressured into federal boarding schools that separated them from their homes, families, and cultures. Girls were often taught different curricula, and had fewer opportunities to play sports in school and fewer pathways to make it to college; Title IX, currently administered by the Department of Education, wouldn’t pass until 1972. Title I, also currently administered by the Department of Education, only dates to 1965, and as of 2024 provides $18 billion annually to schools in places with the highest poverty rates. Also in 1965, the Higher Education Act established federal financial aid as the primary provider of funding for college education for students who otherwise couldn’t afford it — currently, through FAFSA, the Department of Education awards more than $120 billion a year to about 13 million students in low-interest loans, grants and work-study funds.
I’ve seen changes in all those areas take place, with the thoughtful oversight of the Department of Education. And I’ve also seen tremendous changes in special education. When I was in elementary school, students with disabilities had no protections — many were still denied access to schools, or, if they had a place in a school, given little to no instruction, so that they were essentially being “warehoused.” In 1975, Congress passed the law that eventually became known as IDEA — the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, now overseen by the Department of Ed — requiring that students with disabilities have equal access to a free, appropriate, public education, and that states must actively identify all children with disabilities who need special education services, so they no longer fall through the cracks.
Now, all this progress is in danger of being dismantled. Already, data collection and research by the Department of Education — work that dates all the way back to when we only had an Office of Education –is being abolished. We will no longer have the means to even know how inequality or poverty or racism or sexism or transphobia hurt our students and their educations and their lives.
We cannot allow education in the United States to go backwards. As NEA President Betsy Pringle has recently said, “We cannot stand by while lawmakers dismantle the critical programs the Department of Education implements, cut critical funding for students with disabilities, English Learners, poor students, and take higher education and career/tech training opportunities away from the students and families who need them most … We will protect our students…. we must reclaim [public education] … as the public good it has always been.”
The first step in protecting public education is making our collective voices heard. As a first step, the teachers of Piedmont would like to partner with our School Board, our administration, our students, our families, and our community, to do a Walk-In in Support of Public Education.
Next Friday morning, April 4, before school, we are asking everyone who is able to gather together in Piedmont Park near the vase — or for Beach and Wildwood folks, outside of your school sites — from 8 a.m. until ten minutes before the first bell of the day.
We will stand together in solidarity. Wear Red for Ed if you can. Bring signs expressing your support for public education, for IDEA, for Title I, for Title IX, for federal funding of college education, for our students with disabilities, for our trans students, for all the students of this country.