A reminder that some of the same folks calling for slashing the government depend upon it. Reposted with permission.
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A brother or sister in Christ might need clothes or food. If you say to that person, “God be with you! I hope you stay warm and get plenty to eat,” but you do not give what that person needs, your words are worth nothing. In the same way, faith by itself—that does nothing—is dead.
~James 2:15-17
We have poor kids in America who rely on public education, and they’re not all Democrats. While Donald Trump focuses on wokeness and eliminating the US Department of Education (US DOE), poverty is a real problem for many children. At least 15 states that favored Mr. Trump for President have poor kids in poor schools.
The National Defense Fund reports between 2020 and 21:
- Among the 74 million children living in the United States, 11 million live in poverty.
- One in six children under five (3 million children) were poor, the highest rate of any age group.
- The pandemic forced children already in poverty even deeper into poverty. Almost half (47%) of all children living in poverty live in severe or extreme poverty, a number which rose from 4.5 million before the pandemic to 5.5 million in 2021.
- The South, home to 47% of children in our country who live in poverty, experiences the highest child poverty rates with 1 in 5 children living in poverty.
- 9 million children faced hunger and food insecurity.
- 4 million children lived without health insurance.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness reported in 2024:
Nearly 1.2 million children were either literally homeless (living in a shelter, or in unsheltered locations such as a car or tent) or doubled-up (sharing housing with friends or family beyond a unit’s designated capacity).
Many of these states also voted Republican.
With this cold weather, I remember when I was a student teacher at a school where most of my parents worked in a nearby factory. At recess, some of the children lacked mittens. Some had flimsy coats and runny noses and seemed, if not ill, listless. I identified contagious impetigo in one child. The school nurse congratulated me. Teachers offered mittens to the children who needed them.
Despite all this, the students were bright and hardworking. The parents were engaged and proud of their public school. The well-prepared teachers did a lot with what they had, sharing resources. Amid school privatization, I’m sorry to say that the school closed a long time ago.
Poor kids in this country still attend public schools like this one in good faith. And in many poor areas, there are children whose parents voted for Donald Trump, believing in a better tomorrow. They are proud parents and want the best for their children.
CNN provides an example. They recently reported, Teacher layoffs, bigger classes: Potential federal education cuts could hit GOP’s base hardest about public schools serving the poor in Bell County, Kentucky, Appalachia. The report is behind a paywall, so I’ll describe some of it briefly.
Those interviewed voted for Trump. Still, they worry about losing federal funds distributed through the US DOE if it is eliminated and hope that Trump will not do what he threatens.
Eighty percent of the students come from economically struggling families. The school superintendent summarized the children’s poor conditions by saying that when they go home on Friday, they may not eat again until Monday.
The school district receives about one-third of its funds from the US DOE. If this money is redistributed to the states, it’s hard to know if it will be used for public schools that need it the most.
The educators also voted against Donald Trump’s education plan for school choice, as did all states with school choice on the ballot. Parents want funds invested in their community public schools to create quality programs and support teachers, enough teachers to help lower class sizes.
Bell County is not alone. The US DOE’s Title I program is the largest source of federal aid for K-12 schools, and other places like West Virginia also worry about losing disability services.
The US DOE must monitor states to ensure that children who are poor and those with disabilities get the services they need and legally deserve. Better auditing should determine how money flows to schools is spent, but the department should not be eliminated.
In 2020, The Century Foundation reported:
The United States is underfunding its K-12 public schools by nearly $150 billion annually, robbing more than 30 million school children of the resources they need to succeed in the classroom…
Well-run and well-staffed public schools give children and America hope, yet Donald Trump’s only references to public schools have involved criticism. Like many wealthy businesspeople, he appears hostile to public education. Corporate school reform has broken up schools, and there is little evidence that Trump will turn the tide and improve America’s schools for the poor.
He chose education secretaries like billionaire Betsy DeVos, who never taught or studied anything about how children learn or how they might struggle to learn. His latest choice for that role is CEO Linda McMahon, a wrestling star who, like DeVos, never taught in a public school and whose only goal is to eliminate the US DOE, which provides the services children depend on!
The vouchers (school choice) he and Republican-led legislatures highlight will give tax benefits to the rich for their private schools and break up free public schools, but as noted before, most Republicans don’t want vouchers!
What if President Trump had selected an education secretary or a teacher/administrator with experience working with the poor in Appalachia? This country relies on good teachers, many of them Republicans, to motivate our students and help them afford to attend great universities or career tech schools.
And don’t forget teachers from the Democratic party who will work to eliminate the scars of poverty for all children! Teaching and public education are nonpartisan efforts.
A good president should want to be remembered for creating world-class public schools for all students and great, affordable universities. Fixing public schools has always been about having the will to fund and educate the poorest children regardless of their parents’ political party.
As Trump stood next to his wealthy friends during the inauguration, it was hard to believe helping the poor in deserving areas like Kentucky fit his agenda. I hope I’m wrong because it’s not making America great again when you still have poor children in the cold without mittens.
