National Guides

BUILDING SAFE & EQUITABLE SCHOOLS FOR ALL

Schools should be places where all students—regardless of race, gender, disability, or any other identity—can learn with safety, dignity, and equality. In every school, educators should collaborate with students and families to build healthy environments rich with opportunity, imagination, and belonging. Instead, extremist politicians across the country are working to ban books, prevent schools from teaching the complicated history of race and gender, push out educators, exclude and police students of color, and shame and endanger LGBTQI+ students. Instead of safe and educational spaces for our children, extremist politicians have weaponized schools to exert control. These extremists are pushing unpopular policies that exploit divisions and restrict our freedoms so they can take and hold on to power and money. And at the same time, these politicians are refusing to take critical action to keep students safe in schools.  

We must demand that elected leaders commit to keeping our children and schools safe and healthy. Politicians and lawmakers should prioritize protecting every student against discrimination and harassment and ensure that schools have the supports they need to help students grow, thrive, and live full, dignified lives.  

Policies candidates & lawmakers should support:

  • 1.Support students’ ability to learn and be themselves by keeping them safe from discrimination and harassment in school.

  • 2.Oppose efforts to fuel divisions in our communities by vilifying and excluding transgender students.

  • 3.Oppose censorship of schools’ ability to teach truth, including about race and gender and how they have been used to divide us.

  • 4.Safeguard students’ ability to live full, dignified lives free from gun violence without compromising students’ classroom time, especially students of color and disabled students.

Questions to ask federal candidates:

  • 1.How will you ensure that all students and their families, especially students of color, disabled students, and LGBTQI+ students, feel safe and able to thrive within their school communities? What policies or programs have you advanced or supported to protect and meet the needs of LGBTQI+ students, disabled students, and students of color?

  • 2.How will you work to ensure that transgender students are cared for and validated as they learn and play in their school communities?

  • 3.How will you work to ensure that Black, Indigenous, and students of color, including girls of color, are protected from harmful and racist disciplinary practices that rob them of quality classroom time and opportunities?

  • 4.How will you champion educators’ and students’ freedom to teach, learn, and think critically about our nation’s history and current events?

  • 5.How will you ensure that all students—particularly girls of color, disabled students, and LGBTQI+ students—can learn in spaces free from sexual harassment? And how will you hold perpetrators accountable for their actions?