Issue Guides
Safe Healthy Schools
Schools should be places where all students—of every race, gender, disability, and 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, including here in Michigan, are working to ban books, prevent schools from teaching the complicated history of race and gender in this country, push out educators, exclude and police students of color, and shame and endanger LGBTQI+ students. Instead of creating safe and educational spaces for our children, some extremist politicians in Lansing have tried to weaponize 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 from harassment and gun violence in schools.
Elected leaders must 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 and reject efforts to vilify and exclude 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 pushing them into the school-to-prison pipeline for ordinary school discipline issues.
5.Ensure full funding that meets every school’s needs - including schools building safer environments by prioritizing COVID safety measures.
Questions to ask candidates:
1.How will you ensure that all students and their families, especially girls, 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 girls, 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?
6.How will you ensure that schools are free from gun violence without instituting measures that push students into the school-to-prison pipeline?
7.How will you ensure that schools have the resources they need to build safe learning environments for all, including schools promoting COVID safety measures like enhanced and ventilation and mask and vaccine requirements?