This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for our newsletter at ckbe.at/newsletters .
In one of her first speeches since becoming a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris made an impassioned call for teachers and other union members to support her vision for America’s future.
That includes teaching painful parts of U.S. history, protecting LGBTQ students and school staff from discrimination and ensuring that student loan debt doesn’t force teachers out of their jobs, she said.
“While you teach students about our country’s past, extremists are attacking the freedom to learn and appreciate our country’s true and complete history,” Harris told members at the United Teachers Union’s national conference in Houston on Thursday. “We want to ban assault weapons, they want to ban books.”
The vice president said AFT, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, was the first to endorse Harris earlier this week. The union represents about 1.8 million members, including teachers, school staff, college professors, nurses and other health care workers.
In her speech, Ms. Harris stressed the importance of unions and pledged to support them despite criticism that teachers unions are against students and families, citing her experience leading a White House task force that helped workers organize and bargain collectively.
Harris also called herself a “proud product of public education” and spoke of her first-grade teacher, Frances Wilson, who encouraged her and later attended her law school graduation.
“I know who you are,” Harris said, “this job is personal, professional and extremely important. I stand before you because of Ms. Wilson and so many teachers like her.”
Ms Harris spent much of her speech comparing her policies to those of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term, and criticised “Project 2025,” a plan drawn up by former Trump officials that observers say could influence Mr Trump’s policy decisions if he wins.
Harris called Project 2025 “a plan to return America to its dark past,” noting that the plan calls for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, eliminating student loan forgiveness for teachers and other public employees, and abolishing Head Start, which provides early education to about 800,000 children from low-income families.
“Randy, can you believe they documented that?” Harris told AFT President Randi Weingarten. Harris also noted that Project 2025 would “deprive hundreds of thousands of kids of preschool education.”
Harris highlighted the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student loan debt for teachers. She cited the example of Philadelphia teacher Tonya Cabeza, who was considering leaving teaching because she still owed $40,000 in loan debt after 20 years of making payments. Her debt was forgiven last year under the administration’s policies.
Ms Harris also highlighted a series of laws restricting teachers from talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, noting that in 2004 she was one of the first officials in the country to officiate a same-sex marriage.
“It really breaks my heart to think that 20 years on there are still young teachers in their 20s who are afraid to post pictures of themselves and their partners for fear they might lose their jobs,” she said.
The Biden administration announced new rules earlier this year saying that under Title IX, a federal civil rights law, students and faculty are protected from discrimination in schools based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Republican lawmakers and government officials have strongly opposed the interpretation, and many have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration to block the new rules from going into effect. The rules are pending in at least 15 states.
During her first presidential campaign more than four years ago, Harris said she would increase staff and funding to advocate for the civil rights of LGBTQ students, and if elected president, she would likely be in a position to defend the new Title IX rules from any current or future challenges.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering education reform in public schools.
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For more education policy news, visit eSN’s Education Leadership Hub.
Karin Bersha, Chalkbeat
Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. She can be reached at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.
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