Petition Signers,
Our previous deep dives explored how Project 2025 could affect our veterans and secular rights. In our third deep-dive, we look at how it could affect education at all levels. But keep reading because we have three quick announcements at the bottom.
“Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” (page 319)
That’s the first sentence of the chapter about the Department of Education (DOE), written by Lindsey Burke who serves on an advisory board of charter schools. And it’s no hyperbole that Project 2025 could bring a tremendous defunding to our public schools, from pre-K through college.
One example of this is through “school choice” or “voucher” programs that provide tax-payer money to charter schools (public and private) under the guise of freedom. The math is simple: every dollar diverted to charter schools, often elite or exclusionary, is a dollar that your local public school won’t see. And we explained in our previous deep dive that Project 2025 allows for religious-based discrimination (in admission and hiring) and curriculum based on religious beliefs, funded by tax dollars that were taken from public schools.
The DOE provides considerable funding to states, especially for schools in poorer areas. Eliminating the DOE would mean eliminating that funding (page 319). This could lead to an estimated 8% sudden budgetary drop leading to unimaginable consequences.
One of the programs funded by the Department of Health and Human Services is Head Start, serving over 800,000 children each year, launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Project 2025 boldly demands to “Eliminate the Head Start program” (page 482) impacting our country’s most vulnerable children.
The proposal also demands that any attempt to offer universally-free school meals be “soundly rejected” (page 303), ensuring that families who are on the cusp of poverty, or too busy to complete paperwork, or too embarrassed to stand in the “poor kid” line for food will go hungry.
Moving on to college, Project 2025 threatens to completely eliminate all federal student loans to California (and other states) because we provide state-funded tuition to undocumented students (page 167). The project also suggests removing:
- interest rate subsidies,
- loan forgiveness including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and
- Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans (page 354).
This is just a summary of the 44 pages of education policy recommendations and “justification” laid out by the Leadership Mandate. On that note, we’d like to make a quick comment about page numbers. While we try our best (as you see above) to provide a citation to every claim, please know that the Project 2025 document is frequently being updated and, thus, page numbers may no longer be accurate.
📢 Updates and Announcements
🎬 A New Play is Coming to Sacramento
The actor John de Lancie, best known for his role as "Q" in the Star Trek franchise, will appear live in Sacramento for one night only performing, “The Dover Panda Trial".
This original radio play, written by Mr. de Lancie and Kristen Tregar, is a reenactment of the 2005 trial in which evangelicals took over the Dover, PA school board and tried to replace the approved biology textbook with Intelligent Design (Creationism). Their actions resulted in a lawsuit, and this is the exciting story about that trial.
California Freethought Day proudly presents this event on Friday, October 4, 2024, at Sacramento's Jean Runyon Theatre (at the Memorial Auditorium). You can learn more, and register to attend, here. 🎫
7️⃣ A New Milestone!
We also wanted to celebrate our 7,000th signature, but we missed it by a few days. We just reached 7,100 signatures and want to thank each and every one of you for signing and sharing our petition with others. If you haven’t yet, please consider sharing this update.
📅 Webinar on Talking about Project 2025
Finally, we want to remind you that the Secular Student Alliance is holding a free webinar, on September 18 (Wed) at 4 PM Pacific Time, about how to talk with others about Project 2025.
You can register and learn more here.
💰 Will You Support Us?
In about six weeks, we’re going to send approximately 1,700 copies of our petition to every elected official in California, from school boards to the governor.
We’re estimating this will cost roughly $1,700 in postage, envelopes, paper, and pizza for our volunteers. We need your help to make that happen. You can donate here.
Thanks again for reading, and please keep sharing. Help us reach 10,000 signatures by October 1st.
Sincerely,
PS: A shout out to our friends at the Secular Student Alliance.