We’ve learned that extremism cost our public schools $3.2 billion last year. Now we’re also seeing that President Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon fully intend to defund and destroy the U.S. Department of Education entirely. That means our public schools can expect to lose even more money that they can’t afford.

With 97.5% of public schools experiencing some level of the extremist-driven culture wars last year, almost every one of nearly 50 million students¹ and 3.8 million teachers² in public schools has felt — or will feel — the impact of this assault. Their stories deserve to be heard.

The Costs of Conflict report includes compelling stories directly from superintendents who were interviewed. Earn your Easy A this week by downloading the full Costs of Conflict Report and giving them a look!

Want to take it one step further? Once you download the report, share it with everyone you know. We give you an easy way to share when you get your copy of the report. Let’s get loud with our support of public education!

The post Do This: Get Your Copy of the Costs of Conflict Report! appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Watch this short video to hear directly from one of the researchers, Dr. John Rogers from the University of California – Los Angeles, about what else was learned in their study.

Mainstream parents don’t want this level of conflict in our schools. We want our teachers to be able to focus on their teaching, our students to feel safe and supported, and for our schools to spend their funding on their needs, not on fighting extremism. We must speak out when politicians and other groups hurt our kids, waste our educators’ time, and waste our schools’ precious funding like this. We’ll have one more action for you to take on this next week!

The post Watch This: The Costs of Conflict appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Between 2021 and 2024, more than 300 bills were introduced in state legislatures to ban books, restrict schools from teaching about race and racism, and set restrictive policies for LGBTQ+ students. It’s all part of an extremist effort to attack our public schools with culture wars.

You’ve probably already heard a lot about this, especially if you’ve been reading our Easy A blog for awhile. And you probably know that these culture wars are hurting our kids’ mental health and taking a toll on our educators.

But a lot of us have been asking, what is the financial cost of these culture wars? Well, now we have the answer!

According to a recent report, “The Costs of Conflict: The Fiscal Impact of Culturally Divisive Conflict on Public Schools in the United States”, these culture wars cost our public schools $3.2 billion just last year. That’s right, we said $3.2 BILLION!

How is that possible? The report found that for an average-sized school district experiencing high levels of culture wars, fighting them cost $812,000 last year. Here are some more findings from the report:

• Two-thirds of the schools in the study were experiencing moderate or high levels of “culturally-divisive conflict.” Only 2.5% reported no conflict at all.
• When schools become the center of these culture wars, districts and school boards have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on:
  • Hiring lawyers and paying legal fees to fight the challenges.
  • Increased security to protect board members and educators at meetings.
  • Paying for additional staff hours spent responding to overwhelming public records requests, emails, and online disinformation.
  • Community and government relations.
  • Recruitment of teachers due to high staff turnover rates. 29% of the superintendents interviewed in the study had lost teachers due to culture wars!

We can all agree, this is not what mainstream parents want. We can think of a lot of ways that $3.2 billion could be better spent, and so did the study. Things like: hiring more counselors and teachers, upgrading supplies and technology, offering nutritious meals to all students, and providing more opportunities for kids and educators to prepare for the 21st Century.

You can learn more about “The Costs of Conflict” study on our website here. Please join us in speaking out in support of our public schools and against these divisive — and expensive! — culture wars!

The post Read This: The Costs of Conflict appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

So now you have learned how dangerous school board extremism can be for our schools, and you’re probably wondering, “Ok, but what can I do?” We’ve got the answer! The great thing is that you can attend school board meetings and even speak at the meetings to share your ideas and address your concerns. You can also bring other parents with you so they can speak up too. And don’t worry, if you aren’t able to go in person, you can also email them.

Remember, mainstream parents like us are the majority – It’s up to us to make sure our voices are heard. If you’ve had enough of a tiny number of super loud extremists turning your school board meetings into a three-ring circus and bullying your kid’s favorite teachers, we can help. We’ve got a super handy Parent Playbook that gives you everything you need to get started. Download your copy now! Once you read through it, I guarantee you’ll be thinking, “Oh yeah, I can totally do this!”

You don’t have to sit on the sidelines. You can be the one standing up for your community and protecting your kid’s education. Thanks for taking your Easy Action for this week! ??

The post Do This: Take Action Against School Board Extremism appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

The post Watch This: What’s Happening With Our School Boards?! appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

In 2021, school board races started getting more attention as extremists began manipulating the frustration parents were feeling about COVID-era school closures (You might have even had conversations with parents in your community who were extremely upset over school closures and mask mandates). That frustration created an opening for outside groups. They latched on to that anger and used it to turn those parents against public schools. And then suddenly, we had a loud, vocal minority of parents disrupting school board meetings, demanding that schools re-open and that mask mandates stop.

In the midst of this chaos, Moms for Liberty was founded, and those same parents who were angry about masks started speaking up at school board meetings about other things – wanting to ban books, attacking school curriculum, and gutting diversity and equity policies. And these attacks didn’t just happen at school board meetings. They started targeting school board members at their homes. Suddenly being a school board member, or even an advocate for public education, could result in personal attacks. 

What’s even more disturbing is that these school board fights are meant to look like grassroots efforts, but in reality they’re actually part of a larger attempt by extremist groups to take over school boards and eventually dismantle public education. If that sounds pretty extreme, it’s because it is. And many extremist politicians are actually saying it out loud. And that’s really the bottom line here: public education benefits all of our kids, but extremists want to take it away.

These attacks are hurting our public schools, our teachers and most importantly our kids. Children shouldn’t be paying the price for extremism – but they are.  And that’s why we–as parents, educators, and community members–need to know what’s going on.

The post Read This: What’s Happening With Our School Boards?! appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.