Friday Night Lights has been the topic in multiple blogs. Its story transcends high school to encompass the entire community in small town America. It joins with other stories like Remember the Titans and Hidden Figures among others to showcase the social fabric of the communities that make up the country. These stories stress family, education, church, and service to the country often told through a shared activity like high school sports. Needless-to-say, that social fabric has been taking a beating lately in a concerted effort to unravel it.
“Rural Republicans Are Fighting to Save Their Public Schools”
The subheading for this July article (Atlantic and ProPublica) is “Many State legislators see voucher programs as a threat to the anchors of their communities.
The article is about Todd Warner, a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, who resides in Chapel Hill, birthplace of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the Klu Klux Klan. He is a champion for America’s besieged public schools.
The Trump supporter likes to talk about culture war threats like critical race theory, Sharia law, and so on. Yet despite these identifiers, he seeks to halt the efforts of Republican Governor Bill Lee push for private school vouchers, a cherished MAGA staple. Warner’s district has no private schools. Therefore taxpayer money from the district for private school vouchers will go to well-off families in metro Nashville, Memphis, and other cities where those children already are enrolled in private schools [to avoid attending schools with — you know — those people]. Warner objects to having his small-town constituents subsidizing the education of rich people’s kids.
I’m for less government, but its government role to provide a good public education. If you want to send you kid to private school, then you should pay for it.
Thanks to COVID, eleven states now have universal or near-universal vouchers. The beneficiaries are families with kids in private schools, not families seeking to escape struggling public schools. The current drain from public school funding is estimated to be close to $1 billion.
The response has been an unusual alliance between rural Republicans and Democratic lawmakers against the assault on public schools. For these Republicans, the reality of Earth 1 trumps the rhetoric of Earth 2. Many public schools are not only the sole education option in the real world, they are also the largest employer and hub of the community. The community school is where the community goes for holiday concerts, Friday-night football, basketball, school plays and so on.
“Demonizing public education in the abstract is one thing. But it’s quite another when the target is the school where you went, where your kids went.”
The response from Earth 2 is “Get with the program on vouchers or else.”
After reviewing additional examples of the impact of school vouchers, the authors write:
The highest-profile rural Republican resistance to vouchers has come in Texas, the land of Friday Night Lights and far-flung oil-country settlements where public schools anchor communities. Late last year, the Texas House voted 84-63 to strip vouchers out of a broad education bill. In response, Governor Gregg Abbott launched a purge of anti-voucher Republicans in this year’s primaries, backed by millions of dollars from the Pennsylvania mega-donor Jeff Yass, a finance billionaire.
Representative Drew Darby said:
But without good public schools, these rural areas [which he represents] will wither.
The Republican effort to destroy the public school system continues unabated.
A dangerous precedent is being created.
If you don’t want to use the municipal swimming pool, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private pool or membership in a private club?
If you don’t want to use the municipal tennis courts, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private tennis court or membership in a private club?
If you don’t want to use the municipal recreational facilities, should tax-payer money be used to finance your private gym or membership in a private gym?
If you don’t want to use the municipal school system, why should tax-payer money be used to finance your home school or private school?
Republicans have declared war on communities by unraveling the social fabric of what holds the communities together.
Gleaming New School in Yonkers was designed as a community hub
The subheading for this front page article in the Sunday local newspaper in September is “Whole Child is the Focus.” The school is a brand new k-8 school “gleaming full of amenities, and as green as a school can be.” Author Gary Stern writes that the school “is meant to serve as a true community hub for children and parents in its dense, largely Hispanic neighborhood.”
These amenities include a medical clinic with mental health providers, dental and eye-car services, food and clothing programs among others. There is a clinic, cafeteria, gymnasium/multipurpose room which will be open to the community after school hours and on weekends. The clinic will operate in partnership with St. Joseph’s Medical Center. The community wing accessible from the street will host a Saturday academy for children, a parents academy, and events run by community agencies.
Even the roads around the school have been repaved!
Anibal Soler, the new Yonkers superintendent said:
This school is about the whole child, the whole family, and the whole community. Our job is to make this school the hub of their lives.
Mayor Mike Spano added:
Now they have a bright, shiny new school, a real community school. It’s really a good situation.
In a separate article about Tarrytown schools right above the Yonkers’s school article, Washington Irving Intermediate School 5th grade teacher Christine Creary is quoted as saying:
I think it’s important to create a sense of belonging and community from the very first day that they walk in the classroom. Having a theme really does bring that immediately, where they know there are part of something. They are part of this classroom. They have a place where they know they can be listened to, they’re cared for, and it’s safe place for them to come every day.
She even took it upon herself to give the classroom a fresh coat of paint.
By coincidence, the back page of the front section has a full page ad “Friday Night Lights” with football hero and small-town hero Rob Gronkowski and T-Mobile partnering to bring 5G lights to high school football.
Instead of trying to eliminate the Department of Education and to undermine the communities in the country, there should be standards and guidelines on what a public school should offer. Teachers shouldn’t have to paint their classroom. The public schools should be nurtured as the hub of a community. If only there was a Friday Nights Light candidate for national office.
