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In this episode, Messellech “Selley” Abebe talks with Arnie Fege about what it means to protect public education, why schools remain one of the most important public institutions in a democracy, and how policy decisions shape the daily realities of children and families. Fege is a long-time advocate for public schools and children’s rights in education, with decades of experience working at the intersection of education policy and equity. Together, Abebe and Fege explore what happens when public schools are under-resourced, why access and opportunity cannot depend on geography or income, and how communities can stay rooted in solidarity to ensure every child has the chance to learn, grow, and thrive.

To learn more about Arnie Fege and his work, you can visit this website.

Want to keep digging into the real-life impact policy decisions have on children? Here’s some of what First Focus on Children has published recently:

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Transcript

Selly Abebe  0:04  

What happens to a country when it stops believing in its public schools? Hey, ambassadors, welcome back to speaking of kids. I’m Sally today. We’re talking about something that shapes nearly every child in America, public education, and why so many people right now are asking whether it’s starting to change in ways we don’t really fully understand yet. Now remember, if this episode gets you thinking, pass it along to another parent or educator in your life, and a quick rating or review helps more ambassadors find us. We are making change happen, folks. That means we need you to spread the word, especially with this episode, especially this one, do we ever have a guy for you today? Today’s guest has been in the education world long enough to have stories about just about everyone. Arnie Fege is the president and founder of public advocacy for kids and a longtime advocate for children and public schools. Over the last four decades, he’s been a teacher, a principal, a desegregation director and a policy advocate on Capitol Hill, helping shape major education laws. But if you spend even a few minutes with Arnie, you realize something else pretty quickly, this man can tell a story, and he’s got stories for days. He has seen a lot. He’s been in rooms where the decisions happened. Arnie has a magical ability to set things in context. We love Arnie here, at first focus, he’s a walking Wikipedia page. But even more than that, despite all the ups and downs, he carries an optimism that is really refreshing. This is also his second visit to speaking of kids, which makes him our first repeat guest. Arnie, officially, welcome back to speaking of kids. You are first repeat guest. 

Arnold Fege  1:59  

I’m so excited for this conversation, and I am honored to be part of the First Focus family. It’s always great to be with you. 

Selly Abebe  2:03  

Thank you so much for those kind words, Arnie, and for us, we both also understand that all of these issues around kids are interconnected. You know, we were talking a little bit about immigration, and I think now for the first time, people are really starting to see how much immigration policy has an impact now on education that we really haven’t even uncovered yet. But you have been working in public education for decades. You were involved in the original ESEA and title one work on Capitol Hill, and have watched wave after wave of education reform come and go. You know, in your opinion, what major policy shifts over the last 4050, years most shaped schools that our kids experience today, for better or for worse?

Arnold Fege  2:51  

I was fortunate working for a senator during the 60s, when everybody identifies that period of time as the second reconstruction. It was a time that was amazing expansion of opportunity, from the 60s all the way to the mid 70s, when the country became conservative again. But during that period of time, as you know, I’ll start early, the first US Department of Education was created in 1867 and the reason for the Department of Education was to collect data, especially not only around public education, but collect data related to how the country and the states were providing equal access to a public education for African and formerly enslaved African Americans. And during that time, there was a land grant college Act, which created all the land grant colleges. So if you went to the Michigan State, if you went to University of California, if you went to University of Illinois, if you went to Penn State, those are all land grant colleges that the country invested in, because I really understood that education was the backbone of a democracy. And despite the enslavement and despite Jim Crow, there was a passion around the country for for education and also K 12 education, and at that time, the states were primarily responsible for educational law with local school districts and local control was absolutely huge, and as our settlers moved west, they put what did they do? First they put up a church and then they put up a public school. Those were the two community institutions that riveted the community that gave them the common what we call the common school, because we all had common values around the education of our kids when I came on in the mid 60s as a young staffer for Robert Kennedy, little did I know? Because you know when you’re when you’re an intern and then when you’re a young staffer, you really don’t know that you’re living through history, right? But at the time that I came. Came on board, and I actually came on board with Robert Kennedy when he was attorney general. So if you really want to know what a real Attorney General looks like, you had to use Robert Kennedy as not because I worked for him, but because he actually used federal law to enforce the law rather than to break the law. And he used, and discreetly, federal forces to enforce Brown v Board of Education, which said, you can’t have separate but public school systems, and this is a myth, you can’t have equality with separation. It’s not possible. But the country believed in that myth, that the judicial myth, until 1954 in Brown v Board title one, and the Elementary Secondary Education Act was really close to Robert Kennedy’s heart, but it was also close to Lyndon Johnson’s heart. They didn’t agree on everything, but the one thing they did agree on was education. And I can tell you that I remember to this day when Lyndon Johnson went to his one room school in the perinalis valley of Texas to unveil the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act known as ESEA. What ESEA was supposed to do is to provide equal access and to implement Brown v Board, as our audience probably knows when Brown v Board and by the way, this one of the things I have my staff read every year, the opinion of Brown v Board is like pros. It not only talks about the importance of integrating schools, but it also talks about the importance of integrating communities, and you can have a great school, but it’s segregated. And the question has always been, is that a great school, if you have everybody that scores well, achieves well in a school, but it’s segregated, is that really a good school? And secondly, Robert Kennedy saw schools not just as institutions for achievement, although that was absolutely important for not only the great equalizer that we always talk about education being and leveling the playing field between those who had in private schools and those who had a great education in public schools, but it was also the core of democracy, and that should really hit home during this period of time that we’re experiencing that citizenship and the importance of understanding democracy and understanding involvement and participation, and understanding that everybody has to be at the table, not just a few people, but everybody has to be at The table, and that table should not be dependent on how much money you have, but that table should be dependent on the constitutional ideal of we, the people and all men are created equal. And during that time, there was a belief and that aspiration that that this could take place despite the pushback by the Southern segregationists against integrating schools. And at that time, Lyndon Johnson devoted a billion dollars, which was big money in 1965 when ESEA was created, and that was the first many laws that I can I can bore your audience with the laws that were passed. On the other hand, these laws provided equal opportunity for an expansion of opportunity for many kids and many families and many parents around the country and following ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of course, in 1965 and 1964 a year prior to that, we passed the Voting Rights Act, and democracy, public education and voting are related. It’s an ecosystem, and you and I were talking about this before, it’s just not public education in a vacuum, but it’s public education working to provide informed citizens. That’s what Jefferson talked about, enlightened citizenry. And if we have an ignorant citizenry that doesn’t understand policy, that doesn’t understand government, that doesn’t understand how they can participate, how they can run for office, and you know, originally, when the Constitution was passed, it was only white males who own property that really could participate in their government. Women were never mentioned in the Constitution. 4000 words. Women were never mentioned. African Americans were defined as 3/5 of a person. Can you imagine that? It just sends the chills down my back to even think that as great as the founders were, would identify somebody is 3/5 of a person, which is not a whole person. But over the years, the expansion of opportunity, women could vote, Chinese could vote, Indians became citizens. And these are the kind of facts and information that you know. We’re we’re going to talk about this later that I. A lot of people would like to cancel this culture. They’d like to cancel this information. But we’ve come a long in the 60s came a long ways, besides ESCA came. And actually, prior to that was, we didn’t talk about it was a bill called pl 94 142, that was a special education law, and that was forced by parents and and local community who sued because many disabled kids were either not getting a public education, they were not allowed in school. If they weren’t allowed in school, they were marginalized into closets and other spaces in the in the public school, it was actually the only White House position I ever held. Jerry Ford locked 104 of us in a room at the old executive office building, and said, you damn well better come out with a bill. And that bill was known, as we know it today, as idea, but at the time, was one of the most benevolent policies related to the education of children who were disabled, it required, not only that public schools provide a what’s called FAPE, a free and appropriate public education, but it also created a whole infrastructure related to teacher professional development. Schools change their structures to schools began to plan how they were going to not only educate our special education kids, but one of the questions that you had that Bill formed the IEPs, which were the individual education programs. Those programs were developed for the child between the teacher and the parent. It talked about the disability, talked about the kind of education the child needed, we actually tested held schools accountable for that, for that kind of education. So that was the second large bill, and then following that, we had the English language acquisition bill, which expanded opportunity for for children who were disabled or low income kids and who are not speaking English and created bilingual programs. I always refer to Title Nine as one of the huge, biggest achievements in the history of education policy, because that not only opened the door to women to sports, and we always identify Title Nine as a bill that opened women to sports, but they also opened women to medical schools, opened them to professions, opened the doors to colleges and universities. Now it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t happen all at one time, but it was a federal law that, if left to the states, probably would have never passed. Wow.

Arnold Fege  12:40  

We also had section 504, we also had Americans for Disabilities Act. Expanded opportunities. There was a little known commerce committee bill that they that Congress passed that allowed now women to sign off on credit cards, since that was 1971 and of course, we opened up at that time, and we’re probably going to talk a little bit about it. It opened up the whole concept of parental choice and the privatization of public schools, because there was a huge pushback by lot of the public against against integrating their schools, to the point now that 80% are, fact, it’s a little bit more than 80% of our white kids go to all white schools. So in terms of integration, the courts have fallen asleep. When Richard Nixon became president, he appointed four conservative members of the court. Passed the Milliken act. That was a time that also Congress passed the equal called it the Equal Opportunity Act, which disallowed federal money being used for bussing. And that sort of was the wave that began to dismantle the opportunities that were created during the 60s and the early 70s. And we’re seeing today, we’re seeing a lot of that dismantlement. So you asked me about where is the biggest policy change? I think the biggest policy change is now. Is this attempt now to undo a lot of the opportunities at the federal level, at least a lot of the opportunities that were created by federal policies.

Selly Abebe  14:18  

Thank you so much for that rich context, because I think context matters when you know, we have a lot of parents that listen, grandparents that listen, you know a lot of young adults that that are listening as well. And sometimes, when you’re in it right now, it’s hard to put everything into perspective, right because you’re living in this window, and right now we’re hearing people ask, sometimes very seriously, is public education over with enrollments declining, voucher expansion, constant panic around test scores from your vantage point, what’s actually happening right now? Now within public education and what is, you know, just political narrative, it’s hard to decipher. First of all, context

Arnold Fege  15:09  

does make a difference, and I’m glad you brought that up. I teach a graduate course in education policy. I’m doing probably more history around where we’ve been, because the other two professors that I work with really believe that in order to know where we want to go, we have to know where we’ve been. And Derek black, a professor at University of South Carolina, says that this period of time is like the three decades that we faced before the Civil War, less bipartisan support, a lot of cultural wars and cultural strife going on a loss of or a lack of understanding of democratic values, a loss of a national identity, conspiracy theories, division. Now, this does not happen in every local community. But in our travels, and especially the travels that that take us to local communities, it could be tribals, could be territories, we’re finding that parents are freaking out number one, but sometimes knowing where you have been gives you clarity about the challenges before you absolutely, yeah, the challenges before us are really nothing, nothing new, and not to simplify where we’ve been, but the DEI, for instance, has everything to do with exclusion. It doesn’t say it. There is a move to get rid of Dei, right? Or if you get rid of Dei, what you’re really talking about is segregation and exclusion again. Who are we going to exclude LGBTQ students? How we’re going to exclude Hispanic students? We’re going to exclude Somali students? And then we really understood that we’ve been here before, because we’ve excluded for a large part of our history, African Americans. So to understand that history in that context is really important. I think we’re on the precipice, very frankly, and I go back and forth, because on one hand, I want to keep hope alive. We still have to understand that over 88% of our kids are still in public schools around the country. We are working with huge numbers of local parent groups who are really concerned about the money that vouchers are draining from public education. They’re concerned about the lack of the number of teachers in their schools. They’re concerned about the increase in number of substitutes. But I think more than anything else, what we don’t have today that the country had for a long time was this major respect for public education.

Selly Abebe  17:46  

Yeah, let’s pause right here for a moment. First of all, I have to say, talking with Arnie is always a bit of a trip. The man casually references half a century of education policy like he was just in the room when it happened, which honestly a lot of the times he was. And I love that he has his staff read Brown versus Board of Education every year. I might want to do that as well. I mean that alone tells you something about the way he lives and breathes this work, not just policy, but the long arc of why public education matters in the first place that my friends, is commitment. And you know, it’s actually kind of a gift to have someone like Arnie in the system, someone who remembers how these laws came to be, why they mattered, and what they were trying to protect for kids. After the break, we’re going to shift from the history of how public education was built to what’s happening to it right now, because one of the biggest debates happening across the country is about private school vouchers, how they work, where the money is coming from, and what they could mean for the public schools. Most kids still attend. Stay with us. Welcome back, ambassadors. I’m talking today with longtime education advocate, the indomitable Arnie Fahy. Before the break, we talked about the history the laws and civil right battles that helped shape public education in this country. Now we’re turning to one of the biggest policy fights happening right now, school vouchers and how new federal proposals could change the way public education is funded. A lot of our listeners, and honestly, including me, may just be hearing about this or starting to hear about this. Can you explain in plain language how it works and how it could affect the kids and schools that remain in the public system?

Arnold Fege  19:43  

Well, part of what we do not know. But let’s start with the history. What was the privatization or attacks on public education? Really began in the mid 50s with a economist called Milton Friedman, who really thought that government school, he called them government schools, not public schools. Rules should be really market based, rather than public, and it’s this definition of what is public that really is very important, or what is private that’s really extremely important. And the movement of privatization caught fire with Ronald Reagan, who wanted to pass a tuition tax credit program, which meant that private and religious schools that parents could take deductions for the money they spent for private and public schools, which means that that decreased revenue from the Treasury Department. It was a federal bill to the point that we had charter schools, which are basically public schools, but they’re privately managed. And then this large increase of state vouchers. There’s 20 states that have a variety of different kind of voucher programs, which really means that parents can apply if they wanted to send their children to private school. And then it included religious schools, and then some of the states added home schools, and that parents would apply to the states for up to $9,700 and they could apply that money to pay for their private or religious school or subsidize their home school. And we now know that money is draining money away from public schools, and in fact, Leon County in Florida in 2021 lost about $3.8 million to private schools through vouchers today. 2025 Leon County, Florida, lost $38 million those monies went to parents who applied for and got money to pay for their private school education. Now you’re talking about federal and so this as part of the big beautiful bill, a $26 billion provision was added to the big, beautiful bill which was passed already, which called HR one, and states could opt in. And this is where it really gets complex. First of all, the jurisdiction for this voucher program is not the Department of Education, but the Department of Treasury, number one, number two, it allows states to opt into the program. And if a state opts into the program, people can contribute, citizens, anybody taxpayers, can contribute $1,700 as a single taxpayer, $3,400 as a filing jointly to what’s called a scholarship grant organization SDO, that’s a nonprofit. That money goes to the nonprofit, and that nonprofit then distributes the money that is in that nonprofit to private and religious schools, to parents who apply for those dollars, they added a sweetener in the bill, which really makes it difficult for the States not to opt in, is that money could also be used as a resource for public schools. But because the voucher lobby is so strong, and because a lot of the states already have voucher programs, the chances that money, the majority of that money going to public schools is highly remote right now the Treasury Department is creating guidance, what’s called guidance that gives school districts and states some guidance and how that money can be used. Now mind you, there is no accountability for this money, so when Florida or Texas or Arizona, which, by the way, is now spending almost a billion dollars in supporting their private schools and religious schools, it blew a hole in their education budget, which means that when you blow a hole in the education budget, that means that local school districts are going to lose money, which means that they’ve got to decide how they are going to cut their budget. Are they going to cut curriculum? Are they going to cut teachers? Are they going to cut after school events? Because it’s going to cut sports, right? It’s a whole set of decisions that school boards have to make. So this has a huge impact on public education. Now we don’t know what the impact of the federal program is going to be, because it doesn’t go into effect until school year 2027 but there’s a lot of questions about, can you subsidize religion? For instance, I think this is really a thicket, because I think it’s a highly controversial thicket. Not only does it violate the separation of church and state, but it also creates a big disturbance about which churches and which religious schools can get this money. And you can imagine the kind of controversy this is going to will create when schools that are not mainstream religious schools would begin to apply for these monies for their schools. And Florida even has gone to the point of passing a bill that if a public school has a room three or four. Four rooms or how many extra classrooms that are empty, they have to allow charters to apply to use those rooms, but the public school district is responsible for maintaining those schools and for securing the schools, those classrooms as part of the regular school building. So it gets creepy and it gets more complicated from here, and it depends on what your state you’re in. It’s possible that, if you’re in a state that already has a voucher program, it’s also possible that they could use not to state money to subsidize public their private education, but also to subsidize, but also use federal dollars to subsidize. Now here’s the real deal. Is that Stanford, actually Learning Policy Institute has done a huge amount of research about who gets the money. Most of this money does not go to parents who are leaving public schools. They’re already in private schools. Number one, number two, the average cost of a private school is $13,000 so that most low income families and even middle class families can’t afford the $13,000 to send their kid to private school. And lastly, this is not a parent choice program. Ultimately, the schools make the choice, and when schools make the choice, it’s possible for the schools to discriminate against special education, which many charters, by the way, already do. They could discriminate on the basis of religion, they could discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, they could discriminate on the basis of gender. So all of the non discrimination policies that public schools have to adhere to can be bypassed through the voucher program, but parents really need to understand, and there are a lot of parent groups around the country that are fighting vouchers, need to understand this is not a battle against private schools, and it’s not a battle against religious schools. It is a battle of providing public money without accountability and not knowing what that money is buying in the school that is pretty much closed. So when I have a private school, I can’t run for the school board. There’s no requirement that private schools test. There’s no requirement that they can’t exclude students, as we were talking about. There’s no requirement that teachers be licensed. So there a lot of questions that still are still out there about, how is it that we’re providing all of these millions of dollars of public monies to private schools and to religious schools? And by the way, some states include religious schools. But the courts have been moving in the direction that if you provide money to private schools, you also have to provide that money to religious schools as well. So there’s a lot of questions that are still unanswered, and I’m a taxpayer with my kids are asked no kids. I want to know, just like my parents in my school district want to know, how is that money being used? Because it’s being drained away. We spend a lot of time around rural education, primarily because I think that the most difficult District to provide equal opportunity and to level the playing field are rural school districts that need one every federal dollar they can get because there’s not enough resources to go around. In many cases, they’re short of teachers. In many cases, if their school bus breaks down, they don’t have money to fix the school bus. And by the way, Texas has the most rural schools in the country by far, but they don’t have a choice because there’s not enough kids to provide an additional school. There’s usually not a private school in that community. There’s usually not a religious school in that community, and so most of the choice is provided to parents who already send their kids to private schools. It’s a tax break. It’s basically, at the end of the day, a tax break.

Selly Abebe  28:59  

And Arnie, I mean, when you overlay that with the current headlines around the US Department of Education at the federal level, between staff furloughs and programs being moved around and constant calls to shrink or even eliminate it, this feels counter to the progress that has been made for so many years. In your opinion, where does this put department of education in the future, and starting with Ronald

Arnold Fege  29:25  

Reagan, the Department of Education us. Department of Education was created in 1979 1980 Jimmy Carter lost the election, and immediately, when Ronald Reagan became president, he wanted to dismantle and to eliminate the Department of Education. So it’s amazing it survived this long. But I can tell you what kids will lose, what the Department of Education does, and what will be lost without the US Department of Education, because there are national responsibilities, not just state and local responsibilities, for our kids. What we will lose is some. The best research, education research in the country. What we will lose is the National Assessment for educational progress. Called NAEP is a snapshot of student achievements, a sample of a snapshot about how well our kids are doing. We will lose Title One, which provides approximately $18 billion to low income school districts around the country. We’ll lose the Office of Civil Rights, which guarantees an equal and non discriminatory public education for all of our kids, whether they be HBT Q, whether they be special education, whether it be disabled, whether it be low income, and we will lose the office that collects data about our public schools. There’s 13,000 public school districts, 120,000 school public school buildings around the country, not including our tribals, which are, by the way, the only federal school district in the country. It doesn’t include the territories. So you would lose the education and the oversight of all of those programs as well, there’s about 25 or 30 other programs, including the Office of Civil Rights Equity centers, the statewide parent engagement centers, community schools, a full service schools, 21st Century, before and after schools, all of those programs would be lost, and School Districts at the local level would try to figure out, because of this shift from federal to state to local, how to make up the difference. And already I have a number of states that are not increasing their education budget, and everybody says, well, there’s the federal government only pays about 8% of the education dollar. That’s average. There are some school districts that are rich who don’t get hardly any federal dollars at all. There are other school districts who are very low income, in many cases, those are urban, and many cases, those are rural, who have a lot of low income kids, where the federal dollar may constitute anywhere from 15 to 18% of their budget. They really depend on these federal dollars. And of course, you know what’s going on now is even worse is that we’re farming out these programs to other agencies. And what happens is, and you can imagine you’re at the state level, and you farm out some programs to HHS, you farm some programs out to the State Department. You some farm some programs out to housing. You some farm some programs out to labor. And here you are at the state level trying to figure out, who the hell do I apply to, and who the hell is overseeing my program to make sure that there’s accountability at the end of the day. So instead of reducing waste fraud and abuse, we’re increasing waste, fraud and abuse. And we do the same thing related to voucher schools, without accountability. And if I leave you with one word around the voucher program is there’s no accountability for the money that goes to the schools, literally no accountability. There have been examples where headmasters of charter schools, the headmasters of private schools have misused the money. Unless you track the money, it’s possible for a parent to apply for the dollars, to get the dollars to go to a private school for two months and then leave private school, keeps the money and then go to homeschool, and those kids fall off the rolls. And Florida is experiencing this as well, instead of creating more efficiency and more effectiveness, you know, not only balkanized a system, a public school system, and split it up, those who attack public schools would like to see that happen, and it’s in the process unless everybody at the local level and at the state level, at the federal level, vote, vote, vote, vote if you want to keep Your public school, and if you have a public school that’s performing and you have great teachers, and you have a community involvement, and you have parent involvement, and you have great principals and you have a great superintendent, just hug that school. Just know that that is a school to not only be supported, but that as a school to be respected. And I will tell you that as a travels, as I go through the travels that we go through, I will tell you that I’ve never seen teachers work harder, spend more time. And of course, you know at lower pay. And as you know, where teachers spend anywhere is the neighborhood of 1000 to $1,500 a year of their own money as well you can. And we have a teacher shortage to begin with. You can imagine what will happen as money gets drained from and the resources get drained from our public schools.

Selly Abebe  34:31  

You know, one of the things that I’m very grateful for, there’s many things that I’m grateful for, but one of them is access to a very well run public school. I have two kids that are in elementary school right now, and it’s something that, you know, I think a lot of parents in our community are grateful just by default, from what I see with parent involvement and, you know, just really supporting and loving on the teachers and the administration staff, because it’s not an easy job. Job, and I think for parents that are invested in their children’s outcome, like most parents, are you welcome a partnership with with schools. But for people that don’t necessarily live and breathe policy, what are two or three trends that they should be paying attention to right now? Because it sounds like it’s coming fast, and it also sounds like it’s very confusing, and it also sounds like it may be packaged as an overall net ad, but we may know that the trickle down effect is not going to be so smooth, and again, these are all things that will directly shape their children’s experiences in school. And so what are some things that parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, what should we be paying attention to right now?

Arnold Fege  35:49  

Yes, all of the all of the above, the aunties, the friends, the neighbors, those people that we work with. I think number one is always an awareness issue, is make people aware of what really is happening, or one of the things that we are I think it’s changing. I think the trends are changing. But how many people are so preoccupied with crises in their life that they really don’t know what’s going on? Number one? And you really have to understand that there’s attacks on not only our public schools, but also our public universities, and attacks on what we call the free market of ideas, and we’re more concerned about the harm that a book will do to our kids than what a gun will do our kids, and that a lot of this the policy is not coming from the local level. It is coming from the state and federal level, and to be aware, exactly aware of what’s happening to your public school, because you can have a great public school today and you can lose that public school tomorrow. Number two, I’m really concerned about the two tier school system. It’s incredible that I can go to one school district and they have got the most modern school with the most modern data. They’re prepared for AI, and they’re preparing for college, and they have some of the best counselors, and they have some the best nurses and and then I go to other schools where the leak, where the roof is leaking, and they can hardly afford new books, and they’re shorter teachers. And we have to look at other we have to look apprenticeships and other kinds of resources to keep those kids afloat. So this sort of two tier school district system of opportunity education. And by the way, the reason they attack education is because it is the most important pathway to democracy. And if you want to be authoritarian, you do not want democracy. And I think Minnesota number two is an example of what should be done by a community coming together and saying, We may disagree on this issue and this issue and this issue, but what we don’t disagree on is that we got to come together as a community and so community involvement, community mobilization, community organizations, and also using other organizations, like first focus, like my organization, like NAACP, like the National Education Association, like the Principals Association, like Ed in law, a lot of organizations that are advocating on our behalf, making sure that you know who those organizations are, and then becoming involved. You know, this sounds like it’s a cliche, but the more involvement and the more mobilization, and the more pushback and the more support for public schools, I think the more we can head off this balkanization of public schools. And of course, a lot of the mobilization also depends on national organizations, the National PTA, or it was in town, and they they were sending 500 people to the hill. I think telling stories to your congressperson, telling stories to your senator about what’s happening to your public schools, is essential piece as well. So we all can do a little piece. Some of us can do a bigger piece. And of course, then you have organizations like the League of Women Voters, who are registering high school kids. But if we don’t speak out, if we don’t participate, if we are apathetic, if we think that it can’t happen to our public school, then I think it would be a very concerning atmosphere to me. But I will tell you for right now, there are parents all around the country who are pushing back. And it gives one energy. Gives one energy. When you see parents push back, they go to their school board meetings, and it starts locally at the school board level, of course, right? Absolutely.

Selly Abebe  39:30  

And you know, I think what comes to mind for me, too, is just globally. I don’t know how this makes us more competitive as a nation. And so again, I really, truly appreciate the context that you’ve offered throughout this conversation, and the detail in which you really help tease out and help I know me better understand what’s at stake here. And to your point, I mean, I think there’s so many things that happen. I know me as a parent of three. You. Yeah, public education is kind of the least of my worries. I’m trying to get my youngest to just get through daycare so he can, you know, so we can kind of get rid of that bill. But there’s a lot going on in the minds of parents and caregivers, and they think something as structured and as stable, at least from a historic standpoint, is going to be there like it always has. And I think we’re in these times now where, like you said, things may shift quickly. It’s going to get complicated and a little confusing. But again, thank you so much for your insights. And you know, Arnie, on this podcast, we end asking all of our guests, and I know for you, you may have some good ones, because you’ve been kind of fighting this fight in a very intense way over these last several months. When you go to the Hill and have conversations is, you know, what’s a song that helps you? You know, just reset and keep going when it feels really, really heavy.

Arnold Fege  40:59  

Well, you know, what’s fortuitous about that. Question is that when I do presentations, I actually whether they’re keynotes or whether they’re concurrent sessions or they’re small sessions, I always end in asking everybody to hold hands and to sing, we shall overcome, which is one of my favorites. I have to like, and I do like Lift Every Voice and Sing. I like Earth, Wind and Fire. Keep your head to the sky. I like blowing in the wind. And I’ve always thought, having gone through the Civil Rights era and gone through the Civil Rights Movement, that song was always a song was always an energizer that brought communities together and and mobilized us around a national identity. I’ve always said that if we lose our common school, we’ve lost our common sense as a country, and we could, we could. We’re very close to that unfolding. So those are the songs. And of course, I also get educated by my audience who are younger, who teach me about bad money. So I, I, you know, we can all learn. We can all learn no matter where we are, what age we are, we can always learn Sully. So I found that for Tunis that you asked that as a last question, I love

Selly Abebe  42:13  

that bad Betty has been on heavy rotation in my house after the Super Bowl.

Arnold Fege  42:17  

And by the way, my office is comprised of a great number of Swifties, though, I have to tell you that I’ve been educated about Taylor as well.

Selly Abebe  42:26  

Maybe we need the two of them to come together, to do something to bring us together. We can throw that out there in the universe. Arnie, thank you so much for making the time to be here. I’m sure this conversation is going to be invaluable to so many, so many people that listen.

Arnold Fege  42:41  

I so hope so. And again, I appreciate the work and the effort and the passion of first focus and the work that you are doing as I’m fortunate to have you as a friend and a colleague, and thank you for everything you do. Thank you. Arne

Selly Abebe  42:57  

as usual, here is the one thing I want you to walk away with from this episode, how public education, you know, the system most of us grew up with, didn’t just happen by accident. It was built brick by metaphorical and actual brick built through court cases, built through federal laws, built through generations of parents, teachers and communities who believed in their kids with all their heart, and hearing Arnie talk about those moments from title one straight through to Title Nine reminds you that public education has always been part of something bigger. But let’s get real for a second. I’m a mom. I’m a single mom, and I want to tell you a family is a busy, busy organism. As parents, we juggle jobs, childcare, homework, activities, sports schedules, Orthodontist appointments, Lord help me, birthdays, allowances, college savings and all the things that make up everyday life with kids. So it’s easy to assume the school system will just keep running the way it always has, and it is so easy to take it for granted. That’s why I’m grateful for what Arnie brings to these conversations, that long history and long view of how we got here and what’s actually at stake for kids, because, as he put it, in our conversation, if we lose our common schools, we lose our common sense as a country. If this episode helped you understand a little bit more about what’s happening in schools right now, consider sharing it with another parent or caregiver in your life. Speaking of kids is a podcast by first focus on children. It’s produced by wind Haven productions and blue jay Atlantic. Elizabeth Windom is the supervising producer. Julia Windom is the editor. Jonathan Woodward is the Senior Producer. For more information about this episode, visit first focus.org