Parent Power in Education

Blue easel sign that reads Vote Here in white in English and 8 other languages

Originally published in March 2022

Recently, a friend and I were debating the rhetoric around parents’ control over their children’s education. He felt strongly that to give parents a say in curriculum, lesson plans or strategies would be untenable nonsense.

“Do you really want some [blowhard] dictating what teachers teach?” he asked.

“Of course not, but I do want parents to have a voice in their child’s education,” I countered. Aside from the kids themselves, parents know their kids best.

That’s why I’m so excited to help education activists in Oakland to prepare for their next campaign. They’ll be supporting a local ballot measure to enfranchise non-citizen parents of public school students to vote in school board elections.

We don’t want the loudest parents in the room to make decisions for the whole district and we can’t let those obstructionists shut out the voices of the majority. Most parents simply want policies that improve the quality of the education their kids receive at school.

They want a voice in the policies that govern their kids’ education. In America, we call that voting. It’s one way parents can build power.

For this project, we’ll build power by bringing people together using the opportunity of the ballot measure to do it.

Stay tuned for (more) great things out of Oakland.