7 Strategies to Combat Community Opposition to Public Schools
Community opposition to public schools is best answered with visibility, not rebuttal. Schools that publish what's working, host open forums, invite critics inside, and talk with neighbors directly build enough public trust that organized criticism struggles to gain traction. Arguing point by point on social media usually backfires and makes the responder the next target.
It is not a secret that our public schools are under more scrutiny, and they are held to higher levels of accountability than ever before. I would like to believe public educators are not afraid of accountability. We believe in setting standards and expectations for all students and all staff members. What is most difficult is when educators are not part of helping set these levels of accountability and are then lambasted for not meeting them.
In my local community, a small faction of people have created a very loud voice of opposition against many facets of the public schools. Administrative decisions on the budget, salaries, and insurance are a few of the areas in which this group vocalizes disapproval. Unwanted taxation is a tagline among many of these individuals. Though this group touts "research" as a means of supporting their views, one piece of information can become distorted for an opposing media blitz without ever understanding the larger picture. These people do not want to take the time to learn more.
As an educator, it is easy to support the decisions that are being made by school officials, as well as getting the necessary information out to the public that further reinforces those decisions. One has to be willing to learn more before making a hasty decision, because something that is right for students is at risk here.
We can be sucked into the negativity and start counteracting every comment on social media, newspapers, or on television. Not only is this strategy unsuccessful most times, but it also draws your name out to the critics, and you may become the next target.
To combat these behaviors, comments, and vicious attacks, we must use education by telling everyone "what is right" through our school systems. This seems the most ethical strategy. We need to steer away from the negative draw that pits us against the "opposition group." We must illustrate how kindness changes people, how tolerance makes us more aware of our community needs, as well as putting ourselves in someone else's shoes and understanding their stories through empathy.
Here are seven strategies that communities and educators can use to combat opposition to public education.
| Strategy | Best suited to | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Celebrate the positives through social media | A slow drift in how the community talks about the school | Ongoing, low |
| 2. Tell your story | Adults whose picture of school is their own childhood | Ongoing, low |
| 3. Community forums | A specific budget, policy, or personnel decision | One-off, medium |
| 4. Door-to-door discussions | A levy or ballot question with a deadline | Campaign, high |
| 5. Writing | Explaining how much the school's role has expanded | Ongoing, low |
| 6. Invitation to walk with you | A critic who has not set foot in the building in years | One-off, medium |
| 7. Find common ground | Individual critics who already share some of your goals | Ongoing, high |
1 - Celebrate The Positives Through Social Media
Have you heard of the #GoCrickets revolution? A small school district in Wisconsin is making waves across the country because of a hashtag on Twitter. The superintendent, Joe Sanfileppo, understands how to create a rage, or brand, around his students and community. People across the United States can be seen with a "Go Crickets" T-shirt celebrating the feats and accomplishments of their students. Whenever something amazing happens, a picture is taken to document it, and it's hashtagged out to the Twitterverse (Take some time now and look it up on Twitter).
Flooding social media with "what is right" with public education can be powerful. In much the same manner that negative press can tear down a community, building a brand with a strong foundation can counteract these attacks. It makes it more difficult for an opposition group to gain momentum and tear it down.
Let us be honest, schools do not do enough celebrating "what is right." For the most part, we are too humble to talk about ourselves all the time. We must relinquish this past practice and celebrate, develop a brand, and create a rage over what our students are doing daily, as well as staff members.
2 - Tell Your Story
We must tell our story of what is going on in our classrooms, hallways, recess, and even community outreach. The majority of what students are doing is positive, and nothing is more powerful than illustrating kindness in a school.
In the past seven years at my school, we have focused on culture over strategy. What does this mean? It means we have put more time and effort into creating a place where students and staff members want to work and learn than any other aspect. We believe that if both students and staff look forward to coming to school, we will have a larger impact on academic achievement.
Work on relationships in schools from Dr. Bill Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education and from John Hattie points in the same direction. Daggett has argued that the most effective schools share one thing above all else: a positive culture. In Hattie's work, collective teacher efficacy has ranked among the highest-impact influences in his analyses, drawn from Rachel Eells' 2011 meta-analysis of collective efficacy and student achievement.
We must tell our story about the acts of kindness, the ability for us to learn more about ourselves and celebrate our diversity, as well as building student empathy.
3 - Community Forums
Invite people to talk civilly about public school challenges in community forums. Set dates, possible questions to ask, and get as much information out to the public before the forum starts. In this fashion, attendees can be better informed and ask more pertinent questions to inform the decisions that are being made by school boards, administration, and educators in the school district.
Community forums can be set up in a multitude of formats. Usually, someone leads through dissemination of information and discussion, and allows time for a Q and A portion. While not all people will attend, the contents of the community forum can be recorded and posted online. Those who could not attend can still view and take part in the post-discussion.
Another effective strategy is giving each community forum a theme or main topic of discussion. In this format, community members can choose which community forum to attend. Forum planners must still make sure there is time for open discussion, especially if questions being asked by audience members do not align with the theme or main topic. The key is for everyone to be heard.
Becoming informed citizens starts with wanting to learn more before we give our opinions. Too many times, people give their two bits before asking questions to learn more.
I hold a positive presupposition that all educators are trying to do what is best for students in the decisions they make. It would be difficult to find an administrator who is only out for themselves and makes all decisions according to their personal needs or wants.
4 - Door-to-Door Discussions
In my experience, door-to-door discussions change more minds than anything else on this list. They are also the most intrusive, especially in the time of "keyboard warriors." A "keyboard warrior" is someone who makes outlandish statements online, statements they normally would not make in person. Social media has created a platform for everyone with an opinion on anything to have a voice. While I believe this can make our society stronger, it can also have a negative impact if the "keyboard warrior" is looking to "troll" or "trash" individuals.
Door-to-door discussions are the most invasive into people's lives. Canvassers or surveyors show up on your doorstep and ask questions. There are a lot of quick decisions that must be made; some may be comical: 1) should I answer the door, 2) should I answer the questions when they ask, 3) should I let them know my beliefs, and 4) how do I end this conversation as quick as possible. I have even heard of people doing army crawls across their floor to avoid answering the door.
If we have educators going door-to-door with the latest information and research, they can be great agents for change. They must practice their prompts, even having possible answers to these questions, as well as follow-up questions. This will make going door-to-door more successful and result in the best chance at effecting change.
5 - Writing
Blogging, writing, and documenting what is going on in schools, and specifically classrooms, helps others see "what is right" in education currently. Most adults think about school through the experiences they had as students. The education environment has changed significantly. The most noticeable would be the responsibilities that society, even us as educators, have placed back onto schools to remediate.
Many districts support students with food at school and at home, clothing, health care, mental health support for students, and even in-home support for families. Some see this as a shift of responsibility from families to the school. Others see this as a logical step for schools as they know their students and families so well.
We need to be telling the stories of not only our academic successes, but also the stories of the socio-emotional victories connected to our school. FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, means we have to avoid disclosing protected information from a student's education records, and district or legal guidance should shape anything we say publicly about an individual student. Even leaving names and family circumstances out, we can still paint the picture of what educators deal with on a daily basis.
6 - Invitation to Walk With You
Many educators may shy away from a strategy that invites the opposition into their place of work. There is nothing more powerful than having someone follow you while you are on the job. The community will quickly see that the concept of an educator or principal has changed dramatically. Rarely will you find a principal who spends a majority of their time behind their desk, and likewise, you will not find a teacher giving 30-45 minute lectures and calling it sound instruction.
Engagement and effective communication strategies are the most noticeable difference in the past couple of decades. Educators have to compete with video games, handheld mobile devices, and instant gratification. The best educators are finding new ways to add movement and engagement strategies into instruction.
A recent article I wrote, A Principal's 12,000 Steps, outlines a typical day in the life of a principal. In one day, I was able to support families with food boxes, students with behaviors, instructional and behavioral strategies with teachers, supervising students in a multitude of areas, as well as covering jobs because of absent staff.
Walking with an educator will give you a visual and emotional connection to what schools have become and continue to transform. We must invite community members into our schools to help be part of the solution.
7 - Find Common Ground, One Conversation at a Time
One strategy, similar to the community forums and the invitation to walk alongside us, is to work one conversation at a time. After talking with people who disagree with a decision, look for the places where you already agree, even when the overlap is small. Discuss with them in detail the reasons your community is already strong on education, the great things going on, and how to not only participate, but to get engaged in making schools a better place for students and families to learn.
Continuing this process with more and more people builds a coalition rather than a standoff. When we chose a career in education, many of us would have never guessed we would need to be advocating for education in the ways we are currently. Advocating for public education has never been so difficult, but we must do it in order to create a learning environment that is best for students, as well as creating a place where we all want to work and learn!
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should speak for the school when criticism goes public?
Decide that before it happens, not during. Districts should follow their own communications policy and designated chain of command, so the first step is knowing what yours says and who it names. A school that has to work that out mid-controversy loses a day, and a day is a long time in a comment thread.
How should a school respond to a negative post on social media?
Check your district's communications policy before posting anything publicly, because some situations route through the district office or legal counsel rather than the school. Where a reply is yours to make, once and briefly tends to work better than a long one. A short response that acknowledges the concern, states the school's position in a sentence, and asks the person to contact the office directly gives other readers accurate information and moves the real conversation somewhere it can go better. Answering every reply rarely helps, because threads reward whoever posts last.
What can a school say publicly about a specific student or family?
Less than critics usually assume, though the limit is narrower than a blanket ban. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protects personally identifiable information drawn from a student's education records, so a school must avoid disclosing that material even when the public version of events is wrong. It does not put every subject involving a student off limits. Follow district and legal guidance on what can be said in a particular case, and tell the general story about what staff handle rather than the particulars of one child.
How can a school gather community input instead of only broadcasting?
Build a standing intake channel rather than waiting for the next forum. Short surveys at back-to-school night, open office hours at a time working parents can actually make, standing coffee sessions in the library, and a follow-up summary sent to anyone who showed up. The summary matters more than people expect. It shows attendees their time produced something, which is the difference between a listening session and a venting session.
- Visibility beats rebuttal - Community opposition to public schools loses momentum when a school keeps publishing what's working, while arguing comment by comment makes the responder the next target.
- Know your communications policy before you need it - Districts have their own policy and designated chain of command, and finding out what yours says mid-controversy costs a day you don't have.
- Forums work when people arrive informed - Publish the questions and the background material ahead of time, give each session a theme, and record it for the people who couldn't attend.
- Door-to-door costs the most and reaches the most - It suits a levy or ballot question with a deadline, and it only works if canvassers have rehearsed both the prompts and the likely follow-up questions.
- FERPA sets limits, not a blanket ban - Schools must avoid disclosing protected information from a student's education records and should follow district or legal guidance before responding publicly about an individual.
Handling community pushback is school leadership work, and most educators step into it without ever having been taught it. If formal preparation in leadership or administration is your next step, the sponsored programs on this page are worth checking for how they fit around a full-time school schedule.
As a 5th grade teacher, in 2010 Jon won the Presidential Award for Elementary Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST). As a principal, his school won the 2012 Blue Ribbon Award. In 2018, he won the National Distinguished Principal Award (NDP). In 2019 he won the National No Kid Hungry Breakfast Hero Award.
Jon is the author of three guides published on teacher.org: An Educator's Guide to Combat Bullying & Bully Prevention; Teacher Evaluation: A Transition Guide to Exemplary Performance; and You are the Wild Card: Infusing Fun Back into Curriculum. He has authored a children's picture book that was released January 2019 titled Benjamin’s Visit to Principal Reads Office…again! (available at www.archwaypublishing.com)
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