| | | | |  | | By Juan Perez Jr. |
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People display signs during the Kentucky Freedom Rally at the capitol building on August 28, 2021, in Frankfort, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images | A NEW PLAYER — A new organization linked to some of the biggest money movers in Democratic politics is setting out plans to resist the country's cultural divides in education. — The Campaign for Our Shared Future has a new executive director who says the group has already raised $9 million and has ambitions to secure millions more. Its strategists have identified 15 states — including the home turf of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — where the organization is preparing to operate during the midterms, fast-approaching school year and 2024 campaign season. — The campaign's emergence marks the latest form of sophisticated community organizing and fundraising efforts centered on school boards and classrooms, as liberal-leaning education leaders scramble to match political momentum harnessed by conservatives boasting their own initiatives on parents' rights, school history, and sex ed lessons. — Their goal: Organize parents, educators and students to press against conservative-led legislation and political rhetoric targeting how race, gender and curriculum are addressed at K-12 campuses. IT'S MONDAY, AUG 1. WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. It's still possible to get abortion medication through telemedicine or by traveling across state lines. But a patchwork of state rules is fertile ground for scammers looking to make money off desperate patients . Reach out with tips to today's host at jperez@politico.com and also my colleagues Michael Stratford ( mstratford@politico.com ) and Bianca Quilantan ( bquilantan@politico.com ). And don't forget to follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro .
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People protest outside the offices of the New Mexico Public Education Department's office, Nov. 12, 2021, in Albuquerque, N.M. | Cedar Attanasio/AP Photo | 'THE BATTLE CONTINUES TO GROW' — Officially a nonpartisan effort, the Campaign for Our Shared Future and its separate advocacy fund are connected to Washington, D.C.-based groups that have supported Democratic politics and spent tens of millions of dollars on left-leaning causes during 2018's midterm elections . — City corporate records show the campaign's branches were registered in early May by a nonprofit public charity known as the New Venture Fund and a social welfare organization called the Sixteen Thirty Fund . Those two entities are managed by Arabella Advisors , a firm founded by former Clinton administration appointee Eric Kessler that advises donors and nonprofits about where to give money. — That structure allows the Campaign for Our Shared Future to operate without publicly disclosing its donors. — "It's clear to me that the battle continues to grow," said Heather Harding, a former education grantmaking director at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies who began working as the campaign's executive director in July. — "We think that presidential politics will continue to keep schools sort of in their crosshairs," Harding said. "We don't find that productive to the actual work of learning, so we do hope that as more donors join us we can be broader, and go deeper so that public schools continue to be a backbone of democracy."
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Arizona Department of Education Superintendent Kathy Hoffman speaks the latest Arizona coronavirus update during a news conference in Phoenix. | Pool photo by Matt York | RACING ARIZONA — Arizona Republicans want to seize the state's school superintendent office this fall — and they've put race, sexuality and parents' academic anxiety at the center of their campaigns. — Superintendent Kathy Hoffman, a Democratic critic of Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, will face the victor of an Aug. 2 GOP primary race that's piled onto rhetoric wielded by conservative state politicians, and Govs. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin. — The Republican primary features onetime state superintendent-turned-attorney general Tom Horne, real estate business owner Shiry Sapir, and Maricopa County state Rep. Michelle Udall. Each of the aspiring school chiefs have portrayed classrooms as being overrun with hypersexualized lessons and critical race theory that harm children still regrouping after months of mask mandates and school closures. — The heated contest to oversee public schooling for more than 1 million children marks a test of how a swing-state Democrat might hold onto their office as the Republican Party increasingly builds an offensive on reshaping education. But Tuesday's down-ballot election will also pit conservatives' education message against a swath of undecided voters as political attention gets directed at Arizona's crowded gubernatorial and Senate primaries. — Conservatives are staring down a very tight race. An OH Predictive Insights poll of roughly 500 likely GOP primary voters from July 27 showed Horne and Sapir tied for first place with support from 21 percent of respondents. Udall was in third place with 14 percent. Forty-four percent of voters said they were undecided. The survey had an approximate margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points. Here's more from your host .
| | | BECERRA TALKS YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH — Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will travel to a children's hospital in Wilmington, Del., this morning to attend a youth mental health forum as schoolchildren prepare to return to classes in the coming weeks. — According to HHS, Becerra will be joined by Nemours Children's Health President and CEO R. Lawrence Moss, Delaware Democratic Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), and other local officials to discuss the nation's mental health crisis. — Schools will be encouraged to use Medicaid: Becerra and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently told governors that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will issue guidance to states this summer that encourages them to leverage Medicaid's existing "free care" policy so more schools can receive funding for covered health care services, including mental health treatment, they provide to children enrolled in the government program. — The Medicaid guidance could arrive in the next six to eight weeks, an administration official told reporters last week. As of March, 17 states had expanded their school-based Medicaid programs, according to the Healthy Schools Campaign .
| | | BUYING TIME — School leaders are pushing the government for more time to spend billions of dollars in temporary federal education aid dished out during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic. They're also expressing concerns about a "fiscal cliff", or cuts that lurk in the wake of big spending on long-term expenses with short-term funds. — Assistant Education Secretary Roberto Rodríguez thinks states and school districts will step in with their own money to ease the transition. — "My prediction is that we will see , over the course of the next three years, districts and states find and utilize more innovative ways with their state and local resources to try to mitigate some of those challenges as we're winding down the pandemic funding," Rodríguez told your host last week during the Education Writers Association conference in Orlando. — The department is also thinking about longer spending timetables for non-infrastructure projects, Rodríguez said. Organizations — including AASA, The School Superintendents Association, and the Council of Chief State School Officers — have again pressed the government to clarify its plans for the so-called "late liquidation" process we told you about in May. — "We're trying to address and mitigate some of those challenges around the funding cliff," he said. "But it's clear that we have systemically, if you look back over years, failed to make the investments in the underlying system that we need to close opportunity and achievement gaps." That brings added importance to President Joe Biden's FY23 federal budget, Rodríguez said, "because it's an investment in helping to support and mitigate some of those challenges of the cliff."
| | | A POLITICALLY TROUBLING IRONY — To achieve the long-sought goal of returning high-end manufacturing to the United States, POLITICO's Brendan Bordelon and Eleanor Mueller report , the country must paradoxically attract more foreign workers. — From electrical engineering to computer science, the U.S. currently does not produce enough doctorates and master's degrees in the science, technology, engineering and math fields who can go on to work in U.S.-based microchip plants. Decades of declining investments in STEM education means the U.S. now produces fewer native-born recipients of advanced STEM degrees than most of its international rivals. — Foreign nationals, including many educated in the U.S., have traditionally filled that gap. But a bewildering and anachronistic immigration system, historic backlogs in visa processing and rising anti-immigrant sentiment have combined to choke off the flow of foreign STEM talent precisely when a fresh surge is needed. — A growing chorus is warning Congress they're running out of time.
| | | CHARTER CHATTER — A prominent conservative college's plans to open Tennessee charter schools now stand on shaky ground, after the institution's president said "teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country" at a private reception . — Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn earlier this year announced plans to launch 50 charter schools in Tennessee, after Gov. Bill Lee originally asked for 100. — But three Hillsdale-affiliated charter school applications in Tennessee have been rejected by local school boards since Arnn's comments, The Associated Press reports . — All three Hillsdale affiliates have filed to appeal their rejections to the state's Public Charter School Commission. But Lee declined to comment on whether he would support overturning the local boards' rejections of Hillsdale's charter applications. The commission was created in 2019 and Lee has hand-selected all nine members. Arnn has also sought to recast his comments in a USA Today editorial .
| | | | INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY . | | | | | | | | — Trained, armed and ready. To teach kindergarten: The New York Times — Oklahoma downgrades school district over complaint it shamed white people: The Washington Post — A two-week program to get your summer-lazy kids off screens and ready for school: The Wall Street Journal — L.A. schools estimate tens of thousands of students are missing from back-to-school rosters: Los Angeles Times — Michigan State asks Supreme Court to take Title IX case caused by cut of swimming teams: USA Today | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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