Students Demand Quality Education for All

 

The fight is on at the state legislature and nationally for equal, quality public education for all students.

John Carlos Serana Musso, student representative on the New Haven Board of Education, led 80 students to Hartford by train to tell the legislature and Governor “It should not matter what your zip code is, every student deserves the best quality education.” Current state funding has left New Haven with $1,000 less in per pupil spending than wealthier towns.

Just two days later Trump signed the executive order to dismantle the federal Department of Education which funds special education, nutrition and other vital programs.

The struggles were linked by Constanza Segovia, organizing director of CT for All coalition, speaking at the student press conference. “All of us stand before you UNITED with the REFUSAL to normalize the violent policies of the current US president,” she said. “We stand before you with a clear demand to our leaders in DC, and our leaders in Hartford. Join us in this refusal as they try to set back decades of civil rights, LGBTQIA rights, immigrant rights, and education justice work in this country.”

Following the president's executive order, Rep. Jahana Hayes, former national Teacher of the Year, announced she has submitted a resolution of public inquiry..

“I am not going to sit by and let us go back to a time where special education students were placed in the basement and not allowed to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers. I am not going to go back to a time where students came to school and didn’t get a hot meal or a book or computer or broadband — or all the things they needed to learn,” she said forcefully.

The American Federation of Teachers has filed a lawsuit to reverse the special order. Jenny Graves, executive vice president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, who had accompanied her students to the state capitol said, “Our schools are already grossly underfunded in Connecticut. It would be absolutely devastating to lose this.”