Flush with taxpayer cash from the federal government, state and local officials are rapidly transforming public schools into “full-service community schools” that will address far more than just “education.”
In fact, under the guise of caring for the “whole child,” these “community schools” are increasingly taking over the few remaining duties left over to parents — mental health, dental health, vision, nutrition, healthcare, social and emotional wellbeing, and more.
The plan is to get children into government hands earlier and earlier, too. The U.S. Department of Education boasted last year in a blog post that community schools will “support” students “from cradle to career,” something long considered the exclusive domain of parents.
The Biden administration, led by a man who notoriously sniffs and touches children while claiming they “are all our children,” has been showering federal funds on the scheme since taking office, as The Newman Report documented in 2022. Congress has been fully complicit, even under GOP control.
Just last year, the Biden Department of Education announced yet another $150 million in additional “community school” grants to 30 education agencies — many of them in conservative states where lawmakers would be unlikely to participate if not for the federal tax money. Responding to the federal funding, states have already spent billions on the scheme.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who famously denied that parents were the “primary stakeholders” in their children’s education, could barely contain his glee as he announced the new funds.
“We know that comprehensive, wrap-around approaches—including nutrition assistance; mental health services; early childhood education; and access to high-quality afterschool summer learning, and enrichment programs—all are crucial for accelerating our students’ academic success and their recovery from the pandemic by helping them thrive both inside and outside of school,” said Cardona.
“I am proud that the Biden-Harris Administration is expanding the number of community schools across the country as an evidence-based strategy to Raise the Bar in education and to deliver on our commitment to support students, families, and whole communities,” added the education boss, calling the latest round of taxpayer funding “vital” for supporting the “holistic needs” of children.
Already, an estimated 10,000 “community schools” exist across the United States thanks to such grants, launched in the waning months of the Obama administration with RINO support in Congress. And with the federal government funding them and the teachers’ unions pushing them hard, that number is expected to keep ballooning quickly.
The far-left National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest union with more than 3 million members, touts “community schools” all over its website as essential for all children.
It describes them as institutions offering “services and supports like free healthy meals, health care, and tutoring, or systemic changes like shifts in school culture, policies, and approaches to teaching and learning.”
On its website, the California Department of Education, which is working hard to get community schools all across the state, highlights some of the differences between them and traditional government schools.
“A community school is a public school … has community partnerships that support improved academic outcomes, whole-child engagement, and family development,” the radical leftwing agency declares, listing “integrated supports services” and “extended learning time” as key features.
“Community schools support the needs of the whole child,” it continues, with “approaches that sustain mental and behavioral health through healing-centered practices, social–emotional learning, and restorative justice.”
The California Department of Education also boasts that the new model increases access to social workers and counselors. These tax-funded experts in the schools can help children transition to new made-up genders, access abortion, and get dangerous psychotropic drugs to enrich Big Pharma.
In addition to sidelining parents, community schools also seek to marginalize and ultimately replace institutions such as churches that for centuries have served as “community hubs.”
Illinois is one of many states that, using federal funding, have unleashed the “community school” model on the population. Despite junk taxpayer-funded “studies” claiming the model “helps” children, the results suggest just the opposite is true.
The prominent “sustainable community school” known as Richards Academy in Chicago, for instance, graduated about two thirds of its victims in four years — yet it did not have one single student proficient in either reading or math on standardized tests, Illinois State Board of Education data show. Almost 80 percent of student are chronically absent. And the school costs taxpayers some $4,000 more per victim.
Unsurprisingly, though, the Chicago Teachers Union wants to replicate that “success” across the district.
“We have committed as an entire union to using our contract to create more sustainable community schools like Richards Academy,” said CTU boss Stacy Davis Gates at a press conference, calling it the “type of school community that is necessary to nurture, to educate, to reimagine, to ameliorate injustice and disparity.”
Using the notorious “Delphi” tactics for manipulating a group of people into a particular outcome while making them think they came up with the ideas, governments across the country are holding meetings with taxpayers and parents on the issue. They all end up at the same: Government schools must tax more, spend more, and usurp more control over the lives of children.
Ultimately, the goal of these government-controlled community schools is total government. They seek to become the center of the community and life — a replacement for family, church, and genuine community. Universal mental-health screening and government intervention in everything are already being deployed as part of the process.
Rather than fight back against the latest outrage from government schools and the Biden administration, parents should do something far more effective: opt out altogether. Parents, children, families, and communities would all be better off leaving the whole system.
Families, voluntary associations, and churches — not “community schools” — should be placed back in their central role in the lives of children. Government must be stopped from encroaching any further. Civilization and liberty depend on it.
