Project 2025 promises to spell disaster for public education, and not only because of threats to close the Dept. of Education. It's so bad, even student-teachers are canvassing to GOTV.
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Anna Buckley, a third-year college student at Fayetteville State University—which she describes as the “No. 1 HBCU for public education in North Carolina”—comes from a family of educators and plans to join them in the field. She has been a tutor most of her life. But right now, Buckley is focused on how to address challenges facing public education during this crucial election year—ensuring positive changes happen, and that education doesn’t go backward.
Buckley is currently serving as the state president of the Student North Carolina Association of Educators and as a part of the National Education Association (NEA)’s Aspiring Educators Advisory Committee. Her NEA chapter is hosting a voter-education event, and they’ve partnered with Methodist University’s educators club and Rally NC, among other organizations, to help with voter registration. “I know Aspiring Educators all over the country, we’re advocating for public-education candidates,” says Buckley. “It’s especially important because it’s more than just the presidential election. It’s also the school boards and everything else.”
Aspiring Educators, a program of the NEA—the country’s largest union of educators—has undertaken get-out-the-vote efforts in the lead-up to elections that stand to significantly impact public education, educators, and students themselves.
In addition to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump announcing he wants to close the Department of Education if elected, Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students, early childhood education, and the impact of vouchers that could fund private education at the expense of public schools, are among key education issues in the race, as outlined by NPR.
Even beyond specific education policy, educators are impacted by countless issues that could be shaped by presidential and statewide elections, including the continued banning of books and gun violence, particularly given that over 20 schools have been impacted by gun violence in 2024 alone. Meanwhile, reporting from The Hechinger Report outlines that other issues discussed this election cycle, including climate change and the economy, directly affect the function of schools and well-being of students and faculty within them. Nearly every issue is an education issue, or at least one that impacts students and educators.
Members of the Aspiring Educators program sit within a unique assortment of roles: They are undergraduate or graduate students who are, in some cases, already in classrooms student- teaching, and are young voters who are focused on the state of their field. According to numbers provided by the NEA from Catalist—a data management company that focuses on progressive politics—they say Aspiring Educators members also voted at a higher rate than the regular 18-29 turnout rate in 2022, 35.2% to 25.5% in 2022. (Some reports had about 27% of voters between ages 18-29 voting in 2022.) Reporting on college student voting from The Hechinger Report detailed that young voters had a significant impact on 2022 races, and could repeat high turnout in 2024.
Multiple members in battleground states emphasized the importance of young educators engaging in issues up and down the ballot.
“We understand fully that every single thing that happens in a public school is affected by policy and politics,” says Kate Meyer, president of both the Aspiring Educators of Wisconsin and of the Aspiring Educators chapter at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both Meyer’s parents were Milwaukee public school teachers who were involved in their union, she says, so when she arrived at college, looking to the Aspiring Educators chapter to find community felt important.
As students, Meyer says current young educators saw how their own childhood classrooms were affected by which lessons were taught, which books they could read, and how much funding was accessible to schools. Now, she’s helping ensure that college students are prepared to vote. When the chapter began knocking on doors and phone banking, the focus was on ensuring people were registered to vote. As the election grows closer, Meyer says Aspiring Educators have been talking to people on the other end of the phone about why they’re voting for pro–public education candidates. In addition, they have been canvassing around campus and the surrounding area where students live in off-campus apartments or houses. Meyer thinks students might be more likely to open the door when they see it’s a peer. Plus, she says, “Everyone has had an amazing teacher in their life, and so they love to talk to teachers,” meaning that they might already feel connected to a peer who is beginning a career in the education field.
The NEA has endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris for president, and multiple Aspiring Educator members who spoke to DAME have expressed enthusiasm for her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school teacher. Hannah St. Clair, the National Education Association’s Aspiring Educators chairperson, says that when we have people who are prioritizing public education in the White House, it’s more likely to increase equity in schools, funding, and opportunities for students. “Having educators speaking about what their experience is, speaking about how politics truly affects every single decision in the classroom, I think can really show people that when you’re voting for someone, whether it’s at local, state or federal level, those leaders—they impact what is happening for students and educators in our local communities,” says St. Clair.
Just as Meyer mentions experiences she had as a student that have evolved into policies she’d like to see as a young voter, St. Clair points to an issue that has impacted them as a student and is now at the top of their mind this election cycle: She recounted visiting Georgia for several Aspiring Educators events in early September, about a week after two teachers and two students were killed in a school shooting at Apalachee High School. One event occurred only about an hour away from the high school. It underscored how policies dealing with gun violence also impact education; in January 2024, the cover story of NEA’s own magazine focused on educators demanding change around gun violence.
For St. Clair, it also brought back memories from their time as a student. They started doing drills for schools in first grade, she says. “I still remember the first time they hid us around a bookshelf and went and knocked on the doors pretending to be an intruder,” they recounted. A stark difference this election cycle, St. Clair explains, is that she feels Harris understands gun violence shouldn’t be the norm in schools, whereas on Trump’s ticket, the response is “just deal with it, get over it.”
Policies related to gun reform are something Lindsey Springer, Aspiring Educators of Michigan’s Political Action Chair, would like to hear more about from the Harris-Walz campaign. She loves that Harris selected Walz as her running mate, because “what we want as educators is to have fair working wages and fair working environments, and I think that because Tim Walz has gone through all of that himself, he will be more of an advocate.” When the National Education Association union went on strike, President Biden did not cross the picket line, and she believes a Harris-Walz administration would also protect unions.
She’s been using Instagram to push voting initiatives, including how students can request absentee ballots. This will be the first time Springer can vote, so she’s learning as she goes and is working to share information in the process.
In another battleground state, Kasandra Medina-Torres—Nevada State student president for the Nevada State Education Association, who represents the Aspiring Educators for Nevada—is also using social media to tell people how to register to vote and explain the differences between Harris-Walz’s and Trump-Vance’s policies on education. She believes social media is an easy way to reach young people, because they’re already on the platform, as opposed to email, which young people don’t check as quickly.
In Nevada, if you drive around, you’ll see the political divide, says Medina-Torres—different yard signs, different flags. And on campus, she thinks there is energy: “Almost every day I’ll get somebody who stops me and asks me, are you registered?” she says.
Young educators are also focused on statewide elections. In Wisconsin, Meyer was part of the committee that vetted candidates for recommendations for next year’s election for the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC). The council is not affiliated with political parties, she says, and all candidates are asked about issues that affect teachers. “We understand that every single election is so important, and so we want our members to not only vote for Kamala and Tim but to vote for pro–public education candidates up and down the ballot,” she says.
While Springer in Michigan is not sure the two-party system is the most effective way for the country to run anymore, she added that sometimes, from the outside, you don’t understand how much the federal or state government actually impacts teaching. Being informed is critical to using your voice, she says. “Because if you don’t understand this, at the government [level] where we can protest—because we have the right to a peaceful protest, [where] we can elect representatives that represent our beliefs and values, if you don’t understand that it’s coming from them, you’re not going to know that change is possible,” she explains.
Back in North Carolina, Buckley is thinking about the western part of the state, which was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. Educators, school staff, and students will need support. Like other Aspiring Educators, Buckley is advocating for paid student teaching as well as budget raises, which could be impacted by statewide and local elections, she said.
Buckley thinks people shouldn’t count out young voters, or cast them as people who only listen to what is on social media. Young educators are real people. “We’re watching,” she says. “I want them to know that they can also help build us up as leaders as well.”