Some key issues in K-12 education were addressed this week at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, with speakers repeatedly calling for a rejection of Project 2025 and its proposal to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, survivors of school shootings shared their personal stories, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and others spoke about his background as a public school teacher and football coach.
While other policy issues ultimately attracted more attention at the four-day Democratic gathering in Chicago, K-12 education played a bigger role at the DNC than at the Republican National Convention in July.
Neither former President Donald Trump nor his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, mentioned education in their speeches. However, several speakers at the Republican convention in Milwaukee raised concerns about student behavior and school discipline, as well as the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules, which now require schools to allow nonbinary and transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity unless judges have temporarily barred them from doing so.
Here are five key moments from the 2024 DNC for educators.
1. Walz’s background as a teacher is discussed
In a short video shown before Walz’s speech on August 21, several former students from his time as a social studies teacher and football coach at Mankato West High School recounted their experiences with the vice presidential candidate.
“When he first started teaching, it was like full-contact teaching,” Blake Frink, a 2001 Mankato West graduate, said in the recorded video. “You just couldn’t help but be interested in what he was talking about.”
Frink credited Walz with inspiring his own decision to become a teacher. Another former student of Walz’s, Ben Ingman, told a story about how Walz became his middle school basketball and track coach to earn extra money to pay off another student’s lunch debt.
“Coach Walz inspired us with what we could achieve together,” Ingman said in a speech on Wednesday. “He believed in us and he helped us believe in each other.”
Former students who played for the Mankato West Scarlets when Walz was defensive coordinator joined Ingman on stage in their high school jerseys and cheered the high school fight song. Walz himself spoke about his background as a teacher in his speech accepting the nomination and thanked his football players and students for inspiring him to run for Congress.
“They saw in me what I wanted to convey to them: a commitment to the common good, an understanding that we are all in this together, and a belief that one person can make a real difference for their neighbors,” Walz said. “Never underestimate a public school teacher.”
He also gave a pregame pep talk to Democrats with many football analogies to encourage them to call, knock on doors and donate money before Election Day.
2. Politicians and celebrities criticize Project 2025’s proposal to abolish the U.S. Department of Education
Several speakers at the convention, including Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, former First Lady Michelle Obama and even comedian and “Saturday Night Live” star Kenan Thompson, criticized “Project 2025,” the conservative policy agenda pushed by the Heritage Foundation and a number of officials in the first Trump administration.
Although Trump tries to distance himself from the coalition’s agenda, the coalition’s education policy proposals largely coincide with his own. This includes the proposal to dissolve the Federal Ministry of Education.
“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books – none of that will prepare our children for the future,” Obama said.
In her speech Thursday accepting her party’s nomination for president, Harris criticized the proposal to abolish the department, using it as a launching pad for her slogan, “We are not going back.” She also mentioned the document’s proposal to eliminate the Head Start program for young children living in poverty.
“We will not let him abolish the Department of Education, which funds our public schools,” Harris said. “We will not let him end programs like Head Start, which provide preschool and child care.”
(The federal government generally provides less than 10 percent of total public school funding nationwide..)
In his speech, Walz also criticized conservative efforts to remove books that often highlight race, gender identity and sexual orientation from school classrooms and called for gun safety measures. He also touted a law he signed in 2023 that would make Minnesota one of the few states to offer free breakfast and lunch at school to all students..
“While other countries banned books from their schools, we banned hunger from ours,” Walz said.
3. School shooting survivors demand gun safety laws
In a segment on gun violence on August 22, survivors and families of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, shared their stories.
“On December 14, 2012, I walked into Sandy Hook School, stopped in the office, talked with my principal, and then began my day with my second graders,” Abbey Clements said. “Suddenly, there was a loud crash, like metal folding chairs falling over, 154 gunshots rang out, we hid in our coats, tried to sing with my students, read to them, tried to drown out the noises, fear, crying, running. I carry that horrible day with me.”
Clements was joined by Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was one of the 19 students killed in the 2022 Uvalde shooting.
“It’s 10:30 a.m. at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. The school is honoring my 10-year-old daughter Lexi for her A’s,” Rubio said. “She’s receiving a good citizenship award and we’re posing for pictures. She’s wearing a St. Mary’s sweatshirt and her smile lights up the room. Thirty minutes later, a gunman murders her, 18 classmates and two teachers. We’re taken to a private room where police tell us she’s not coming home.”
Throughout the convention, politicians called for safety measures to protect firearms and criticized Republicans for blocking bills to ban assault rifles and other automatic weapons.
“Many other fundamental freedoms are at stake in this election,” Harris said in her speech. “The freedom to live safe from gun violence – in our schools, communities and houses of worship.”
4. Oprah Winfrey links Harris’ historic nomination to the desegregation of schools
Harris is the first woman of color and person of Asian descent to lead the presidential nomination of a major political party.
While Harris herself did not address her identity in her speech, another speaker, talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey, linked the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to Brown v. School Board verdict and school desegregation to Harris’ historic position.
In her speech on August 21, Winfrey paid tribute to Tessie Prevost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who integrated the city’s public schools in 1960. Williams died earlier this year.
“It was the grace, courage and bravery of women like Tessie Prevost Williams that paved the way for another young girl who, nine years later, was part of the second class that integrated the public schools in Berkeley, California,” Winfrey said of Harris.
Harris famously drew on this story during her 2020 presidential bid, criticizing her then-rival Joe Biden at a Democratic primary debate for opposing federal child transportation measures earlier in his career..
5. Teachers’ union leaders step up to support Harris and Walz
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called on voters to support Harris and Walz’s slate of candidates in a series of short speeches Thursday, joining other union leaders who spoke at the Democratic National Convention.
“As an 8th grade science teacher for over 30 years, I can tell you that Kamala Harris and teacher Tim Walz understand that when our public schools are strong, our nation is strong,” Pringle said.
AFT was the first union to endorse Harris for president after President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy for re-election on July 21. The NEA quickly followed, switching its endorsement from Biden to Harris later in the week, and Harris attended the AFT’s convention on July 25 for a personal speech.
Both unions were critical of Trump and Project 2025.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance cannot claim to be child-friendly while simultaneously cutting funding for public schools,” Weingarten said.
