With the Trump administration soon to take office, independent schools across the country will quickly find themselves becoming, to varying degrees, counter cultural. Schools with conservative cultures and missions will have to locate themselves on a continuum where the presidential agenda seems poised to define the outer boundaries of extremism. Schools with more firmly liberal cultures and missions will wonder if they will be left alone, an ironic silver-lining of the new administration's focus on states' rights, or if they will be singled out and attacked.
These conflicts will test our independence. After all, the biggest points of leverage for government in our schools are state approval requirements and participation in state programs like vouchers and shared services. Although state approval requirements for private schools could become weaker as the new adminstration pushes its school choice agenda, it's also possible to imagine ad hoc requirements that most independent schools would consider noxious. Policies for private schools in the 1920s, for instance, reflected the surging xenophobia and racism of post WW1 America, a decade when the Klan effectively governed the state of Indiana, and Asian people were barred from citizenship in most Western states. In many states at that time, English-only instruction was required for all schools and teachers could only gain certification from colleges where English was the language of instruction. Many political historians see close similarities between today's national climate and that of the 1920s. School vouchers, for instance, could come with strings--remove the following books from your library, vaccines from your health requirements, topics from your curriculum. I believe that independent schools should urge their state and regional associations to track and apprise them of any state legislation having to do with nonpublic schools and to seek alternatives to any federal or state funded programs to which they're tied. Schools that serve students with special needs will have to identify elegant compromises.
The other tests will be in the court of school community opinion. Most independent schools have already explored these conflicts over the last decade, particularly during and after the pandemic, and emerged wiser, if not beleaguered, for it. Schools have become clearer in describing the school's mission in action to prospective students and parents, and some have made very public stands, even terminating enrollent contracts for students (or their parents) who agitate against clearly stated school values. Our school values will become an even stronger asset in the current climate, an even bigger reason to protect those values by becoming assertively clear about them.
In the broad public view, independent schools have spent most of their history cast as the epitome of comfortable, conservative elitism. We've evolved dramatically in those years and now have the opportunity to make our true missions and values known, but it's going to take conviction, planning and guts.
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