Parental Organizing to Shape Education Policy: The Case of Save Our Schools NJ

• In Event: From Philanthropists to Parents: Interest Groups in the Battles for and Against Education Reform

Abstract

The expansion of market-based education reform has led to a growing resistance as parents and students in the impacted communities have organized in opposition to the forced school closings, charter school expansions, taxpayer-funded vouchers, and the loss of democratic control of their public schools that market-based reform entails. In New York City (Scott & Fruchter, 2009); Philadelphia (Maranto, 2005; Simon, Quinn, Golden and Cohen, 2017); Chicago (Lipman, 2017); Newark (Danley & Rubin, 2017); New Orleans (Buras, 2013; Buras, 2015; Dixson, Buras, and Jeffers, 2015) and many other cities, community members have been “sitting in, walking out, marching, filing lawsuits, going on hunger strikes, and otherwise “ris[ing] up in protest against the market-based agenda” (The Alliance To Reclaim Our Schools 2015, p. 3).

The opposition to market-based reform also has expanded beyond city-wide campaigns to include statewide and even national efforts to shape education policy. This paper examines one such statewide organizing initiative by detailing the creation and growth of Save Our Schools New Jersey (SOSNJ). Founded by a handful of parents in 2010, the all-volunteer SOSNJ has grown to include more than thirty four thousand public education supporters who live in urban, suburban, and rural New Jersey communities and in each of the state’s forty legislative districts. The organization is governed by an economically, racially, and geographically diverse group of its most engaged members, who refer to each other as volunteer organizers. As of July 2017, there were 112 volunteer organizers, including the founders and others who joined in the first few years and members who came on board more recently. There is little attrition among the volunteer organizers, and existing volunteers are a key source for new recruits.

The organizers communicate with each other on a “private” Facebook page accessible only to them. All substantive decisions regarding the organization—everything from signing a letter or writing an editorial to taking on a new area for policy advocacy—are decided by a majority vote of the volunteer organizers. SOSNJ has a strong social media presence, including an active Twitter account and a public. Facebook page staffed by volunteers. The public Facebook page reaches 25,000–50,000 people in a typical week, and as many as 200,000 when discussing a particularly popular issue. The volunteers also use organizing software to communicate with the large membership by e-mail, alerting their members to pending legislative votes and enabling them to contact their legislators with a few clicks of their keyboards.

SOSNJ’s members and volunteers have helped write and pass legislation that they support and to stop policies that they oppose. They regularly testify in front of the New Jersey State Board of Education and the state legislature and shape policies and practices in their local school districts. This case study provides a rich account of how a grassroots, parental organizing effort can bridge divides of geography, race, and class to build the political strength necessary to successfully impact public policy.

Author

• Julia Sass Rubin, Rutgers University - New Brunswick/Piscataway