As movement lawyers at Advancement Project, we support grassroots organizers around the country fighting for community control and a liberatory education in schools.  

Last summer, we wrote an op-ed in TIME to sound the alarm of a disturbing trend—we were hearing from the ground that once again, school district leaders were trying to close local public schools in Black, Latine, and low-income communities.

We published the op-ed shortly after the public learned about Project 2025 and its plan to eliminate the institution of public education. We were already seeing this plan get carried out—school by school and school district by school district—in the Black and Latine communities where our partners organize.  

This week, after learning that the U.S. Supreme Court gave the okay to the Administration’s unlawful actions to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, we believe that this piece we shared last summer is now more relevant than ever. You can read it in full here.