About The Alliance
to Reclaim Our Schools
The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) was officially formed in 2013, born out of the fight for education justice emerging in cities across the country. Teachers, parents, school staff, communities, and students had experienced education funding cuts and layoffs, inequities persisted, and the school privatization movement was experiencing another surge. Teacher and school staff union membership was being gutted across the country, and school closures had become commonplace.
A series of town halls were held across the nation, culminating in a meeting in Los Angeles where community and union organizations were able to realize their shared vision. Together, organizations would take on the national privatization movement, and uplift the community schools model through the creation of local coalitions on the ground. There would also be a federal component to the work of AROS, pushing the government to fully fund IDEA And Title I, while seeking pathways to get federal funding to our local schools.
Our coalition was born out of the need to shift the narrative around public education, highlighting the successes within our networks, but also elevating community solutions over corporate or legislative edicts. Over the years, our coalition has hosted walk-ins, presented in numerous Congressional hearings, hosted a presidential forum, and helped to form countless community coalitions who fight each day for public education.
Ten years have passed since the formation of AROS, but many of the fights have stayed the same or evolved. AROS continues to stand with folks on the ground who call for an end to systemic racism within our system, call for the teaching of honest history, stand up for LGBTQIA+ youth, push for language access for parents and students, and who spend each day knocking down barriers so that all kids can achieve at their highest level.
As we turn the page and think about the next ten years of AROS, there are many unknowns and pages waiting to be written. Together, as union and community coalitions, we will be united and stand together, in the fight to transform public education.
The Principles That Guide Us
We are parents and caregivers, students and community members. We are educators and school staff.
We have come together around a common commitment to public education. Schools should be a source of creativity and joy. We believe that the only way to give every child the opportunity to pursue a rich and productive life, both individually and as a member of society, is through a system of publicly funded, equitable and democratically controlled public schools. The principles below reflect our joint efforts to define our vision for public education and to distinguish our vision from that of those who wish to privatize our schools. Now, more than ever, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that access to good public schools is a critical civil and human right. We are committed to working together to reclaim the promise of public education as our nation’s gateway to democracy and racial and economic justice.
Public schools are public institutions.
Our school districts should be guided by a commitment to provide all children with the opportunity to attend a quality public school in their community. Public schools are a public good and are built to serve students of all abilities and backgrounds, not just some. Our districts provide needed accommodations to students with disabilities, English language instruction for immigrant and refugee families, and mental health and wellness support for our communities. These services, combined with strong academics, separate public schools from other “reform” models of education with the underlying goal of providing education to ALL students. We believe that public education should be led by democratically elected school boards, representatives from our communities - not corporate boards, CEOs, or state governments. Strategies take away the public’s right to have a voice in their local schools inherently create winners and losers among both schools and students. Our most historically disadvantaged children become collateral damage in these reforms, and community self-determination becomes impossible. We will not accept that.
Our voices matter.
Those closest to the education process—teachers, administrators, school staff, students, their parents, and community members—must have a voice in education policy and practice. Our schools and districts should be guided by their communities, not by corporate executives, entrepreneurs or philanthropists. Top-down reform doesn’t address the real needs of schools or students. Districts and States must support parent and community empowerment, promoting inclusive policies and meaningful opportunities for input. Most importantly, we believe that we must actively listen to students, collect their feedback, and utilize this data to make decisions for our schools.
Strong public schools create strong communities.
Schools are community institutions as well as centers of learning. While education alone cannot eradicate poverty, schools can help to coordinate the supports and services their students and families need to thrive. Climate change has affected our school communities, whether through wildfires, hurricanes, or extreme temperatures in buildings not equipped for these new changes. Communities across the country are struggling to provide much-needed affordable housing options, and every night, more than one million students are unhoused. So called “reform” strategies ignore the challenges that students bring with them to school each day, and view schools as separate and autonomous from the communities in which they sit.
Assessments should be used to improve instruction.
Assessments are critical tools to guide teachers in improving their lesson plans and framing their instruction to meet the needs of individual students. We support accountability. But standardized assessments are misused when teachers are fired, schools are closed, and students are penalized based on a single set of scores. Excessive high-stakes testing takes away valuable instructional time, elevates anxiety in both students and teachers, and narrows the curriculum—with the greatest impact on our historically disadvantaged students.
Quality teaching must be delivered by committed, respected and supported educators.
Over the last five years, we have watched the War on Teachers play out, resulting in a current nation-wide teacher shortage. We believe that teachers should be honored. Teaching is a career, not a temporary stop on the way to one. Our teachers should be well-trained, certified, and well-supported. Teachers must be trusted and afforded the ability to teach honest history to our nation’s students. They should be given the opportunity to assume leadership roles in their schools. Highly qualified teachers and school staff are our schools’ greatest assets - let’s treat them that way.
Schools must be welcoming and respectful places for all.
Schools should be welcoming and inclusive. Students, parents, educators and community residents should feel that their cultures and contributions are respected and valued. We recognize that Black lives matter, and support policies that seek to rectify years of systemic racism and punitive discipline practices within our systems. We also support the rights of community members to love who they want, be referred to as they wish, and to be free from harassment and bullying. Schools that push out historically disadvantaged students and treat parents as intruders cannot succeed in creating a strong learning environment. Respectful schools are better places to both work and learn.
Our schools must be fully funded for success and equity.
Almost 70 years ago, in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that African-American students were being denied their constitutional right to an integrated and equitable public education. We have not come far enough. Today our schools remain segregated and unequal. When we shortchange some students, we shortchange our nation as a whole. It is time to fund public schools for success and equity, for we are destined to hand off the future of our nation to all our young people.
Our Vision
Public education is a human right and our nation’s gateway to racial and economic justice and authentic democracy. The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools envisions an equitable and excellent system of public education that serves all, not some, students. We believe that public schools are public institutions where self-determination and the democratic process allow community voices to be heard, respected, and centered. Teaching should be delivered by committed, respected, and supported educators who create safe, welcoming, anti-racist and culturally inclusive and affirming spaces for their students. Schools should be fully funded at the federal, state, and local levels, providing needed resources and supports for educators, support staff, students, families, and community members through sustainable Community Schools.