New York, NY – In the face of ongoing and increasing systemic inequities in U.S. public schools, the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) is excited to continue its advocacy work through their 11th annual National Week of Action Against School Pushout, taking place October 18–26, 2025. The week-long campaign will feature teach-ins, film screenings, panel discussions, workshops, and other activities aimed at confronting the practices and policies that criminalize students and exclude families from meaningful participation in their schools.
“In their best light, schools are meant to be places of hope, belonging, community, and possibility,” said Ruth Idakula, Program Director for the Dignity in Schools Campaign. “Through education, students and communities should gain critical skills and the tools to participate in the positive transformation of society. Yet millions of students today are criminalized through policing, harsh disciplinary codes, and test-driven systems that treat young people as problems to be managed rather than human beings to be nurtured. Families are also pushed out, silenced, and excluded from decisions in schools that should belong to them. That’s why our coalition of students, educators, parents, and advocates continues to declare: Education is STILL a Human Right.”
DSC as a coalition emphasizes that public education is more than buildings and policies, it is more than reading, writing and math—it is a relationship and commitment rooted in human connection and trust. School communities must foster belonging, healing, and justice for every student, reflecting the communities they live in and come from. Yet for generations, students moving through public education systems have faced systemic attacks through underfunding, privatization, punitive disciplinary systems, school-based policing and inequitable testing regimes. These challenges disproportionately affect Black students, students of color, Indigenous youth, LGBTQIA+ students, disabled students, and housing-insecure youth.
“Our students demand something better,” said Andrew Hairston, Texas Appleseed and DSC Coordinating Committee Member, “They want to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, to learn not for compliance but for liberation, and to attend schools that are sanctuaries for healing and belonging, centers of cultural affirmation and critical consciousness raising, sites of democratic governance, and hubs of equitable resources and infrastructure. This is not utopian—it is the promise inherent in public education as a human right.”
The National Week of Action Against School Pushout invites communities nationwide to join DSC in building schools that truly serve and empower all students, highlighting the fight to reclaim public education as a just, equitable, and liberatory institution.
For more information about events, resources, and how to participate, visit dignityinschools.org.
