A nationwide movement of students, families, educators, and organizers comes together to confront school pushout and the forces reshaping public education—from AI and privatization to policing, surveillance, and immigration enforcement.
Dignity in Schools Campaign’s National Week of Action Against School Pushout | October 17th–25th, 2026
From October 17–25, parents, students, teachers, education advocates, and grassroots organizers across the country will come together for the National Week of Action Against School Pushout, organized by the Dignity in Schools Campaign (DSC) and its member organizations.
This year’s theme, “Public Education. Public Good!”, is a declaration of what communities know and what generations of organizers have fought to make real: public schools are essential public institutions, and the people who depend on them deserve investment, dignity, safety, and a meaningful voice in how they are shaped and function.
For 20 years, DSC has organized alongside young people, families, educators, and communities to challenge the policies and practices that push students out of school and limit their futures. The National Week of Action continues that work by bringing local struggles, solutions, and visions onto a national stage. At its best, this work is a vision of public schools where care, accountability, and shared leadership are central to how communities learn and grow together.
“Public schools should be designed to ensure students and families develop healthy relationships and develop the environment and culture where it is encouraged to learn from, be accountable to, and care for one another across differences,” said Andrea Ortiz, Director of Dignity in Schools Campaign–New York. “In restorative and healing-centered public schools, students, families, and educators sharpen their leadership skills and get civically engaged from the moment they enter the school, because developing their culture and how they are going to treat one another is going to be a co-created collective process.”
In 2026, communities are organizing at a moment when the fundamental promise of public education is being dismantled. Across the country, students and families continue to encounter exclusionary discipline, physical punishment, policing, surveillance, discrimination, inadequate resources, and educational systems that too often prioritize compliance over learning and punishment over care.
“I refuse to accept a system where children are punished for circumstances they did not create,” said Shequite Wilson-Johnson, Co-Founder of GAP Leadership Collective. “Poverty, trauma, housing instability, and limited resources should never become barriers to a child’s success. Through youth leadership, storytelling, civic engagement, and community partnerships, we are organizing to ensure students are not just talked about when decisions are made, but are actually sitting at the table helping shape those decisions.”
The National Week of Action is a call to change what we fund, to resource what we value, and to co-create what we know public schools are actually for.
For our National Event, we are hosting the Assembly Required Virtual Film Festival from October 17th-24th. Get tickets here
