Over the next several months, Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) will host a series of webinars on topics related to private school vouchers and PFPS’s goal of ensuring public funds are used to maintain and support public schools. The webinars are intended for public education advocates, students and families, educators, attorneys and anyone interested in protecting and strengthening public schools.

PFPS is pleased to announce that the first webinar in the series will feature Dr. Julie Fisher Mead, with a presentation entitled “Public Education: The Cornerstone of Democracy.” Dr. Mead, a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has written and presented extensively on education privatization and students’ legal rights.

Dr. Mead’s PFPS webinar will focus on the role of public education in the U.S. as the cornerstone of democracy, and the ways that private school vouchers pose a growing threat to this institution. The webinar will address questions such as: What are the values and principles that make public schools so essential to a strong democracy? How do external threats to public education impact those principles? How do we describe and defend those values when supporting our local schools? Dr. Mead will also discuss differences in legal protections in public schools and private school voucher programs, explaining how privatization opens the door to discrimination.

To register for “Public Education: The Cornerstone of Democracy,” to be held on Tuesday, May 19, at 2:00 p.m. ET, please click here.

To access other PFPS advocacy tools, including webinars featuring PFPS, please visit the PFPS website.