WEBINAR KICKS OFF ELC 50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS

September 16, 2022

In 2023, Education Law Center will celebrate 50 years of innovative advocacy to protect and strengthen the right to public education for the nation’s school children. ELC is marking this milestone with a webinar series that kicks off with “Post Carson v. Makin: How Can We Protect Public Education?”

Register for the webinar, scheduled for October 6 at 3-4 p.m. ET, here.

This webinar, co-sponsored by ELC’s Public Funds Public Schools campaign, will focus on the national implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision allowing religious schools to participate in Maine’s public school system and what advocates can do to prevent any further intrusion of religion into the nation’s public schools.

The Carson opinion issued by the Supreme Court in June addressed Maine’s exclusion of private religious schools from the state’s longstanding program to deliver public education in districts with no public schools by allowing them to pay tuition to private schools. Read the ELC/PFPS statement on the decision here.

Post Carson v. Makin: How Can We Protect Public Education? will feature:

• Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster, who litigated the Carson case and are navigating the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling for Maine’s students and schools.
  • Prior to being elected to serve as Maine’s 58^th Attorney General, Mr. Frey worked in a private legal practice in Bangor and served three terms in the Maine House of Representatives. Prior to joining the Office of the Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General Ms. Forster was a litigation associate at FoleyHoag LLP in Boston, and Dechert LLP in Philadelphia. She also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Norma L. Shapiro, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
• Dr. John H. Jackson, President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, who leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a fair and substantive opportunity to learn for all students regardless of race or gender. Prior to joining the Schott Foundation, Dr. Jackson served as National Director of Education and Chief Policy Officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education.


• Dr. Preston Green, Professor of Educational Leadership and Law at the University of Connecticut and the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the Neag School, who has extensive knowledge of education law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on legal and policy issues related to educational access and school privatization.

The discussion will be moderated by Public Funds Public Schools Director Jessica Levin. PFPS, a collaboration of ELC and the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a national campaign to ensure public funds for education are not diverted to private schools through vouchers and similar programs. PFPS filed amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs throughout the Carson litigation, including in the Supreme Court, and is involved in litigation to protect public schools from privatization across the country.