Long Beach residents rally for free public education for all students

More than 100 Long Beach residents gathered at the teachers' union headquarters Saturday to listen to education leaders, students, community activists and elected officials voice outrage and disgust at the Trump Administration's efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

“We need to protect our most vulnerable students!” teacher Bernice Baneras shouted into a microphone at the rally, held at a small lot behind the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) offices. “Without funding, where are our students with disabilities going to go?”

In the early days of his second term of office, President Donald Trump appointed Elon Musk — the world's richest man — to run an outfit called DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”), ostensibly to cut government waste. In fact, DOGE is a small team of wealthy executives, engineers and far-right ideologues who are seizing control of highly sensitive computer and payment systems in the offices of the U.S. Treasury Department and USAID (which dispenses foreign aid) and have also been active at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health, according to The Guardian.

This access gives Musk access to the personal information of millions of Americans, according to Politico.

Though federal judges have issued injunctions against the efforts, high level Trump Administration officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, have attacked those rulings.

During the rally, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson welcomed and praised education workers, teachers and students, thanking them for standing up to protect the Department of Education. He described his family’s life in the South during Jim Crow segregation, when his grandmother fought successfully to send her two children to integrate a community school.

“What they [the Trump Administration] want is an uninformed electorate,” Richardson said. “This is an attack on our democracy. We’ve seen it before—if you can’t read, you can’t vote and speak up for our democracy.”

Representative Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, echoed Richardson’s sentiments. An educator “first and foremost” as well as an immigrant, he said, he expressed love for the country and gratitude for the opportunities he received coming to the United States at age 3, speaking only Spanish.

“We work hard, we help build this country,” Garcia said. “And we’re not going to stand for the dehumanization of immigrants in this country by Donald Trump. While we feel hopeless, we haven’t lost hope that we can turn thing around, and so many people are counting on us to do so.”

Speakers described the implications of dismantling the Department of Education.

“The thing that’s most at risk is the research unit,” education and community activist Nadia Tushnet said in a later interview. “The research done through the Department of Education has led to understanding of how kids learn to read, how kids learn mathematical thinking, which is important critical thinking. And so, without that, we’re without the kind of guidance teachers need to do their best job. Research underpins that.”

States with fewer resources to funding will suffer more, the speakers said.

“Some Title I funding, if you look nationally, is 14% of education funding,” Tushnet told attendees, referring to federal education money that goes to schools with at least 40 percent of their students coming from low-income families. “But where it goes is absolutely crucial. Rural districts and impacted urban districts, if they lose money, it gets worse.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond promised the audience that the State of California would back up curriculum content and funding if the U.S. government pulls it.

“The president cannot unilaterally get rid of the Department of Education — it has to be an act of Congress,” Thurmond said. “This is not a partisan issue — if that department were to be abolished, it would mean a lack of special education for children of all backgrounds.”

Thurmond said that his office is taking steps to protect students and schools. For example, he said he developed a bill stating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents may not come within a one-mile radius of any school.

But Garcia emphasized that it would take more than legislation to save public education.

“We need to do everything we can to put ourselves in between the harm that these billionaires and, quite frankly, the militia groups, are going to try to impose on our community,” Garcia told rally attendees. “Say no to anyone trying to dehumanize any of our children, including those with disabilities and those questioning their identity, the ones who are starving and hungry coming to school because their parents can barely afford to put food on the table. We get in the way, we have to be loud — every chance that we get, we call on all of our other friends who have a platform, who have a voice and don’t stand silent.”

As an example, Garcia spoke of an incident when Musk and his “DOGE team literally of teenagers” attempted to access the Department of Labor.

“Labor unions heard what was going on,” Garcia said. “Thousands came out, along with me. The DOGE team was so scared to go into the department that they shut down and cancelled.”

LBUSD school board member Juan Benitez said that he would advocate for funds and policies that benefit all district students, regardless of race, gender or abilities.

“I’m calling on the officials who are not here to also stand up and say specifically what they’re going to do," Benitez said. "We’re all here because of a free, equitable, well-funded, high-quality public education.”

Concluding the rally, Richardson invoked the same spirit.

“So, you’re damn right every one of us should fight and stand up,” Richardson said. “We should not just come out when it’s ‘my kid, my student, my school’ when we’re talking about equity. Stand up and protect our children. They’re counting on us the same way I counted on my grandmother to get it right.”

Anthony Pignataro contributed to this story.