The Education Wars picked up the story of a cruel bill that sought to deny education to the children of immigrants based on the legal status of their parents. The measure, led by Sen. Bo Watson and Rep. William Lamberth, did not advance despite the persistence of its two leading advocates.
Then there is Tennessee, where odious legislation that would have given public schools the right to turn away undocumented students, or charge them tuition, collapsed this week due to widespread opposition. A broad coalition of groups, sixty five strong, including the Tennessee Chapter of NAACP, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM) — one of my favorite grassroots organizing groups—and an array of immigrant rights organizations helped bring this thing down.
Local school officials played a key role too. The Hamilton County School Board, representing the largest school system in the home district of Bo Watson, the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, voted unanimously to condemn the legislation last week, and every one of the district’s 79 school principals came out in opposition.
