PROVIDING FOR OUR KIDS
DON’T TAKE THE BAIT
This summer, we have an opportunity to unite to ensure our legislature provides all our children with the freedom to learn joyfully, nourish their imaginations, and meet their needs head-on.
As always, if our messages don’t spread, they don’t work. Our shared challenge is to break through the noise by pulling together with a narrative that inspires our communities to chime in and join us.
PS. Thank you to We Make the Future for providing some of the research and narrative guidance we use in this guide!
DISMANTLING HARMFUL NARRATIVES
The opposition thrives on keeping their audience scared. This fear provides them cover to make moves that line their own pockets with our dollars and helps them retain and grow their unchecked power. Their fear-based narratives most often use BIPOC & LBGTQ people as their scapegoats.
These greedy politicians have been trying to stop every child from receiving a great education for decades. They’ve stripped school funding so that it denies students the resources needed for quality education. They’ve passed laws that ban students’ ability to learn from the mistakes of the past, and they've exploited ignorance about transgender people to push aside trans children. They’ve made it harder to keep experienced, qualified teachers in the classroom by cutting teacher pay and maintaining large class sizes. All of this is because many of them don’t believe that all of our children should be able to attend a great public school in their neighborhood regardless of ability, where they live, or what they look like.
Their objectives:
To confuse the public about the inequities between private and public schools so they can get away with ripping funds from students via school voucher programs to bankroll private schools for the wealthy and hide their refusal to fully fund public schools
To scare well-meaning parents into believing and repeating false narratives about curriculum. In order to make our case for well resourced, equitable public schools, our choir needs to be louder and singing from our hymnal—not theirs.
What you can do:
Become a Wisconsin Public Education Network Budget Ambassador! Learn more and support their work here. Help make sure everyone in Wisconsin understands what’s at stake for our kids.
Use the following narratives in your PTA meetings, in conversations with parents, neighbors, and community, and on your social media.
Call your state legislators and ask them to support Governor Evers’ education budget.
Show support for BIPOC/LGBTQ youth publicly whenever you can.
WINNING NARRATIVES
KEY GUIDANCE
Keep your message short and sweet.
Identify your audience. Find those who share your values, and energize them. Are you speaking to educators? Parents/Caregivers? Students? Center them in your message.
Consider your tone.
Name race, class, gender—doing this grounds us in our shared value of unity and can inoculate your message from the other side's divisive tactics.
Be deliberate with rhythm. Read your message aloud. Does it stick in your head? It should be easy for newcomers to understand and repeat.
Be local and specific. Name your local community. Show us exactly how local students win when we join your movement or achieve your goal.
Reiterate your values. Like Public Schools Unite Us, your slogan should spread easily. (And use “Public Schools Unite Us” as much as you wish!)
Keep it positive. Fighting against something? We get it. There’s a lot of bad news. You can and should name the problem, but the focus of your message should be positive and aspirational.
Demand that we rewrite the rules, messaging from inevitability. Our families will have what we need when we make self-interested politicians stop politicizing our children’s education. We make wealthy corporations contribute as much as they take from our communities to fully fund our children’s future.
Name your successes. People want to join a movement that gets things done. Invite them to join a community and remind them of a “win,” large or small, to inspire them.
Only use words everyone knows. People understand kids, they understand freedom, and they understand support. Don’t get bogged down in the lingo. A second-grader should be able to understand your message.
Try this! Take pieces of it! MAD LIBS public education messaging:
(Place) (people) believe in (shared value). But instead of delivering what kids need, (powers-that-be) are trying to (bad thing).] That’s why we’re coming together, (who’s coming together), to make sure our kids have (urgent demand, rooted in shared value). Join us in (specific call to action).
SAMPLE NARRATIVE #1
[Sheboygan, etc] families believe every kid deserves the freedom to learn and be themselves without political hurdles.
But instead of providing our kids the education they deserve, some lawmakers are rushing through a series of bills to divide kids and teachers by race and limit their curriculum. That’s why parents are coming together, Black, brown and white, just like we did to pass our last referendum, to make sure our kids have everything they need to learn an honest history in our great public schools.
Join us to demand that lawmakers support Governor Evers’ education budget and provide for all students! #PublicSchoolsUniteUs
SAMPLE NARRATIVE #2
School is a place where children develop their understanding of the world and their ability to make meaningful changes in it. It shouldn't be a battleground for spreading lies.
But certain politicians are trying to make our kids’ classrooms political, spreading lies about the lessons they teach so they can strip schools of the funding our kids deserve.
Together we can reject this division and join together to make schools a place where every child, Black, white and brown, can learn, grow, and thrive. Join us to demand that lawmakers support Governor Evers’ education budget and provide for all students!
SAMPLE NARRATIVE #3
School is a place where childhood happens. A place where children of different places and races learn from the past, make sense of the present and prepare for the future.
While educators work to deliver our children accurate and honest education, some politicians are bought and paid for by the NRA and are willing to sacrifice our children for campaign donations while trying to turn us against schools so they can censor the lessons taught in our classrooms, deny certain children resources and whitewash our history books.
Our children deserve the freedom to learn and be safe in school: to develop the knowledge and skills to deal with our past, shape a better future, and pursue their dreams.
By contacting our elected leaders to fully fund our schools, we can ensure every child the quality education we want for our own. Join us by [insert your specific call to action.]
Something important to remember
Yes, call out the racism, harm, and motivation, AND... don’t get stuck there.
Think of our people, our base, our values sharers. They value hope. They want joy. They seek unity. We lose our people if we stay stuck in the mud of why the opposition is terrible.
Use the vision of what you want and come back to it when you feel stuck.
We don't have to fall for their tricks. We can have a world where our kids have freedom to be safe and authentically themselves in their schools. We can have a world where everyone has the freedom to take time off when they or a loved one is sick. We just have to build it together. That starts with [call to action].
Sample tweets/graphic captions/short messages
Here are some sample messages you can edit and share! Hashtags are: #PublicSchoolsUniteUs and #TogetherForOurKids
Most of us want public schools that prepare students for their future and cultivate a lifelong love of learning. We want every neighborhood school to have: [choose 3: a band, teachers who are certified to teach physics and calculus, counselors to help students make healthy choices, caring and supportive staff who welcome families into the school, theater class, after-school sports, a chemistry lab, classes that offer college credit, debate, robotics, foreign languages, music ] and much more.
Our students & communities thrive when educators have what they need to help our students live and grow brilliantly. We will not be fooled by these attempts by certain politicians to gain & hold onto power at the expense of our public schools, our educators and our kids.
When our leaders fund voucher programs, they favor the wealthiest few over most kids' freedom to learn and grow. By demanding our leaders fully fund our public schools, we will ensure that the many defeat the money and all our children have the freedom to learn, grow and thrive.
We know what we need to keep our kids safe. But some politicians who are bought and paid for by special interests are willing to sacrifice our children for campaign donations. We aren’t fooled by their lies. Flood the feed and let (Insert name) know we stand #togetherforourkids.
We believe in children’s potential to meet new challenges and have an honest outlook, so when we try to white out our history, we are doing them and our future a disservice. Our loyalty is to children and who and what they can become, and that's why we support @GovEvers budget.
WHY WE LAUNCHED THIS SERIES
Make it stand out!
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
This year is a pivotal crossroads for our state and our nation. In 2020, we came out in record numbers. We marched, we voted, we volunteered, and we elected new leaders to govern our interests.
But now, our time is running out to ensure that every person in Wisconsin knows how much they made a difference. If we cut through the noise, we can ensure they know that they changed the direction of our state, improved our lives, and will do it again.
Here’s the challenge: our collective knee-jerk reaction to disinformation and incorrect statements is to provide “enough” facts to win the day, argument and voter. But contrary to our instincts, this doesn’t work and can even strengthen our opponent’s narrative!
When we try to disprove a falsehood, what ends up happening is:
We deepen the audience’s belief in the lie
We repeat and reinforce our opponent’s frame
We expose the lie to folks that might not have heard it before
At the same time, we know we can’t stay silent. This monthly newsletter will help inform how to dispel lies and call out dog whistles without repeating them.
