Former President Donald Trump is the first convicted felon to run for president. The irony is, under the 14th Amendment, felons in many states cannot vote, sometimes even after their sentence is up. 

As a staff, we have different political opinions, values and candidate preferences. However, after an anonymous political survey of our class, we unanimously agreed that we do not want to see Trump as president again. 

Trump does not have the best interests of students and teachers in mind. According to his campaign website, he has plans to cut teacher tenure and replace it with “Merit Pay,” a program that would reward arbitrarily named “good” teachers and punish “bad” ones according to his own definitions. He hopes to limit what can be taught, by banning critical race theory and so-called “inappropriate content” in schools. According to his campaign website, Trump also hopes to roll back the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX, the federal law that prevents sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, and protects LGBTQ+ students from discrimination. He has even promised so far as completely closing the Department of Education, according to CNN. 

Regardless of Trump’s track record as a politician, his election would bring about a new era of public education in which recent advancements in discrimination protection, more equitable school funding and teachers’ rights will be rolled back, affecting students, teachers, and parents across the country.