The top issues facing schools as a new academic year is set to begin

Students and educators across the country are heading back to school this month with a fresh set of challenges for the academic year, as well as some lingering from the last one.

Educators face new laws to obey and varying instructions on how to do so. Students plan to get back to protesting the war in Gaza and will have to negotiate the growing problem of bullying fueled by artificial intelligence (AI).

Here are the top five issues going into the new school year: 

Student protests

Colleges were rocked this year as students set up scores of campus encampments to protest Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas and demand that their schools divest from the country.

Thousands had been arrested by the time commencement season ended.

Schools were on the edge of their seats as Columbia’s president was called to resign by bipartisan lawmakers over the protests, fights broke at the University of California, Las Angeles (UCLA) and a House hearing was called with the leaders of Northwestern, Rutgers and UCLA over the chaos.

But the battles with police do not seem to be slowing student activists down.  

“What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways. So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any — any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from from Israel,” Mahmoud Khalil, student negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, told The Hill.  

“And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history,” Khalil added. 

Other schools that agreed to meet some of the protesters’ demands, such as Northwestern University and Brown University, will be conducting votes on if they should divest from companies that work with Israel this fall. 

AI Bullying 

In K-12 schools, educators and students will be wrestling with a new type of bullying that no one is quite sure how to combat yet: AI.  

The use of AI in schools ramped up last school year as both teachers and students got a better grasp of how the technology can be used to help create lesson plans or work as a personal tutor.

Unfortunately, children have also figured out how to use AI for more nefarious purposes. 

Educators have watched in horror as students created deepfake sexual images of female classmates; one athletic director created deepfake voice audio to try to get a principal fired by making it look like he was racist.

For schools, parsing through what is AI and what is real is a difficult task, and Congress is having a hard time keeping up with what type of punishments should come from these acts.  

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is among the lawmakers who have promoted legislation to fight deepfake pornography.  

“And what is even crazier is that right now there are no federal protections for any person, regardless of your gender, if you’re a victim of nonconsensual deepfake pornography,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Transgender protections 

Policies regarding transgender students will be a major battleground this year, as states stake out diametrically opposed positions and multiple legal cases work their way through the courts.

The governor of California is in the middle of a lawsuit after passing the first statewide law that says teachers do not need to tell a student’s guardian if they want to go by a different name or pronouns, unless they request a change to the official record.

“This is a deeply unserious lawsuit, seemingly designed to stoke the dumpster fire formerly known as Twitter rather than surface legitimate legal claims. AB 1955 preserves the child-parent relationship, California law ensures minors can’t legally change their name or gender without parental consent, and parents continue to have guaranteed and full access to their student’s educational records consistent with federal law. We’re confident the state will swiftly prevail in this case,” Izzy Gardon, spokesperson for the governor, previously told The Hill.

Another hot-button issue will be the final Title IX rules, which have been challenged by multiple Republican attorneys general.

The Biden administration finalized Title IX changes that codified federal protections for LGBTQ individuals, including gender identity and sexual orientation under sex discrimination.

“These regulations make crystal clear that everyone has the right to schools that respect their rights and offer safe, welcoming learning environments,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.  

However, the new rules have only gone into effect for 24 states due to rulings by lower-court judges in the around 10 lawsuits against the regulations.

The Department of Justice has asked the Supreme Court to take emergency action, arguing the lower courts have paused the whole rule in these states, when Republicans only take issue with the parts related to transgender individuals.

“The district court held that respondents’ challenges are likely to succeed and issued a preliminary injunction. But the court refused to tailor the injunction to the two provisions of the Rule that are the source of respondents’ asserted injuries — or even to the three provisions they have challenged on the merits,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said. “Instead, the court enjoined the entire Rule, including dozens of provisions that respondents had not challenged and that the court did not purport to find likely invalid.” 

Republicans have argued the administration’s changes to Title IX will allow transgender students to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and compete on teams that match their gender identity. The new rules do not cover eligibility of student athletes.

School choice rules 

The momentum of education savings accounts (ESAs) as the most popular school choice option does not seem to be slowing down.

ESAs allow parents to open an account if they are looking to homeschool their children or send them to private school. The state government will give the families a certain amount of money to assist them with the transition.

The qualifications are different, with some states allowing universal ESAs for any family, while others have restrictions based on income level or disabilities.

“Beginning this year, students who attended an accredited nonpublic school at any time during the 2023-24 school year and did not receive an ESA are eligible for the 2024-25 school year if their household income is at or below 400% of the 2024 Federal Poverty Level,” Iowa said when announcing applications for the 2024-25 school year were opening in April.  

Other states are still grappling over school choice policies, most prominently Texas, where pushback from rural Republicans has turned the issue into a fight dividing state lawmakers.

“We don’t have the same economy of scale as larger districts,” Aaron Hood, president of the Texas Association of Rural Schools, told NBC News. “If we lose five or 10 students, that’s a teacher salary. But we can’t afford to have one less teacher, so now we’re cutting academic programs, we’re cutting sports, we’re cutting the things that this community relies on.” 

New laws 

Among the most recent changes that educators are dealing with is in Oklahoma, where the state superintendent said teachers have no choice but to include the Bible in lesson plans. However, more than a dozen school districts so far say they will not comply. 

“I suspect that the first thing that will happen is he will target a specific school district or multiple school districts who he believes are not complying with his directive, those school districts will then have to make a choice as to whether to bend [to] his whim or to sue,” Rob Miller, superintendent of Bixby Public Schools, previously told The Hill.  

“And I can tell you that if Bixby was one of those schools that he selected to come after, we would file a lawsuit,” Miller added. 

Multiple states have also put new book bans into place over the summer, with Utah saying the goal is to “identify and remove pornographic or indecent material.”