America's children deserve to learn in a safe environment, and federal and state leaders must take more aggressive steps to identify and address dangerous school situations, Erika Donalds, chair of education opportunity at the America First Policy Institute, told Newsmax Saturday.
New government data shows that more than one million crimes were reported on school grounds between 2020 and 2024, and Donalds, appearing on Newsmax's "Wake Up America Weekend," said that many of the problems in today's schools started with guidance from the Department of Education under former President Barack Obama.
"[It] allowed for lax discipline policies in our schools and a lack of reporting for violent crime, for assaults, for robberies on our school campuses," said Donalds, the wife of Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
She pointed to recent federal efforts to restore stricter reporting requirements and said that recent guidance from the DOE brought to light that most states were not reporting persistently dangerous schools, even though parents have the right to opt out of them and place their children in a safe environment.
President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have pressed states to begin identifying such schools so parents would have clearer options, Donalds said.
"You can find a paper about this on the AFPI website, so that parents have that opt-out option," she said.
Donalds also emphasized that solutions must center on empowering teachers and parents, not bureaucrats.
"Well, we have to empower our teachers and not override them at the administrative level," she said. "We also have to be more transparent, as was being pushed by President Trump and Linda McMahon, with what is actually going on in our schools. Empower parents with those safety metrics that are actually happening in the schools, and give them an option out when the schools are not safe. Empower parents and empower teachers."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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