With her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has placed a former educator at the top of the ticket in the 2024 election.
It is the honor of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign.
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 6, 2024
I’m all in.
Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school.
So, let’s get this done, folks! Join us. https://t.co/tqOVsw2OLM
During his five years leading the North Star State, Walz has notched a slew of K-12 policy wins in his belt.
In March 2023, he signed HF 5 into law, making Minnesota the fourth state to provide permanent access to universal school meals. Upon signing the law, Walz said, “As a former teacher, I know that providing free breakfast and lunch for our students is one of the best investments we can make to lower costs, support Minnesota’s working families, and care for our young learners and the future of our state.”
Walz’s time as governor has also seen billions more for K-12 education spending, a nearly 4% increase in teacher salaries between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, access to unemployment insurance for hourly school workers, an expansion of paid family and medical leave to nearly all workers in the state, and a broadening of collective bargaining rights.
“Educators are fired up and united to get out and elect the Harris-Walz ticket,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, in a statement. “We know we can count on a continued and real partnership to expand access to free school meals for students, invest in student mental health, ensure no educator has to carry the weight of crushing student debt, and do everything possible to keep our communities and schools safe.”
In a 2019 op-ed for Southwest News Media, Walz summed up his views on education, writing that, “Education is the great equalizer of society. Education unleashes untapped potential. Education conjures the magic of promising beginnings and the grace of second chances.”
Walz taught high school social studies and coached football at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minnesota, from 1994 until his election to Congress in 2006. From 1989 to 1990, he also taught high school in China in one of the first government-sanctioned groups of American educators to do so. He was elected governor of Minnesota in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.
On the other side of the aisle, less is known about the education policy positions of Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
Dale Chu, a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, an education reform think tank, compared Vance to President Donald Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, in a post he wrote in July. “Unlike Pence, who brought a respectable record on education reform from the Hoosier State, Vance has little to show for his limited time in the Senate — or otherwise, save for his first book.”
Chu also said, however, that Vance’s working class background could lend itself to support for career and technical education or apprenticeship programs.
Past posts on X also indicate Vance is a strong supporter of parental rights legislation. In a post from September 2021, Vance said, “Parents should absolutely be the primary stakeholders in their kids' education, and anyone who disagrees should stay the hell away from our kids.”
Parents should absolutely be the primary stakeholders in their kids' education, and anyone who disagrees should stay the hell away from our kids. https://t.co/gip0m991DI
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 30, 2021
In another post, from last October, Vance stated, “My education policy is that we should stop funding institutions that teach American kids to support terrorist killers.”
Prior to his election to the Senate in 2022, Vance had a six-year career in venture capital following his graduation from Yale Law School in 2013. In 2016, he published “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling memoir about his upbringing in rural America, which was later adapted into a movie by Netflix.
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