Just ahead of World Teachers Day, local teachers and leaders of unions that represent staff in Orange County public schools gathered at the teachers’ union hall Friday with the Harris-Walz campaign to slam Project 2025, the right-wing policy playbook tied to members of the former Trump administration.
At the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association union hall, University of Central Florida professor Dr. Robert Cassanello and other local educators slammed parts of Project 2025 that could decimate the public education system as we know it, and undercut the labor unions that fight to preserve it.
“[Trump’s] extreme Project 2025 has a blueprint of getting rid of the Department of Education if he's re-elected,” Cassanello, who teaches history at UCF and sits as vice chair of the statewide United Faculty of Florida labor union, pointed out.
A vocal critic of the GOP's war on what they see as “ideological indoctrination” in higher education, and faculty like himself, Cassanello painted a grim picture for what he believes would occur under a second Trump administration, should the former President be victorious in the Nov. 5 election.
“He would slash funding for our K-12 schools,” Cassanello predicted, “all the while giving massive tax cuts to the billionaires and big corporations.”
Project 2025, a manifesto published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is a 922-page policy playbook developed for the next Republican administration that reaches the White House. Based on the outcome of this November’s election, that could be an administration led by former President and billionaire Donald Trump.
While Trump has repeatedly denied any ties to Project 2025 and continues to claim he hasn’t read it, a number of his close allies directly contributed to it. A review by CNN identified at least 140 people who worked in the former Trump administration involved in the book’s policy proposals, including longtime adviser and notorious xenophobe Stephen Miller.
The Project 2025 playbook has been highlighted by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail as a preview of what Americans could expect if Trump is re-elected to the White House.
Critical for educators is the part of the manifesto that directly tackles issues regarding education — by in part promoting policies unpopular with public school advocates, some of which have already started to play out in Florida — from efforts to undermine public employee unions to the deregulation of child labor laws and the expansion of school voucher programs that generally don’t improve educational outcomes, even as they divert funds away for public schools and worsen inequality.
“Florida has been a testing ground for Project 2025 ideas,” said Ron Pollard, president of the Orange Education Support Professionals Association, a labor union that represents thousands of non-instructional staff in schools, from custodial workers to bus drivers, cafeteria workers and paraprofessionals. “I want everyone who is listening today to hear this when we say we will never stop fighting against those who think of our children’'s education and safety as just a means to an end.”
Pollard, a former custodian for Orange County Public Schools and former member of the U.S. Steelworkers union, described Harris and her VP pick, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as leaders “who understand that our country is only as strong as its students.”
Maira Rivera, a local teacher and vice president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, agreed. “They believe that education is a key to the middle class, and they know that when our middle class is strong, America is strong,” said Rivera, a grandmother of three OCPS students and mother of a daughter who also teaches in the public school system.
Rivera noted several pillars of Harris’ platform that directly touch on issues important to many parents, students and teachers, including access to affordable childcare, advancing the Biden administration’s efforts on student debt relief, and investing in financial aid programs to help make higher education more affordable for families with fewer means.
“I don't need to remind anyone that Gov. Tim Walz is a teacher and a coach. He knows firsthand what our educators are facing. Or that Vice President Kamala is a staunch supporter of unions and their right to collectively bargain,” Rivera said.
As a result of a controversial law (SB 256) approved by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, more than 68,000 public employees in Florida have lost their union representation and thus the protections and benefits they received under their union contracts. Some of those unions were first established decades ago, but due to stringent new mandates for unions, have been decertified.
Several groups affiliated with Project 2025 contributors or that otherwise sit on its advisory board directly lobbied or otherwise proudly advocated for that Florida legislation, including lobbying arms for the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the out-of-state James Madison Institute.
The bill was also a priority of the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-affiliated think tank that seeks to defund the public education system and drain it of resources.
Pollard, whose union is facing a recertification election as a result of the new regulations (essentially, a vote by members on whether to keep the union or dissolve it), argued Friday that unions are “vital” to the middle class. Research shows public employee unions in particular can help shrink the pay gap between the private and public sectors — a problem that disproportionately affects women and Black workers.
Unions, said Pollard, provide “an avenue for better raises, for better benefits, for the very things that we strive for as family members to feed our children.” Without a union, individual workers lack the power of that collective voice, and the opportunity to demand meaningful change to wages and working conditions at the bargaining table.
“This Project 2025 stuff is designed to take us back to a time when we fought for everything, and had nothing,” he continued. “This country was built on the back of unions.”
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