March 2, 2023

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern

Preemption: Curricular Preemption

This session examines state preemption of local school boards with regard to the content of curricula and educational materials. Divisive concepts in schools have been raised targeting the 1619 Project (a New York Times Magazine series reframing American history in the context of slavery and structural racism) and Critical Race Theory. This curricular preemption swept the nation and now the strategy has been expanded to preempt discussion of LGBTQ+ issues as well. This session will examine the trend of curricular preemption, from its origins to current iterations.

Speakers: Steven Nelson, Corinne Green & Marissa Roy

Dr. Nelson is chair of education policy & leadership in the educational psychology, leadership, and higher education department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas College of Education. Before his current appointment, Dr. Nelson served on the faculty of the University of Memphis (as program coordinator) and the University of New Orleans. He has taught and led in charter schools, traditional public schools, and private schools in the New Orleans area. Dr. Nelson also served as the first-ever education advocate at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s School-to-Prison Pipeline Project in New Orleans. In addition, he worked on charter school law and policy, special education access and equity, and juvenile justice issues. Dr. Nelson’s research and teaching interests intersect with education law, policy, and education politics. In particular, his research and teaching consider how education reform laws, policies, and political dynamics advance, impede or regress efforts at achieving educational equity for Black students in urban settings. He considers himself a critical race theorist.

 

Corinne Green is the Policy & Legislative Strategist at Equality Federation. In this role, she tracks all LGBTQ-related legislation across the country and provides policy analysis and support to Equality Federation members. Corinne is a harm reduction and queer rights activist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Prior to joining Equality Federation, she worked for Transgender Law Center, where she oversaw the passage and implementation of California’s Gender Recognition Act, the country’s largest expansion of access to nonbinary gender markers, and created the Protect Trans Health campaign to defend gender identity protections in the Affordable Care Act. In her home state, as President of Louisiana Trans Advocates and Policy Coordinator for Equality Louisiana, she fended off anti-LGBTQ attacks, helped write the Deep South’s first trans-inclusive nondiscrimination executive order, and broadened access to the overdose reversal drug naloxone.

 

Marissa Roy has spent her career working with local governments to engage in high-impact litigation. As a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Los Angeles, Marissa helped bring one of the Office's first large-scale workers' rights lawsuits to hold accountable port trucking companies that were classifying truck drivers as independent contractors rather than employees and deducting thousands of dollars from their wages. In addition to protecting workers' rights, Marissa worked with the City of Los Angeles and later the County of Los Angeles to challenge the Trump Administration's hostile immigration agenda, from the federal district court all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.