Some key K-12 education topics got some airtime at the 2024 Democratic National Convention this week as speakers made repeated calls to reject Project 2025 and its proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, school shooting survivors shared personal stories, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others spoke about his background as a public school teacher and football coach.
While other policy topics ultimately drew more attention at the Democrats’ four-day gathering in Chicago, K-12 education played a larger role at the DNC than at the Republican National Convention in July.
Neither former President Donald Trump nor his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, mentioned education in their addresses, though some speakers at the Republicans’ gathering in Milwaukee raised concerns about student behavior and school discipline as well as the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules, which now require schools to allow nonbinary and transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity in places where judges haven’t temporarily blocked them.
Here are five key moments for educators from the 2024 DNC.
1. Walz’s background as a teacher gets airtime
In a short video played before Walz’s speech on Aug. 21, a handful of former students from his years teaching social studies and coaching football at Mankato West High School shared their experiences learning from the vice presidential nominee.
“When he started teaching, it was like full-contact teaching,” Blake Frink, a 2001 graduate of Mankato West, said in the pre-recorded video. “You could not help but be interested in what he was talking about.”
Frink credited Walz for inspiring his own decision to become a teacher. Another of Walz’s former students, Ben Ingman, shared a story about how Walz became his middle school basketball and track coach in an effort to earn extra money to pay off another student’s lunch debt.
“Coach Walz got us excited about what we might achieve together,” Ingman said in a speech on Wednesday. “He believed in us, and he helped us believe in each other.”
Former students who played for the Mankato West Scarlets when Walz served as defensive coordinator joined Ingman on stage in their high school jerseys and cheered along to the high school’s fight song. Walz himself talked about his background as a teacher in his speech accepting the nomination, crediting his football players and students for inspiring him to run for Congress.
“They saw in me what I had hoped to instill in them: a commitment to the common good, an understanding that we’re all in this together, and the belief that a single person can make a real difference for their neighbors,” Walz said. “Never underestimate a public school teacher.”
He also gave Democrats a pre-game pep talk filled with football analogies to motivate supporters of the Democratic ticket to make calls, knock on doors, and contribute money before Election Day.
2. Politicians and celebrities criticize Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education
A number of the convention’s speakers, including Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, former first lady Michelle Obama, and even comedian and Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson, criticized Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and a number of officials from the first Trump administration.
While Trump has tried to distance himself from the agenda, its education policy proposals largely align with his own, including a proposal to eliminate the federal Education Department.
“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books—none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” Obama said.
In her speech accepting the party’s presidential nomination on Thursday, Harris called out the proposal to eliminate the department, using it to lead into her chant, “We’re not going back.” She also singled out the document’s proposal to eliminate the Head Start early childhood program for young children living in poverty.
“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools,” Harris said. “We are not going to let him end programs like Head Start that provide preschool and child care.”
(The federal government typically provides less than 10 percent of all public school funding nationwide.)
In his speech, Walz also criticized conservative efforts to remove books that often highlight race, gender identity, and sexual orientation from school classrooms, and he called for gun safety measures. He also touted a law he signed in 2023 making Minnesota one of a handful of states that provide all students with free breakfast and lunch at school.
“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” Walz said.
3. School shooting survivors call for gun safety legislation
In a section about gun violence on Aug. 22, survivors of and families connected to shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, shared their stories.
“On Dec. 14, 2012, I walked into Sandy Hook School I stopped in the office, chatted with my principal, then started my day with my 2nd graders,” Abbey Clements recounted. “Suddenly a loud crash like metal folding chairs falling, 154 gunshots blaring, hiding in the coats, trying to sing with my students, trying to read to them, trying to drown out the sounds, terror, crying, running. I carry that horrific day with me.”
Clements was joined by Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was one of 19 students killed in the 2022 Uvalde shooting.
“It’s 10:30 a.m. at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, the school is recognizing my 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, for receiving all A’s,” Rubio said. “She receives a good citizen award and we pose for photos. She wears a St. Mary’s sweatshirt and a smile that lights up the room. Thirty minutes later, a gunman murders her, 18 classmates, and two teachers. We’re taken to a private room where police tell us she isn’t coming home.”
Throughout the convention, politicians called for gun safety measures and criticized Republicans for blocking bills to ban assault rifles and other automatic weapons.
“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Harris said in her speech. “The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship.”
4. Oprah Winfrey connects historic Harris nomination to school desegregation
Harris is the first woman of color and person of Asian descent to lead a major political party’s presidential ticket.
While Harris herself didn’t lean into her identity in her speech, another speaker, talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey, connected the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the desegregation of schools to Harris’ historic position.
In her speech on Aug. 21, Winfrey honored Tessie Prevost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who integrated the city’s public schools in 1960. Williams died earlier this year.
“It was the grace and guts and courage of women like Tessie Prevost Williams that paved the way for another young girl, who nine years later became part of the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkeley, Calif.,” Winfrey said, referring to Harris.
Harris famously leaned into this history during her 2020 presidential run, criticizing her then-rival Joe Biden at a Democratic primary debate for opposing federal busing measures early in his career.
5. Teachers’ union leaders make an appearance in support of Harris and Walz
In a set of brief speeches on Thursday, Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called on voters to support the Harris and Walz ticket, joining other labor leaders who spoke at the Democratic convention.
“As an 8th grade science teacher for over 30 years, I can tell you that Kamala Harris and teacher Tim Walz understand when our public schools are strong, our nation is strong,” Pringle said.
AFT was the first labor union to endorse Harris for president after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid on July 21. The NEA quickly followed, switching its endorsement from Biden to Harris later that week, and Harris joined the AFT’s convention for an in-person speech on July 25.
Both unions have been critical of Trump and Project 2025.
“Donald Trump and JD Vance can’t claim they’re pro-child while gutting funding for public schools,” Weingarten said.
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