A mother spoke her truth to the Guilderland School Board this month.

“As a proud parent of two children in the Guilderland school system,” Elish Melchiade told the board “I’ve had to reassure my children multiple times that they will be OK when they ask me with tears in their eyes if, when they go to school, will they come and take me away for being Mexican.”

Melchiade went on to say, “I know they also have friends in their class that are LGBTQIA+ who have their own fears about losing critical representation in school, clubs, education, etc. as a consequence of DEI being demonized. Now more than ever, I think it’s important to stand on principle, even when being silent and flying under the radar would be easier or more comfortable.”

We wrote in a story on the top of our front page last week about local leaders sharing their experiences with panicked calls from families worried about losing their federally subsidized housing or tearful constituents worried about being deported.

Schools should be a safe place. Every student, no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, should feel welcomed at a public school.

As we’ve written before on this page, our nation’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths.

On Jan. 29, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” that chilled our soul.

“Parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education and to instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand,” the order states.  

“In recent years, however,” the order goes on, “parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination.

“In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics. In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed. These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.”

We agree that parents trust America’s schools to provide their children with a rigorous education. We believe that part of that rigorous education is teaching students to be original thinkers, to work collaboratively to solve problems, to question, and to create.

We have observed firsthand this rigorous learning being practiced in our local schools. We have watched educators support students as they learn and grow.

We were moved to tears last spring as transgender students spoke out at Guilderland High School’s anti-hate rally.

They live in a time and a place where being transgender — something that they are rather than they chose to be — can be regarded as evil or wrong or simply not true.

“Hateful people may say trans people are going to hell but I have lived through hell worse than any that satan could ever put me through …. Trans people, trans kids die without support …,” a 17-year-old student told his schoolmates. “I am a man, a man who is in danger. Our lives and rights are in danger. You cannot leave us behind …. You can help us — at the very least, make us feel seen and supported and wanted.”

Our state’s education department responded swiftly, accurately, and bravely to the Trump administration’s orders.

On Feb. 2, the department issued a statement in response to Trump’s executive orders. The department noted that, since 1954, when the Supreme Court held that separate schools for African-American children were inherently unequal, New York has taken seriously its constitutional requirement to have public schools educate all the children of the state.

Since the pivotal 1954 Supreme Court decision, the department notes, Congress has protected and prioritized historically neglected students through legislation such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

“These laws recognize and celebrate personal, social, and economic differences,” our State Education Department says. “They are models of strength through diversity.”

The department states that Trump’s orders are not only antithetical to this tradition but also ineffective since he has a constitutional duty to see that laws are faithfully executed.

As constitutional pillars are being chipped away, it remains to be seen if federal courts that enjoined Trump’s attempt to freeze federal funds are, in the long run, successful.

The statement concludes, “The Board and the Department remain committed to the inherent dignity and worth of every child. As such, we denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders. Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.”

We join Elish Melchiade in her call for the Guilderland School Board to make a similar statement. Other school boards should do so as well.

“I genuinely feel,” Melchiade said, “it would be a huge comfort to those marginalized groups that are struggling right now and who are forced to be silent under the weight of these attacks that those who have the authority and privilege in Guilderland stand up for them both today and every day.”

These are the times when individual states can make a difference in protecting their residents from the dismantling of our rights. So can individual municipalities and individual school districts.

Later at that same Feb. 11 Guilderland School Board meeting, board member Rebecca Butterfield spoke out. She is a pediatrician and voiced her concerns that, over the last few weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down “clinical practice guidelines that medical professionals use all the time for things like HIV guidance for STD treatment for the care of the sexual assault victims.”

As we’ve written on this page in recent weeks, as the Environmental Protection Agency removed information about climate change from prominent areas of its website, removing vital information from federal government websites won’t make the problems go away; rather, it will limit our ability to solve them.

Butterfield also said that the Youth Risk Surveillance System had been removed, explaining that it is a multi-year survey of high school students “that looks at teen behaviors in regards to mental-health issues, substance abuse, and violence.”

The CDC website page about the system now opens with a highlighted notice, saying the data had to be reposted because of a Feb. 11 court order, but goes on to say, “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities.”

Butterfield said to her sister board members, “We have a frontal lobe that can handle this, but children and adolescents are enmeshed in this environment now where a lot of times, if they’re marginalized because they’re LGBTQ, because they’re not binary, because they’re children of color, because their parents might be immigrants, they’re feeling very marginalized and isolated.

“And they’re at grave risk, I feel, for mental-health problems, for suicidal ideation, for a whole host of problems … I don’t have a solution to this, obviously, except to say that I think this is an opportunity to advocate for those kids to say, ‘We see you, we hear you, we respect your dignity and your humanity.’

She concluded, “I think, you know, inaction is not entirely benign. And I think it’s important to be loud and overt and voice our values even when sometimes it’s very difficult.”

We agree. Standing up to the falsehoods promoted by the Trump administration is essential if we don’t want to lose ground as a society.

We were relieved when we talked to Marie Wiles, the superintendent of the Guilderland schools, to hear that the threat of a loss of federal funds will not change the district’s approach to serving all students.

On Feb. 13, Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice to lead, or perhaps dismantle, the Department of Education, declined at a Congressional hearing to answer questions on whether federal funds to public schools would be cut if schools hosted clubs based on ethnicity or race.

Guilderland currently receives about $1.9 million from the federal government with a $125 million budget this year. 

“We are not going to in any way change our course in the work we do serving our students,” said Wiles. Although it would be difficult to make up those federal funds, she said, the district will stay the course.

The same supports the district has long had in place — including counselors, social workers, and psychologists as well as teaching staff — and the same school clubs that serve as a “safe place” for students and their allies to meet are functioning as they always have, Wiles said.

She described the language in Trump’s order for “ending radical indoctrination” as “gobbledegook.” “It does not reflect the reality of what happens in our classrooms,” said Wiles, noting faculty is guided by the state’s learning standards.

In any classroom, on any playing field, on any school bus, Wiles said, the diversity of Guilderland students is apparent.

“It’s not that we’re doing diversity,” said Wiles. “We are diversity.”

She said that educators, “since the dawn of time,” have worked to help students learn and grow and that is what the schools are doing now. “Our mission as a school district,” said Wiles, “is to make sure that each and every single one of our children can feel and are treated with dignity, with respect for their individual needs.”

We often reflect on the words of German pastor Martin Niemöller who, after World War II, spoke openly about his own early complicity in Nazism and his eventual change of heart.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist,” said Niemöller. “Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Our public schools need our support to stay the course in meeting the needs of each of their students, making sure every child feels welcome. Speak out as if your future depends on it — because it does.