The idea of so-called community schools dates back to the early 20th-century Progressive Era. This plan turns schools into one-stop shops for families and is accompanied by so-called wraparound services staffed by—typically unionized—government workers. It blurs the lines between parents and the state, thereby undermining the sanctity of the parent–child bond.
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California union leaders are particularly interested in negotiating the inclusion of community schools in collective bargaining agreements. They want to ensure that thousands of new community schools are implemented by 2031 and that they are an integral part of this dubious process.
At the national level, U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), along with U.S. Representative Susie Lee (D-NV), have just introduced the Full-Service Community School Expansion Act. The bill aims to provide essential resources for school districts nationwide to plan, implement, expand, and support full-service community schools, including “medical, mental, and nutritional health services, mentoring and youth development programs, technical assistance, and continuing education courses for students and families.”
Not surprisingly, the proposed law has drawn support from teachers’ unions and various advocacy organizations, including the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Maryland State Education Association, and the Coalition for Community Schools.
Ever-present busybody Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a longtime advocate of government intervention, is very much in favor of community schools. She asserts, “Every day, the challenges that students and families face outside the classroom reveal themselves inside the classroom—challenges like poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of access to healthcare. That is why the Full-Service Community School Expansion Act is so critical; it invests in the proven strategy of wrapping services around students—from mental and physical healthcare to nutrition and after-school programs. . . .”
However, community schools and other forms of government overreach into family affairs are terrible ideas. Where community schools are in effect, the state assumes a greater role in child-rearing, further eroding the inviolability of the parent-child relationship.
And this is the heart of the problem: the dissolution of traditional two-parent homes, often aided and abetted by the government.
As far back as 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about the future that millions of children from broken families now face. Moynihan, a Democratic senator from New York, served in President Lyndon Johnson’s Labor Department when he wrote his report on family and poverty.
With Johnson’s War on Poverty in full swing, Moynihan’s office analyzed employment and poverty trends among black Americans.
As he went through the data, he discovered an alarming shift, noting that black families were experiencing a sharp rise in single-parent households, driven by federal welfare programs that penalized marriage and rewarded father absence. Such policies, he warned, were weakening black families and would eventually erode families of every race if left unchecked.
While Moynihan’s critics insisted that the real problems were racism, redlining, and job discrimination, he maintained that the issue was not about race but about the government’s destructive impact on family structure.
Also, Goldy Brown III, a professor of education and former K–12 principal, importantly points out, “The 1966 Coleman Report found that family background exerted greater influence on academic outcomes than school resources or spending levels.” In fact, family structure has a greater effect on student learning than school funding, curriculum, or class size.
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A 2025 report from the University of Virginia, Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids, confirms the findings of the Coleman report. The presence and engagement of a child’s father have a powerful effect on their academic and emotional well-being.
Brown adds that while strong schools, effective teachers, and accountability do indeed matter, no education reform agenda can compensate for “deep instability in the homes children return to each afternoon.”
Similarly, the late Walter Williams wrote in his 2010 memoir Up from the Projects that even in the antebellum era, when slaves were often forbidden to marry, most black children still lived with both biological parents. During Reconstruction and through the 1940s, 75 percent to 85 percent of black children lived in two-parent families. Today, more than 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn’t do, what Jim Crow couldn’t do, what the harshest racism couldn’t do. And that is to destroy the black family.”
Echoing Walter Williams, Tom Purcell notes that “in 1965, just 8% of children were born outside marriage—about 3% for white children and 24% for black children.”
But today, the figure has soared to 40 percent overall—nearly 30 percent for white children and over 70 percent for black children.
Additionally, in 2025, the Census Bureau released a report on the living arrangements of American mothers at the time of their first child’s birth. Alarmingly, the report states, “There have been sweeping changes to marriage and family structures in the United States over the last several decades. Fertility rates dropped to historically low levels. Marriage rates declined while cohabitation became more common. Childbirth increasingly occurred outside of marriage as legal and cultural norms shifted.”
In sum, our culture is deeply troubled, and we urgently need a renewal of time-honored values. Out-of-wedlock births must be discouraged, and, with rare exceptions, men and women must remain married, especially when they have young children. Boys desperately need guidance and discipline from a strong father figure to help them channel their testosterone-fueled energy in productive ways. If a girl grows up without a caring, protective father, she’s much less likely to seek approval from the wrong people as an adult.
One positive step in that direction would be to kill the intrusive Full-Service Community School Expansion Act and to stress that mothers and fathers need to raise their children in the traditional way without government busybodies interfering.
Former President Ronald Reagan said it best in 1986. “I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”
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Larry Sand is a retired classroom teacher with 28 years of experience and served as president of the nonprofit California Teachers Empowerment Network from 2006 to 2025. Currently, he works to raise awareness of the shortcomings of our education system.
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