91��Ƭ

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta, and while I was there, I stayed at what has become known as the “Hotel of Hope.” Opened in 1967 as the Regency Hyatt House, the Hyatt Regency Atlanta became a welcoming space for all guests during the civil rights era—standing out, deliberately, in a segregated city.

After being turned away from another hotel, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King came to the Hyatt, where Dr. King later held the 10th session of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The hotel earned the name not through sentiment, but through action. It didn’t just offer hope. It made a choice. It took a side.

That distinction matters to me—and I think it matters to school board members and superintendents right now.

Hope is not passive. It is not a feeling we wait for. The Hotel of Hope didn’t earn its name by wishing things were better; it earned it by opening its doors when other doors were closed.

That is the model I want us to hold onto: hope as commitment, hope as practice, hope as something we build and defend — not simply something we hold.

Hope without strategy is a wish

Public education, at its best, has always been that kind of hope. It is a student discovering their voice in a school play. It is a field trip that reshapes a child’s sense of what’s possible. It is pre-K access for a family that cannot afford alternatives. It is an arts program a student might never experience anywhere else.

These are not abstractions. They are real, daily acts of investment in children—in all children, regardless of zip code or circumstance.

But we also need to be honest with one another: public education is under sustained pressure. The push toward privatization, the diversion of public funds through vouchers, and the fragmentation that comes with unchecked charter expansion—these forces are not waiting politely while we articulate our values.

They are strategic. They are well-funded. And they are counting on us to respond with sentiment rather than substance.

Hope without strategy is a wish. We do not have the luxury of wishes. What we have is each other, and we have something more durable than optimism: evidence. We know what works in public schools.

We know the power of a strong, stable, fully resourced district. We know that the children who most need great public schools are often the ones most harmed when those schools are weakened.

That knowledge is not simply inspiration—it is the foundation of an argument, and we need to make that argument clearly, consistently, and together.

No superintendent wins this work alone. The advocacy we do collectively—school boards alongside superintendents—for funding equity, teacher pipelines, and policies that strengthen districts rather than hollow them out is how hope becomes durable. It is how we honor the trust communities place in us.

Let’s act like public education is hope

My time in Atlanta reminded me that the Hotel of Hope did not survive on goodwill alone. It endured because people decided to act on principle, and then did it again the next day, and the day after that. That is our work too.

But principle without presence moves nothing. So here is what I am asking of every superintendent reading this: Own the story. Stop playing defense. Expand your coalition.

Every speech you give, every op-ed you write, every school board meeting you attend—every conversation with a mayor, community member or business leader on the athletic field, in the grocery store or at a faith community—is an opportunity to make the affirmative case for public education.

It’s not simply to rebut criticism, but to tell our story first, clearly, confidently, and on our terms. Families are not waiting for a think tank to tell them what public schools are worth. They already know. Our responsibility is to say it out loud with them.

Find one person this month who is not yet part of this work and bring them in: a local business owner who hires your graduates; a pastor whose congregation fills your schools; or a municipal leader who has not yet connected the future of the community to the strength of its public schools.

The movement to defund and privatize public education is organized and persistent. Our response must be even more connected, coordinated, and visible—one conversation at a time.

State and national superintendent associations exist to make those conversations collective and strategic. Use them. Bring your stories, your allies, and your advocacy to the table.

Hope, in the end, is not what we feel—it is what we build together. Public education is hope. Let’s act like it.