Dean Strunk, faculty, families, friends, and — most importantly — today’s graduates.

I am so excited to join you today and to celebrate YOU and your accomplishments! I am also excited to share in the end of this journey, help you consider the journey ahead, and to inspire you to lift up the stories of the students you will serve.

But in this present moment, you also have another vital calling. In the past, it has been the responsibility of educators to teach the grand American Experiment. But you — YOU right now are being called to save it.

Because public education is under an unparalleled attack. Since the first public school opened in 1635, generation upon generation of students have fought for entrance into the public schoolhouse, but now students across the country are forced to defend their continued presence in the classroom. They need your help.

And make no mistake: The threat to public education is a threat to the cornerstone of American society and democracy.

Each of you are here to be caretakers of the schoolhouse. You are the imparters of truth and of life — to borrow an idea from DuBois. You are masons protecting the foundation of public education from structural degradation — but instead of mortar and water, we need to build with equity and opportunity at the center.

I want to talk about one prescient and pernicious threat to students, public education, and democracy, and that is literacy.

I’m sure many of you have read, studied, and talked about our national challenges with literacy. Make no mistake, we and I mean WE, are failing children, students, and adults across the country when it comes to reading. The facts are that 54% of adults in this country read below a 6th grade level AND only 1 in 3 fourth graders are proficient readers.

Come on folks — this is a basic skill. And it is embedded in everything we do. It comes so naturally to some of us that you might not even recognize it.  But day after day, in classrooms across the country, children are struggling and many may not even know the adult in the classroom is supposed to be teaching them to read.

Reading is far more than any of its parts: I am here to tell you that IT IS A CIVIL RIGHT. And it is a bedrock right — one from which every other right we enjoy flourishes.

And while literacy can no longer be used to deny someone from entering the ballot box, there are still too many bad actors across the country using the literacy crisis to their own advantage — crafting complicated voter registration rules and voting directions; using overly complex and misleading language for referendum questions. This is active disenfranchisement designed to make voting a purview of the privileged few. And framing it as anything else, is nothing less than democratic malpractice.

We cannot let the sacrifices of past generations of Black Americans, women, indigenous Americans, and others who have marched, fought, and died for the right to vote to be in vain.

We cannot allow a systematic weakening of diverse voices. It is our job to teach the power of literacy, the skills to distinguish fact from fiction, to engage in honest debate, and to avoid the traps of conspiracies, hate, and demagoguery.

Democracy is nothing without literacy.

Teaching literacy, then, is not simply about imparting decoding skills. It is about helping students understand the world around them. It is about ensuring young people see themselves reflected in what they read and are equipped to evaluate information critically. These are the tools that turn reading into engagement and engagement into acts of citizenship.

So, you are choosing a path upon which it will be up to you to instill the tools of critical thinking, to impart passion and purpose, and to instill in students a sense of equity and justice.

In short, you are choosing a path today to protect democracy and defend the American people from tyranny, oligarchy, and nihilism.

As educators you also stand as the bulwark against those who would ignite the vibrant tapestries of history.

On the 250th anniversary of this country, efforts are underway to erase history — to sanitize it, soften it, and strip it of the voices that tell the full truth of who we are. We see it in books being banned, in Black history being labeled “divisive,” and in diversity being treated not as a strength, but as a threat.

You, as the educators of students in our classrooms must make a choice — to stay silent or to stand up to this modern effort to push communities of color, women, our LGBTQ+ friends, people with disabilities, and multilingual learners to the margins of public life and public education.

You must choose tapestries over white-washing, equity over tilted classrooms, truth over distortion, and inclusion over exclusion. You are the frontline defenders of democracy — it is you who must share all the reasons to embrace our diversity of cultures, histories, and stories.

It is you who must tell every student that America’s beautiful story belongs to them, and that their story is America. That a country that does not embrace them is a country at war with itself.

It is you who will ensure that every student walks into a classroom and sees themselves reflected — not only in textbooks, but on the walls, in the curriculum, and in the stories we choose to tell. Every hallway should say to students: You belong here. Your history matters. Your culture shines.

You will not just teach the truth but help students find meaning in that truth. Meaning is what transforms truth into motivation – and it is motivation that has always kept the gears of American democracy moving forward.

So to the educators in front of me: this moment calls for courage. It calls for you to stand up to those who would silence truth and debase our shared story. The work is not easy, but history shows us the cost of inaction.

Under your watch, I am confident of the following: You will stop racial and wealth segregation from returning as official federal education policy. You will reveal to students the opportunities and futures before them and tell them not what they cannot access, but instead you will ask them: which opportunity will they pursue? And to give them every tool you have in pursuit of that dream. You will reveal the excellence of every student.

It is your responsibility to be a part of what President Lyndon Baines Johnson described as helping to knock down “barriers to… freedom.” To ensure the walls of injustice tumble down — that is your calling. It is your calling to spread the ability to read, and make every student, as described by Frederick Douglass, quote, “forever free.”

The future of public education as a public good and schools as public infrastructure is in your hands. The call I share with you is simple: Nurture public education, grow it, renew it, and reimagine it — both for students today and students tomorrow.

There is profound joy in the work of making sure every day a student can access an excellent education. There is joy in watching a student discover their voice. Joy in classrooms where identity is celebrated, not erased. Joy when policies you advocated for become laws that tear down barriers and widen futures. Joy in knowing that your work has changed the trajectory of a life, a family, or a community.

Graduates, today you will walk out of this arena equipped not just with knowledge, but with purpose. You carry forward a tradition that believes a more just, humane, and worthy democracy stands at the end of an equitable education.

The future of this country is in your hands. That is indeed a weighty calling — but you are here because you can carry it.  Because, while we all falter from time to time, our determination will remain unfailing. If you must bend, then bend, but never break.

The world you are entering needs your skills. It needs your imagination. And it needs your courage.

May you go forward and preserve democracy, protect the shining city on the hill, demand a future that belongs truly to us all, and tell every student that they and their stories are America.

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Series: CEO Perspectives