Executive Director of Community Relations & Emergency Management
Bloomington Public Schools
School leaders are often asked why they hesitate to take public stances on emotionally charged issues. The answer is rarely indifference. More often, it is fear of fracturing trust, inflaming divisions, or being accused of choosing sides in a deeply polarized environment.
In today’s climate, nearly every issue touching schools is pulled into a political narrative. Superintendents, principals, and school board members know speaking publicly may conflict with the beliefs of some parents and community members who hold opposing viewpoints. They worry about backlash, about accusations of bias, and about whether a single statement could undermine years of relationship-building.
Those concerns are real. So is the need for public schools to remain politically neutral. As educational leaders, we serve families across the full spectrum of beliefs and values. Maintaining trust with all of our families and community is foundational to public education.
But neutrality should never be confused with indifference.
That distinction became painfully clear in the case of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, a Minnesota child who was detained by ICE agents and sent to Texas alongside his father. Liam’s story was not abstract. It walked into a school community. Showed up in classrooms, in worried conversations, and in the hearts of educators who understood exactly what forced separation does to a child.
Leaders in the Columbia Heights (MN) School District faced the same dilemma so many districts fear. Speak publicly and risk angering part of the community, or stay silent and watch a child’s suffering be quietly absorbed into the system. They chose to speak. Not to make a political statement, but to tell the human story of a preschool student and his family.
That decision was intentional, and it mattered. Without it, Liam’s experience would likely have remained one of many untold stories, a child reduced to a case number, his trauma hidden from view. Because district leaders and legal advocates chose transparency and courage, the public saw the human cost, and Liam ultimately came home. Yet within a week of his return, the federal government sought to accelerate the family’s asylum hearing, an effort intended to fast-track their deportation and once again place a five-year-old child at the center of a legal process indifferent to the harm it would cause. Even after reunification, the instability and fear did not end.
Education, at its core, is not political. It is human. Our responsibility is to teach children, protect their well-being, and create conditions where they can learn and thrive. That responsibility does not end when harm comes from outside the school walls.
When external forces directly destabilize a child’s safety or emotional health, our silence does not feel neutral to that child or their family. It feels like abandonment. School leaders see this firsthand, the trauma showing up as behaviour, fear disrupting learning, anxiety rippling through classrooms and hallways. What happens to one child rarely stays contained. As we’ve seen, and what has become all too familiar, it affects peers, staff, and the entire community.
This is the line school leaders walk every day. As a school district leader who supports systems in crisis, I know there is no easy formula. Speaking out carries risk. Staying silent carries consequences, too.
I’m also a father, and grandfather. And my background and experiences with victims of school violence pulls me firmly toward empathy. Children should never be casualties of adult conflict. They should never become pawns in political battles they did not choose and cannot understand.
When school leaders decide to speak publicly, it is rarely about ideology. It is about humanity. It is about recognizing that while schools must avoid partisan positions, they cannot be morally silent when a child is hurting.
It is a line that is very narrow, uncomfortable, and often thankless. But if neutrality causes us to look away from a child in pain, then we have lost sight of why public education exists in the first place.
Sometimes, the most responsible step a school leader can do is remind their community, and the nation, that children come first.
Ricky J. Kaufman is a school safety and emergency management professional in the Twin Cities.
