Hi! It’s Lily and Erica on the national desk today. Our big story is about the posters making it onto classroom walls these days — and the ones getting nixed by school districts. 

Stick around to learn how folks are using vacant school buildings, important updates about special education oversight, and how the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision is playing out in Denver Public Schools.

Teachers are the backbone of schools, but the profession is under strain. At Chalkbeat’s July 30 virtual event, we’ll share exclusive new data showing that heightened teacher turnover was not just a pandemic-era blip. In many places, more teachers have been leaving the classroom for the past four to five years. RSVP to save your spot and join us as we explore what this means for schools, students, and the future of teaching.

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If you’re a chronic daydreamer or you’ve frequently let your eyes wander the classroom during long lectures (we at Chalkbeat would never) you can probably conjure up several iconic classroom posters. Maybe you’re thinking of a kitten hanging onto a branch with the words “Hang in there, baby,” Albert Einstein’s messy ’do, or a grizzly bear with its arms over its head asking, “What homework?”

More recently, maybe you’ve seen signs with the phrase “Hate has no home here” pop up in classrooms or on your neighbor’s front lawn, with rainbow motifs or cartoon hands raised in the air, each with a different skin tone. 

Despite its ubiquity, not everyone loves this poster or its association with LGBTQ communities. In fact, it might be one of the most controversial classroom posters in recent history, if the lawsuits in federal court or the battles in school board meetings indicate anything. And it represents a bigger fight over what belongs in America’s classrooms, including their walls. 

In Ohio, Little Miami School District board members debated a teacher’s “Hate has no home here” poster during a public meeting and one exasperated member exclaimed they’d already gone multiple rounds in meetings over the poster. Board members who wanted the teacher to remove it said they were largely OK with the message itself, but not with the rainbow colors and transgender flag colors. 

The teacher is now suing Little Miami Schools over the board’s vote to remove the poster. 

A school district in Michigan took a different approach. After the school board approved a policy banning “ideological or political materials” not aligned with district curriculum, the district last month sent out a list of 32 pre-approved phrases for teachers to use in displays. Phrases not included, the policy states, would need to go through a process involving as many as four layers of review, including by legal.

Teachers say that process was part of an effort to remove specifically LGBTQ-aligned displays, like “Hate has no home here” posters and Pride flags. A district spokesperson argued its new policy will “maintain a focused and productive educational environment.” But others say LGBTQ students could see themselves erased in the process.

Read the full story.

Most Iowa school districts quietly agreed to keep undocumented students out of some federally funded career and technical education. Iowa is the second state to adopt this kind of a policy, which applies to college courses offered in high schools, after records showed Virginia made a similar move last year. Virginia has since changed course. Still, records from Iowa obtained by Chalkbeat show just how much headway the Trump administration is making in trying to limit the educational rights of immigrant students, chipping away at Supreme Court precedent.

The Education Department has scaled back its oversight of special education, a new report finds. Previously scheduled state monitoring appears to have not occurred, according to an analysis by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. At the current pace, COPAA said, each state would receive a visit just once every 25 years. The Education Department said it is meeting its obligations.

The day after Newark Schools touted Randi Weingarten’s visit to scope out its use of an AI-powered chatbot, the AFT president called for a ban on student-facing AI in elementary schools. The proximity between Weingarten’s visit to Newark schools and her call for AI limits illustrates the sometimes-awkward balancing act education leaders like Weingarten are facing amid a backlash to technology in the classroom and calls to adapt to tech — fast.

Welcome to our real estate column, one week only.

Old school buildings are architectural gems. Famous architects once designed school buildings, incorporating lavish touches both inside and out, from turrets and medieval-inspired details to stained glass windows and rich oak bookcases.

But now, some of these buildings are being shuttered. Just this month, St. Louis Public Schools released a plan to close up to a third of its schools, following other major districts around the country. And America has to figure out what to do with a glut of big but purpose-built structures, one community at a time.

Some developers think they’ve got a solution by converting old schools into housing, addressing the country’s ongoing housing shortages at the same time. Data from RentCafe found 9,320 units were in the works at the start of 2026, up from 7,710 at the beginning of 2024. Schools are the fastest-growing type of building conversion.

In some instances, school buildings have been repurposed into affordable housing, often for seniors. Designers can make fun choices, preserving lockers in hallways and remaking auditoriums into community areas.

Housing isn’t the only option for old schools. Denver Public Schools’ board has been mulling proposals for the district’s vacant buildings. Teacher housing was a popular idea. But community and child care center proposals have been floated, too. 

The other part of this, of course, is money. And real estate is nothing if not a business that revolves around money (we should know, we’re writing a real estate column). Some empty or soon-to-be empty school buildings happen to be on expensive property. 

In Philadelphia, community members said they were worried their school was targeted for possible closure because it’s in an area where real estate prices are increasing. Community members said they didn’t want to see their school get torn down and turned into a parking garage.

That’s how much less time the average high school student was spending completing word problems in 2025, compared with their peers two years earlier. The students mostly likely did not turn into math whizzes, according to the Hechinger Report. Researchers believe the increase in speed in solving word problems in the digital platform ALEKS shows that more students are asking ChatGPT to solve the problems for them. 

Over the same time period that students’ speed increased, their performance on proctored tests where they couldn’t use AI went down.

That’s a student in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where teenagers spoke for hours at a summit about violence prevention. Police have recorded 112 shooting incidents through the end of May in Fort Wayne, up from 103 in the same time period last year. As The Trace reports, city officials say they want to work with more community partners to try to stop kids from getting guns — or feeling like they need a gun at all.