The Public School Defenders Hub, a nonprofit, statewide, public education advocacy coalition based in Orange and Placer Counties, has received a $150,000 growth sustainability grant for expansion from the Contemporary Policy Institute (CPI).

The three year-old non-profit organization is a project of CPI.

“We began the Public School Defenders Hub in 2022 to push back against extremist attacks on public education,” says CPI Founder and President Andy Thorburn. “These attacks include well-organized and funded campaigns to sow culture war conflict and elect extremist local school board members who don’t value public schools.”

The Defenders Hub has assembled a coalition of civil rights and education partners, which includes the California Teachers Association, the ACLU, and Equality California, among others. Coalition members work collaboratively to proactively counter anti-public education forces to ensure inclusive, secular, high quality, secular education for all students.

Advocacy includes public information forums, school board accountability training, free online resource library materials, a Speakers Bureau and a “Rapid Response” platform for local school district community organizers.

“Our vision is to have strong, inclusive, equitable, high quality public schools,” says CPI Managing Director Susan Metcalf. “Educating the community about the threats to public education requires resources, and we believe the CPI grant will be instrumental in achieving our goals.”

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About CPI

For decades, CPI Founder Andy Thorburn was in the business of selling insurance outside the United States. As the business became successful, leadership decided to give back to the communities served. A private foundation was started and when the business was eventually sold, the new owner did not want to continue in the nonprofit sector, but Andy Thorburn did. He created CPI and began focusing on U.S. issues. Its guiding principle is expressed by the motto, “fact based, issue driven.” CPI started a project to bring medical care to the homeless population which was urgently needed during the pandemic. A second project, the Public School Defenders Hub, was begun to support public education where culture war misinformation was, and is, rampant.