The Last Line of Defense: Saving Public Education with Meryl Johnson

The battle between public and private education isn't just about "choice"—it's about the future of our democracy. In this powerful episode of The Pulse, host Edwin Hubbard Jr. sits down with Meryl Johnson, a 40-year veteran educator, former State Board of Education member, and Chair of the Cleveland NAACP Education Committee.

With four decades in the classroom and eight years on the front lines of state policy, Meryl pulls back the curtain on the "systemic dismantling" of Ohio's public schools. We discuss:

The School Funding Crisis: Why the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled our funding system unconstitutional four times—and why your zip code still determines your child's future.

The Voucher Myth: A history lesson on how "school choice" evolved from a promise to help low-income families into a billion-dollar subsidy for private institutions.

Christian Nationalism in Schools: The truth about LifeWise and the movement to take children out of core classes for religious indoctrination..

The "Woke" Reality: Why staying "woke" is a positive, necessary act of survival in a climate of book bans and censored history.

As Merle says, uneducated people are easy to control.. This conversation is a call to action for every "Millennial Mover" in Cleveland to protect the last line of defense: our local school boards.

Become a member of the Cleveland NAACP and power the pulse of our city at clevelandnaacp.org