Murrieta, CA school board member Christine Schmidt during a board meeting on Thursday pushed her school district to formalize celebrations of Constitution Day.
Schmidt, who represents the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, said enacting a policy encouraging the celebration of the holiday would ensure consistency and commitment to “civic education.”
Constitution Day is recognized each year on Sept. 17. The California Department of Education’s website has a recommendation that all public schools celebrate the holiday in order to “deepen student’s understanding of the constitution and the responsibilities of citizenship.”
“Especially since next year, right, is the 250th anniversary of the United States … I think this is very timely,” Schmidt said.
2026 marks 250 years since the formal declaration of independence by the United States in 1776. President Trump is organizing a nationwide celebration called “America 250,” currently led by members of his cabinet and congressional Republicans.
Some of Schmidt’s ideas for the Murrieta Valley Unified School District included discussions in history and social studies classes, assemblies and guest speakers, and how the “littles could dress up as their favorite founding father.”
Superintendent Dr. Ward Andrus discussed the idea of incorporating Constitution Day into an already-packed week of patriotic events, including remembrance of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, which has also been celebrated as Patriot’s Day since President Obama designated it as such in 2009.
Existing celebrations “tend to be really kind of focused on Patriot’s Day, and not so much on Constitution Day, so there’s already somewhat of a structure in place to do it, I just think it’s adding an emphasis on the second part,” Andrus said.
These initiatives are not solely to celebrate national values, but to improve civic education as well. Several recent studies and tests indicate Americans, particularly students, do not have a comprehensive understanding of the U.S. Constitution or possess broader civic knowledge.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37% of Americans do not know a single freedom guaranteed to them by the First Amendment.
A 2022 civics assessment administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that scores in the subject had declined for the first time since testing began, with scores equivalent to 1998.
The rest of the Murrieta Valley board was receptive to Schmidt’s idea, noting an already high number of celebrated holidays as the only problem before tabling the topic and moving on.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Kristina Watrobski
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.offthepress.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
