My son’s last day of first grade is on Thursday. This will be my last post until June, because we’re taking the week off to travel and celebrate family and summer and a very successful school year.
Because he is my son, he requested to go to Central High School in Little Rock to launch his summer. Because he has siblings not quite as politically-inclined, we’ll also dig for diamonds and eat some ice cream.
Before we leave, though, we’ll hand out gifts to his teachers, including his truly phenomenal classroom teacher, whose patience and kindness and enthusiasm and creative energy transformed his public school into a place that could accommodate his love of the Civil War and fascination with germ theory, all while helping him build friendships with other 6-year-olds.
The real present, though, that I commit to giving to every excellent public school educator with whom I ever come into contact:
I will stand up for you. Always.
I’m sure that Sam’s teachers will appreciate the handmade tokens he’ll give them, and probably our gift certificates, too. But what they really deserve is to know that their contributions won’t go unnoticed, that their roles will never be degraded, and that we will live (and vote) our belief in what they do for our children, every day.
Because, the thing is, I’ve never met anyone, not even the most anti-public educator politician, who doesn’t have something good to say about a given teacher in his/her life. It’s like we somehow convince ourselves that it’s the other public schools that are wasteful, or substandard, or uncaring, as though ours was some magical exception to the rule.
We are silent when legislatures propose laws that would prohibit teachers from lobbying or restrict the science they can teach in the classroom. We don’t show up at town halls where teachers are bashed as greedy tenure seekers. We fidget instead of fight when public education–and not our failure to support it–is blamed for poor educational outcomes. We may even forward those emails with the rumors about all the money diverted away from classrooms, and how that’s evidence that school budgets should be cut.
We focus narrowly on what we can do to show appreciation to our own teachers, with brownies baked and coffee mugs purchased, instead of circling around them in a protective sphere of advocacy, showing our thanks by standing in solidarity.
Our teachers, and the children whose lives they touch daily, deserve more than certificates of appreciation, and even more than free massages.
They deserve professional respect, a competitive salary, a secure retirement.
They deserve to be thanked not just at the end of each school year, but every time we go to the ballot box, every time we have a chance to speak out instead of remain silent, and every time we let our policymakers know that representing us means taking care of those who take care of our future.
Thank you, Mrs. P.
I’ll thank you always.
The What: Maintaining the balance of powers
OK, so, I’m cheating a little bit for this last post of “what week”, because, while this is about a policy itself, it’s one that would–in fundamental and actually quite frightening ways–affect the how of policymaking, too.
In Kansas this legislative session, and in some other parts of the country, too, there have been explicit attempts to cut the judiciary out of the policymaking process.
In my state, this has taken the form of a proposed constitutional amendment to stipulate that only the legislature has the authority to determine what appropriate funding for public education is, so that, essentially, the ‘right’ level of funding is whatever the legislature decides to give, and students and schools would lose their right to seek redress from the courts.
It would be damaging to public education.
And it would be a really dangerous precedent.
History is replete with examples of when judicial advocacy has been a successful path to social justice. Even when individual justices, or even the entire judiciary, is fairly conservative, the way in which the court operates can sometimes lead to surprising conclusions.
In ways that are really promising for the pursuit of the ideals on which the country was founded.
Individuals with disabilities entitled to access, people of color pursuing equal opportunity, gays and lesbians seeking the right to marry…all deserve to have all of the channels of our government open to them.
Sometimes social workers, as advocates, can lose sight of the importance of some of these ‘process’ threats. We have not been very active in the campaign finance debate. We tend to be absent in the fights over collective bargaining rights.
And, so far, at least in Kansas, social workers have not been very present in the constitutional amendment battle about the role of the judiciary, either. Maybe, in part, that’s because school finance isn’t seen as ‘our fight’. And there are plenty of things that are. This session alone, we’ve faced budget cuts, more tax restructuring, drug testing TANF recipients, and elimination of some early intervention programs. Among others.
But if we lose on these ‘whats’, we will find ourselves with very constrained options for pursuing tomorrow’s ‘hows’.
If the other side changes the rules of the game, we will find it harder and harder to win.
It’s certainly not that the judiciary is always a slam-dunk for justice.
But it’s part of the system that, over time, has worked better for securing liberties than any other. And we face far better odds with the courts at the table than without.
So, this, too, has to be our fight.
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Posted in Analysis and Commentary
Tagged advocacy, judicial policy, Kansas, school finance