In Action

The Executive Board of my union chose not to come out in support of tax extensions that would, potentially, have saved a number of teaching jobs. Instead they chose to promote the idea that there are plenty of individuals and corporations that should be taxed more in order that they pay "their fair share." A principled stand, but one that has the rest of us not serving on that Executive Board scratching our collective heads.
There is a lengthy discussion and a debate that will consume the next decade about how we pay for the services that we expect, but discussing where we get the water to put out the fire that is burning our barn down seems like wasted effort. We have five years of tax extensions, not increases, on the table. This won't save everyone's job. On the contrary. It will only forestall the inevitable. The difference is having two or three teachers laid off at a school or five. It is the difference between filling every single seat in a classroom and bringing in a few more desks to just filling up the seats. It means more papers to grade, more noses to wipe, more report cards to fill out. That's for those of us lucky enough to have jobs. For those who came to the teaching game in the past few years, the message is pretty clear: Sorry, we just can't afford you. It doesn't matter how qualified or committed you are. It doesn't matter that you were part of a staff that moved a school out of program improvement and educated young minds. You'll have to look elsewhere.
My union wants us all to flock to Sacramento for a Day of Action. It would be a show of strength, we are told. Raise our voices. Vent our spleens. Then come home and check the mailbox for a pink slip. I'm prepared to carry on the fight, but if we don't all agree on what the solution is, then it's a wasted effort. I went on strike a year ago to protest the contract that was imposed on my by the school board. That seems like a hundred years ago. Before teachers were money-grubbing thieves. Before education became optional.
The school at which I work, for now, is named for the father of public education, Horace Mann. He said, "Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery." On March 14, I will be manning my station on that balance wheel, in my classroom.