Why I Am Sitting-In at NC Senator Phil Berger’s Office
It’s early Monday morning. Very soon I will be leaving the house to teach elementary Spanish like I do every school day. My after-school routine will vary a bit today as I head over to Raleigh to participate in a civil disobedience sit-in at NC Senator Phil Berger’s office with fellow educators, parents, fast-food workers, university students, and other community members in an effort to sound an increasingly desperate alarm for public education. This is not a decision I make lightly. As both a teacher and a parent there are several reasons why I believe public education, as a resource that belongs to all of us, needs immediate attention.
Public education is not failing, it is being systematically dismantled. Most pressing is the education budget recently passed by the NC Senate and now being heard in the House. At its core,the proposed education budget makes basic day-to-day school functioning considerably more difficult. Teacher assistants, school nurses, bus drivers, textbooks, and supplies are all looking at severe cuts. Again. We say that we want quality education for all children, but continued cuts like these are a direct attack on our ability as educators to do our job properly.
We are being lied to. Folks who work in school buildings are a good lot. Doing more with less is not just a cliche, it’s a way of life for us. Every year we pull together and teach more students, use less materials, hire fewer teachers, and work with growing class sizes; all with increased accountability and testing. This is not sustainable, nor is it necessary. We are constantly told that there is no money in the budget. Not true.The money and the revenue is there. Corporations and the very well-to-do, while making record profits, are being taxed at record lows. Our elected officials are very literally creating more opportunities for the super rich and corporations than they are for children. Time to raise revenue.
We will not be bought. The recent Senate budget addresses a sticky issue for NC politicians: teacher pay. Going into November, there is no viable way that anyone trying to get elected can ignore NC’s abysmal national ranking of 46th in teacher pay. While teachers most certainly welcome a very auspicious 11% election-year raise, the breathtakingly mean-spirited proposal of where the raises would come from is wholly unacceptable. Raising NC teacher pay while cutting another 7,400 teacher assistants is unconscionable. Forcing teachers to choose between a raise and career status is unfair and a breach of contract. Teacher raises, yes; raises for ALL school workers. But know this: we won’t tolerate raises for teachers if they are paid for with education cuts. There is nothing left to cut.
Testing is not learning. As we witness an unprecedented draining of resources from public education through decreasing revenues, regressive taxation, private school vouchers and other privatization schemes, we are subjecting children to an ever increasing battery of tests. I intentionally use the word battery because relentlessly testing children with no regard to research about multiple intelligences and differentiated learning is child abuse. As education professionals we know more than ever about the varied ways students learn. It is a cruel irony that at time when we know better than ever how students learn we are consistently provided less resources to actually meet student needs.
Our problem is not “bad teachers”. A myth being perpetuated by Senator Berger and others is that in order to improve education we need more ways to get rid of bad teachers. By his logic, education will improve as soon as it is easier to fire teachers. From this stems his obsessive focus on ending career status, our due process rights. Apart from the obvious disrespect to us as professionals and the fact that there are already no less than 15 different reasons for which a teacher can be fired, anyone paying attention to the growing teacher exodus in NC should be asking a wholly different question: What are we doing to keep good teachers?
Poverty in NC. As educators, a substantial part of our professional lives revolves around student data and research. Increasing lexile levels, re-teaching standards, reflecting on our teaching to incorporate best practices; the list goes on. Here’s are some basic statistics we don’t talk about often enough: 1 in 4 children in NC lives in poverty; 1 in 2 is from a low-income household. We know without a doubt that reducing poverty increases academic achievement. I am proud to sit-in with fast-food workers and support the fight for a real living wage. If we want real opportunity for our students, we must stand with their parents as they demand fair pay.
I am a parent. As a father with two children in public school, I know very well what it means to want not just the best for my children academically, but to want the best for them period. By natural extension, what I want for my own children, I want for my students. In this economic and political environment, telling children they can grow up to do whatever they want rings hollow. We are witnessing a cementing in place of class division by lack of access to opportunity. As educators we cannot stand idly by, under the guise of professionalism, and watch as our resources are stripped away from us and our students. Not standing up to these attacks on public education silently condones structural inequalities disproportionately affecting the poor and students of color for whom prison is a very real and menacing alternative.
I’m sitting-in today to say that we, as educators, parents and students, do not accept being asked to do more with less any longer. I’m sitting-in today because we, the people of NC, are better than this.
Todd Warren is an elementary Spanish teacher in Greensboro, NC. He is the father of two public school students and a member of Organize 2020, the social justice caucus of the NC Association of Educators.
Why I Organize for Public Education
Thoughts on organizing for public education and the broader fight for social justice: First, our schools ARE our communities. Almost any issue that is considered a social justice issue impacting students, parents, and educators is visible on the school level. Every -ism as it relates to race, class, sex, immigration, LGTBQ, environment, housing, access to resources and others are not only p…alpable and on display in our schools, they are often readily measurable which can be very useful in holding ourselves accountable to the equity/ equality we desire. For all of its failings, we must consider very carefully why the attack on public education from pre-K all the way to our public university systems has been so brutal and systematic. Public schools have many shortcomings, but its successes are being systematically dismantled. Quality education is not about being “able to get a good job,” as is so often touted as the reason and value behind why you should go to school. Quality education is about building the tools and critical thinking skills necessary to understand the world around us and how to work with others for what should be our ultimate goal: collective self determination. We often fall short and are swayed by the wider market culture confusing self dermination with rugged individualism. Imagine the potential our schools have not just for teaching reading and math, but as community centers where parents meet and make decisions about issues affecting their lives. Places where the community can gather and participate in job creation and resource allocation. Schools as hubs of direct democracy that can help communities address issues like coal ash disasters and marshall reliable testing of drinking water. Communication centers that help us understand that access to housing and food is vital for children that we will live with in the future. When you start to see the untapped potential of schools in this way, you begin to understand why the forces of greed put so much time and energy into the destruction of public education. They aren’t attacking public ed for what it IS, they are systematically and effectively removing threats to their rule and unquenchable thirst for resources. We LOVE Public Schools because they are US and they are OURS. We have a LONG way to go to defend and TRANSFORM public education, but we cannot lose this fight. Our enemies understand this- we would do well to understand what they are trying to take from us.
Todd Warren
Spanish Teacher
Guilford Elementary
Greensboro, NC
Statement of Support from Organize 2020 for NC Raise Up and Fast-Food Workers
Organize 2020, social justice caucus of the NC Association of Educators, stands in full support of the class action lawsuit brought by workers against McDonald’s in 3 states for wage theft. McDonald’s, one of the largest corporations in the world – has been committing rampant wage theft against its employees- forcing workers to work off the clock, not paying workers for overtime, and forcing workers to pay back register shortages out of pocket.
As public school educators, Organize 2020 supports NC Raise Up and the effort to unionize fast-food workers and other low-wage workers in NC. We recognize that poverty is one of single biggest impediments to learning and that in taking a stand against poverty, we are taking a stand for education. We recognize that someone employed full time has the right to a living wage and that $7.25 is not enough for one person to live on, much less raise a family. We recognize that the fast-food industry is hugely profitable and can easily afford to pay its workers fairly.
In a time when education budgets are being stripped to the bone we condemn the public subsidy of private industries; these companies need to pay their workers more and not be dependent on a publicly subsidized workforce. Fast-food workers are the parents of our students. Our students’ success is directly tied to their parents’ ability to provide for their families. Our success as professionals is directly tied to these families having the opportunity to thrive.
In a state where 1 in 4 children lives in poverty we recognize that it is our duty as educators to speak out about these conditions and that to remain silent is to ignore some of the biggest issues facing our students every day. In that spirit, Organize 2020 stands with NC Raise Up, fast-food and other low-wage workers across NC with the hope that together we can link arms and directly address these issues of poverty that are affecting us both.
Hillside High, Durham, NC #Decline2Sign !
High Point Central High, NC #Decline2Sign !