Proud Parent
Good grades are great, but let’s also brag about the other reasons we’re proud of our kids.
Teacher Appreciation
Our unwillingness to adequately fund teachers and school for children across the US is one of our most shortsighted policies.
If we really appreciated teachers we’d remove the barriers to effective education.
Stop Vilifying School Librarians
Florida Gov. DeSantis has continued his crack down on books in Florida schools, leading to empty shelves where school libraries once stood and school librarians vilified and fearful they’ll be charged with felonies.
It’s awful, authoritarian, and dangerous.
Social Media Myths
Perhaps you’ve heard the story going around social media. Perhaps you’re lucky and haven’t. But the story goes that schools are installing cat litter boxes in some bathrooms to accommodate kids who identify as cats.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Because it is. Yet it’s been shared widely across social media. Worse, several political candidates (almost entirely Republican) have repeated it in the press, on social media, at rallies and meetings. Joe Rogan - essentially an Internet troll with a big platform - repeated it on his show.
And it’s not true. A team of investigative journalists looked into each named accounting of the story. No truth to it.
How an urban myth about litter boxes in schools became a GOP talking point
Instead it spreads as part of the fear mongering over the gender identity debates and LGBTQ+ issues. It’s a way to ridicule and stoke fears of “the others” and legitimize laws to restrict rights of minority groups.
The saddest part is that the only kernel of truth in the cat litter story is some schools (from the same district as Columbine) that stock cat litter do it for “go buckets;” buckets of materials for kids locked in a classroom by an active shooter.
Way to go, America: do nothing about the real, horrible thing that happens repeatedly in our country and instead focus on some fake, imagined fear.
Please don’t spread this stupid cat litter nonsense. People who do should take a break from social media.
Teacher Shortage
America’s schools are facing a huge shortage of qualified teachers. There’s no clear data on how many teacher shortages we have nationally, but it’s massive.
The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state. Illinois reported in January >2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting 200-1,000 open teaching positions.
To combat this, counties and states are trying different approaches. Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.
And who loses in all this? Obviously the kids, who won’t benefit from experienced and skilled teachers.
Teaching is hard. And under immense scrutiny these days. Few other professions have so many people who seem to think they know how to do the job better than those who’ve studied and gained hands on experience. Because teaching isn’t just about subject knowledge, but how to help others learn, how to build curriculum, how to adapt learning styles, how to engage different students, and a huge amount of empathy.
But it’s not just the kids who will suffer.
To compete in the economy of tomorrow, we need educated citizens. Education has long been one of the things that attracts people to the US. And yet again we are failing our kids and ourselves.
It’s time we learn to invest more in ourselves and our communities to build better for tomorrow. Starting with investing more in our teachers and our schools.
School Year Fears
Schools are starting back up and kids are trying to figure out what supplies they need or don’t need. Unfortunately some fears are more overwhelming than others.
More children have died from COVID in the past 2 1/2 years than school shootings in the past 50 years.
But shootings bring a visceral reaction and will get a lot more funding and attention, just likely not in the right ways.
Both are complex, scary, low likelihood, and high consequence issues. No easy answers. But we shouldn’t let unfounded fears dominate our actions. We need data and science and research to show us how best to address these issues and make our kids feel safe and secure in school.
And remind ourselves and our kids that for both issues, the overwhelming percentages say they’ll be ok.
Schools
A county in North Carolina has approved a plan to put AR-15s in all schools for security reasons. Who can imagine anything going wrong with this plan?
Having two kids in public schools, I see every year how desperately underfunded our schools are. I’ve been PTA President; I’ve seen the receipts of what teachers have to self fund for their classrooms.
And that’s on top of teacher salaries that are mostly not near what they should be.
The dearth of public school funding is one of the most short sighted policies in America. Few things will pay off better for our country than investing in education.
So it’s sickening when funding then goes instead to guns or hardening schools. Which statistically has been shown to do more harm than good.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2776515
“The rate of deaths was 2.83 times greater in schools with an armed guard present”
The winner in this, of course, is the gun industry, as people just keep buying more guns. And now schools are, too.
I’m shaking my damn head.
Public Schools
Public education is the greatest tool for social mobility we have as a country. An educated populace benefits all of us, both in ways material and immaterial.
Yet public education in the US has been under attack for decades, by criticism and mistrust, crippling budget cuts at the K-12 levels, and unduly soaring costs at college levels.
So it’s unsurprising to see hot button issues used against it to tear down public education. In the wake of Uvalde, I’ve seen several commentators saying this is why homeschooling is better than public schools, this is why schools should be privatized, and questioning public schools’ ability to keep kids safe. It starts to sound like the calls for privatization of education, like we heard when Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education under Trump.
According to statistics online, 10% of US K-12 students attend private school, yet 6% of school shootings 2000-2018 occurred at private schools. Clearly there are many reasons, some correlated and not a cause.
The conservative/ libertarian Cato Institute (founded by one of the Koch brothers) said in 2018, “Anytime you write about a tragedy and point to your favorite policy reform as the solution, it can seem opportunistic and, frankly, a little callous. But it is not groundless to think that school type could matter, and nothing should be off‐ limits for discussion to end these sorts of tragedies.”
I might actually believe they were honest about nothing being off-limits if they honestly considered and tried popular aspects of gun control. Instead, we just get more attacks on public education.
Fund the Moms, Instead
As the horror unfolded in Uvalde, a mother was handcuffed outside the school for “interfering,” as she pleaded with law enforcement officers to enter the building and save the children. Her children.
As a parent I can imagine the frustration, fear, and anger as the seconds and minutes ticked by, knowing a gunman was in that school with her kids.
So she did what the law enforcement officers hadn’t done. She went in and saved her kids. Alone. Unarmed. Brought her children to safety.
We’ve seen the Uvalde SWAT team photo. Dressed up, playing soldier. We know the armored tanks that many of these police forces have. It’s been reported that Uvalde spends ~40% of its municipal budget on its police force. And those police stood by for 90 minutes as children and teachers were slaughtered. What a waste of money. And it contributed to wasted, innocent lives.
Many want us to hold up police as heroes. It’s a dangerous job, undoubtedly. But they do too many jobs for which they aren’t suited. And this one, for which they’ve been outfitted, trained, and paid, they didn’t do. It’s not a problem unique to Uvalde.
Remember that when politicians tell us they need more money for police. Instead, we need better solutions than police.
Because in this one instance, a single mother did more than most of the police there.
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No More Silence
Screw the thoughts. Screw the prayers. Screw the moments of silence.
We need action in this country. Lives - LITERALLY - depend on it.
Banned Books
There’s a surge in Banning Books in schools, many being banned for having LGBTQ+ content.
If reading books changed someone’s sexual identity or gender identity, don’t you think all the books (let alone movies, tv shows, etc) that LGBTQ people have read over the years would have turned them straight?
But instead, people give in to fear, hatred, and bigotry of how some people live, or whom they love, and decide to ban books. Even Judy Blume.
