For decades, public education has been a target of attack for certain political groups. I have personally watched as schools have had to make sacrifice after sacrifice, placing more work and responsibility on fewer and fewer people, due to over twenty years of either funding increases that are below inflation, flat funding, and even reduced funding. Only a few years ago did Michigan schools finally surpass the per-pupil funding from fifteen years prior.
This past week, our borough mayor suggested that schools should not receive the full funding amount that the borough can provide. Our state government has yet to commit to providing its schools with at least as much funding as they received last year. As a result, our district has already told some of its assistant principals that their positions have been eliminated. They have informed the district that they will likely be cutting over forty teaching positions.
Meanwhile, I and other teachers that I work with have put in more time and energy this year than any of the 23 years I have worked as a teacher--and that is saying quite a lot considering some of my past years. We are at overload, continually wiped out, with some burning out entirely and leaving the profession. Even in our most contentious bargaining years, I have not seen teachers so demoralized.
This needs to end. If schools are truly that essential (as I have been saying my entire career), then they should be fully funded and more. To quote from The West Wing:
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce; they should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to it citizens, just like national defense.