Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 22:11:36 -0400
From: Karen Crowell
Subject: put your money where your mouth is
Not everyone liked what I had to say recently about the teacher bonuses.
Instead, there has been a lot of self-congratulatory talk about how much credit we should give our elected officials. Did you notice how carefully Heather tried to tiptoe around the word REPUBLICANS without even once saying it out loud?
Unfortunately, any Republicans running for re-election this year are in a real bind. They HAVE to worry about how unpopular their party is with voters in this state. Republicans in the General Assembly have been merciless to pretty much all of their constituents, earning national attention for their atrocities. So it comes as no surprise that the MAJORITY of our county commissioners (who just happen to be REPUBLICANS) are trying so hard to project a POSITIVE message and distance themselves from their own political party.
But the point of my comments then, and now, is to underscore how much credit we should give teachers, not elected officials.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, then here are some excerpts from what teacher Pam Lilley has to say. She writes a blog featuring the words of teachers who have resigned, and she wrote a letter to one of our legislators recently about the plight of teachers across the state and why North Carolina ought to be doing a whole lot more when it comes to showing how much we value them.
“I am friends with hundreds (literally) of teachers, many of whom HAVE been teachers of the year at their school and nobody is interested in a model that pays**some teachers more than others based on performance and it boils down to the argument I’m sure you’ve heard before: effective school-wide teaching depends on collaboration.
“Whether you believe in merit based pay or a system that many with experience in education would consider more equitable, you should want teachers to make a living wage.
“From the 2001-02 to the 2011-12 school years, the national average of teachers’ salaries fell -2.8%. One can assume the cost of living didn’t also fall during that decade in /anyplace/, USA, so that’s really unfortunate, especially considering how underpaid we were already*.**
*
“We recognize that in 2008 the state entered a deep recession and when our pay was frozen the first year, most of us were grateful not to have been furloughed. But this year when the state cut revenue that could have been used to help teachers in order to instead help the wealthy and corporations, the trust between teachers and legislators hit an all-time low….
“We have lost faith that the legislators are doing what’s best for us or for our students. What would it take to open our minds and hearts to something new? **An act of good faith on the part of the state**to restore our step increases and get our base pay up to the national average.**Then we will know their money is where their mouth is when they say they value education.”
Let me also point out that even if sales tax revenues have increased enough to support paying bonuses to teachers in Chatham County, we should not be thankful to WalMart and other companies like them who profit from selling goods at prices that their employees can’t afford to buy,
It is yet another way that those of us who CAN afford to live above the poverty-line perpetuate the inequality and injustice that permeate this country today, congratulating ourselves on OUR successes, all the while ignoring the fate of the those who CAN’T afford a decent standard of living.
Karen Crowell
Neither complacent about the future, nor the least bit contrite about expressing it.