Teacher Appreciation - Legislative Non-Appreciation

If This Is Appreciation . . .

While it may be news to the leadership of the Missouri House, this week is Teacher Appreciation Week. School districts, parents and community groups across the state are recognizing the essential role that teachers play in our respective communities. It’s a time when we focus on the unsung and underpaid professionals who routinely put in long hours creating innovative courses of study while ensuring a safe and nurturing learning environment for our community’s children.

Yet today’s teachers face challenges that our parents’ teachers never could have envisioned.  And who could have predicted that school teachers would become a favorite target of political attacks from self-serving state legislators, who seem more interested in corporate campaign contributions than improving our schools?

That appears to be what happened last week, when the Missouri House sent a pre-emptive message of non-appreciation to teachers and, once again, confirmed its leadership’s persistent separation from reality on education issues.

With the narrow passage of HB 1526 (by a 83-82 vote), the Missouri House stomped on local community control of schools and sent a strong message of disrespect toward hard working teachers. Incredibly, the bill eliminates teacher experience as a factor when districts face reduction in force. Further, it mandates that districts utilize an arbitrarily constructed and confusing formula to determine who goes and who stays.

Legislator Accountability?

Despite the fact that there was virtually no support for the bill from school administrators, school boards, community groups or teachers, Springfield-area legislators Burlison, Hough, Elmer, Leach, Long and Schoeller felt compelled to vote in favor of this strange, ill-conceived bill, which now moves to the Senate. Representatives Lampe, Denison and Weter demonstrated a deeper understanding and appreciation of teachers and schools by voting “No”.

The time has long since passed for legislative leadership in Jefferson City to be held accountable for their ridiculous forays into what they loosely call “education reform” and to stop these politically motivated attacks on teachers and public education. There is real work being done to improve our schools every day at the local level. Legislative leadership should be asking what they can do to help rather than attempting to create more chaos with canned legislative tricks like HB 1526. Their real constituency back home would be most appreciative.