At the conclusion of the ceremony honoring retirees and employees celebrating years of service to the Mount Vernon Community School district, retiring employee and outgoing Mount Vernon Education Association president Suzette Kragenbrink summed it up beautifully – “Vote for education.”
This past legislative session has been brutal towards education issues across the state. There was the possibility of cameras in classrooms, curriculum review of all materials teachers use that would have been a headache for all teachers, especially in areas like social studies and humanities classes to adapt.
There’s also been the threat for the past month or more from Gov. Kim Reynolds to get her vouchers for private students passed, a plan that would be detrimental to rural school districts across the state and send our taxes to support private school students who can be more selective of the students they pass. Thankfully, that bill was voted down just ahead of the legislative session ending.
In the close of the legislative session, the legislature allowed school districts to take open enrollment requests year-round, instead of at a March deadline. That measure is going to impact all school districts, and like all measures passed in the dead of night and under secrecy, it’s not good law. It hasn’t been debated, nor the possibility of the financial impact to districts looked into enough to know why this was necessary.
That doesn’t get into the number of teachers and staff who are leaving the profession and the possibility of staffing shortages that many districts are seeing across the state. Lisbon struggled to find a teacher for a core curriculum subject for the second semester this past school year. How many other districts are going to struggle to find teachers for their district as the pool of applicants grows smaller and school budgets get tighter due to underfunding?
When education isn’t a priority in our voting, it’s not just the students who suffer. All of us will suffer.