Suppose you went to work for a company, and these were your working conditions.
Your work area is over-crowded, maybe too cold in the winter and too hot the rest of the year. It may have some serious building code violations, it’s old and run-down, and maybe doesn’t even have windows. The people you’re in charge of weren’t hired by you, you have to take whoever shows up, and you can’t fire them, either. By the way, there are twice as many of them as there should be in your office, in terms both of space and the right conditions to do the job well.
You’re not provided with enough supplies and equipment for them, so you go out of pocket to pay the difference. To top it off, you get very little respect and support, you’re paid a lot less than most other people with your education, and the benefits aren’t so hot, either. You do get a little extra vacation each year, which you may spend working to earn a little more money.
Sound like a great deal? I didn’t think so. Yet what I have just described is what DISD teachers face every day.
In the interest of full disclosure, my mother has been a DISD teacher, mostly in middle schools in Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, for about 35 years, so I know a little bit about what teaching entails and what kind of dedication it takes. I hope we can pretty much stipulate that we expect an awful lot from our public school teachers considering how we treat them, but issues like pay, benefits and their general status in society are topics for another day.
The overcrowded, substandard working conditions, however are something we can deal with soon.
On Jan. 19, the first DISD bond issue in a long time, and for a whopping $1.37 billion, goes to the voters for approval. If it passes, every school in the district will receive some improvements, and a 20 sorely-needed new schools and hundreds of classrooms will be added.
Making sure that each school benefits, and having the election on the same day as the city’s special Mayoral election, are both politically smart moves. All three leading Mayoral candidates have come out strongly in support of the bonds, even though the mayor has little formal power to affect the schools, and the higher turnout due to the city election will probably help passage of the bond election. The single best thing the bond election has going for it is the trust people are placing in DISD Supt. Mike Moses. The fact that the board hasn’t had raucous meetings leading off the local TV news lately and the FBI’s wrap-up of its investigation also both have to help.
Working against passage, as would be true anywhere, are several factors. First, there’s a feeling among some that since the public schools are part of the public sector, they should be run as lean as possible. After all, if Abe Lincoln could educate himself by firelight and our grandparents could trudge to school in two feet of snow, uphill both ways, today’s kids shouldn’t be coddled either. But even if today’s conditions aren’t quite Dickensian, this argument is still nonsense if we expect our kids to learn and compete at the highest level.
Another contention is that if my kids are grown or in private school – or on a more sinister if unspoken level, if those public school kids don’t “look like mine”- why should I incur bonded indebtedness to help the public schools? This argument, also nonsensical, ignores the fact that everything from business growth and job creation to crime statistics, things that affect us all for better or worse, are directly related to how well we support the public schools in carrying out their mission.
That mission is critical to all our futures, even if we or our children might never set foot in a public school.
And to carry out that mission well, the schools have to have the facilities and equipment they need to do the job we expect them to do.
