Your Voice

Amid Uncertainty, One Thing Is Clear: Your Vote Matters

BY JENNIFER MITCHELL

ATPE Governmental Relations Director W hat if your school closed for spring do we provide a safe learning environment break and never opened back up for students and accommodations for school again? What if you suddenly had to staff who are worried about their health? teach all your classes from home on a laptop? How do we modify our school calendars in a What if the STAAR test were simply cancelled? way that will make it easier for us to man

A year ago, these what-ifs would have seemed age similar disruptions in the future, if neclike impossible scenarios. Now they are a essary? How do we help those students who shared experience for many ATPE members. have fallen further behind? The changes that happened practically overAs we start the school year under such still night because of COVID -19 have tested your strange and shifting circumstances, many mettle in ways you never imagined when you questions remain unanswered. Amid few cerfirst entered the education profession. Most tainties, we know the coronavirus pandemic of the changes have been difficult and unwelhas strained our economy and our public edcome—with cancellation of the STAAR test beucation system, and there will be an enduring ing one possible exception. need for added resources and creative solu

Educators were tions to the novel dauntless in facing the sudden disruption AS LOCAL, STATE, problems we are now facing in our public of the 2019-20 school AND FEDERAL schools. Whether we year. You turned your kitchen tables into GOVERNMENTS like it or not, education in the time of classrooms. You spent SCRAMBLE TO FIND COVID -19 is a more hours overhauling les son plans and devel SOLUTIONS TO expensive undertaking. ATPE is gearing oping a new breed of PROBLEMS THAT WERE up for a difficult 2021 “homework” for your students (and their UNIMAGINABLE ONLY legislative session in which budget writers frazzled, teleworking A YEAR AGO, YOU ARE must attempt to adparents). You held drive-by celebrations SEEING THE POWER dress these expanded needs with markedly for graduating seniors. OF YOUR ELECTED decreased revenue. You accomplished all these unforeseen OFFICIALS. The education budget cuts of 2011 are tasks with a smile, still fresh on the often while dealing with your own behind-theminds of many of you. It took years to fill that scenes challenges: caring for your stuck-athole, which is starting to look like a small inhome families, staying connected to isolated dentation compared to the crater in front of older relatives, and facing the trauma of a deadly us today. Fortunately, we’ve seen a modest new disease within your own household or circle shift in elected officials’ attitudes toward the of friends. education profession in the last few years, slowly turning away from the toxic rhetoric Uncertain Future and strong-arm tactics of groups that want to

Navigating government orders that often defund our public education system, muzzle conflicted and changed on a weekly basis and teachers, and hand out taxpayer dollars with worrying about long-term impacts of the panno strings attached to unregulated private and demic made this a summer of disquiet. How home schools. Whether that trend continues

depends entirely on the votes you cast in 2020 at every level of the ballot.

The Power of Your Vote

As local, state, and federal governments scramble to find solutions to problems that were unimaginable only a year ago, you are seeing the power of your elected officials. For instance, in recent months Gov. Greg Abbott issued a number of sweeping executive orders, from shutting down schools this spring to restricting certain businesses from opening and requiring Texans to wear masks in many situations. Abbott is not up for reelection this year, but there is no question that voters’ mixed reviews on his handling of the pandemic will be remembered in the 2022 election cycle.

Much of the state’s guidance on when and how to begin the 2020-21 school year left a great deal of discretion to local officials. As a result, school districts tasked with determining their reopening protocols, adopting or readopting calendars, and crafting plans for online and in-person instruction have turned to their locally elected school board trustees and the superintendents hired by those trustees to make such important decisions.

State legislators are another group of elected officials whose judgment will play an enormous role in shaping the future of our schools and how Texas responds to and recovers from the COVID -19 pandemic. Although the Texas Legislature will not convene its next regular session until January, planning is already underway, and bills are being drafted as we speak. Those state lawmakers elected by you will be crafting the budget that pays for almost every aspect of your profession (not to mention drawing new electoral maps through redistricting).

At the federal level, members of Congress are determining the flow of federal funds, employees’ rights to sick leave or unemployment benefits, and safety measures. Of course, 2020 is also a presidential election year, and it’s important to remember that the president has not only the power to issue executive orders of his own and to sign or veto federal bills, but also has the ability to appoint officials to powerful posts within his cabinet. The U.S. Department of Education, headed by a presidential appointee, will decide whether to grant waivers of rigid testing and accountability requirements and how to dole out federal education funds, for example. The list goes on.

These are trying times. It matters more than ever that you vote in November and in all other elections at the local, state, and national level. All elected officials ultimately answer to you, the voter. Use your power to elect the people who will do right by you, your families, and your students.

TeachtheVote.org: ATPE’s Advocacy Website

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