Your Voice

Who’s Talking to the Teachers?

BY JENNIFER MITCHELL

ATPE Governmental Relations Director As you know from the ads playing on your television and filling your mailbox, it’s an election year. Right about now, you are (we hope) preparing to vote in the May 24 primary runoff election, or you voted early. Have you noticed how many campaign messages this year pertain to education?

From local school board races to the halls of the U.S. Capitol, it’s hard to escape mentions of critical race theory (CRT), patriotic education, schools’ response to COVID-19, library books, or parental rights. These are topics worthy of discussion, particularly during an election year when voters must make high-stakes choices at the polls. The problem is that educators like you are often left out of those conversations altogether.

In 2021, Texas lawmakers passed controversial curriculum bills to restrict how teachers discuss current events and sensitive history-related topics in their classrooms. We wrote on our Teach the Vote blog about how the Texas Senate—ruled by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick—drove the legislation and suspended nearly every procedural rule the chamber had to pass the bills as quickly as possible with little interference from the pesky public or even the Texas House. Senators passed the bills in the middle of the night after taking no public testimony. Regardless of your political affiliation or beliefs about the merits of those bills, all educators and voters should be appalled by the abuse of process, neglect of transparency, and obvious disdain for educators’ input on major education legislation.

Despite boasts by Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott, and others that the Legislature successfully “banned the teaching of critical race theory” with its passage of those bills, candidates up and down the ballot this year are harping about the urgency of combatting the CRT, indoctrination, and “Marxist ideology” they claim are pervasive in Texas classrooms. Even social and emotional learning (SEL)—incorporated into our state’s curriculum standards and promoted by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)—has been branded as a leftist conspiracy “to change children’s worldview,” as one current Texas House candidate and non-educator put it, or described as “mind control” and “propaganda,” per a State Board of Education candidate who recently won her party’s nomination. Isn’t it ironic that the candidates complaining most about curriculum and textbooks are those with zero teaching experience and people who haven’t stepped foot inside a classroom in decades?

ELECTED OFFICIALS AND The point is that elected officials and politiPOLITICIANS FAR REMOVED FROM cians far removed from

THE CLASSROOM ARE TELLING the classroom are tellVOTERS A STORY ABOUT WHAT IS TAKING PLACE IN OUR SCHOOLS, ing voters a story about what is taking place in our schools, and many

AND MANY VOTERS BELIEVE IT voters believe it with-

WITHOUT EVER TALKING TO out ever talking to eduEDUCATORS LIKE YOU. cators like you who are in classrooms teaching students every day and dealing with the myriad challenges that accompany a career in education. Right after the March election and Abbott’s parental rights crusade, which took center stage in his contested primary, the governor directed his appointed commissioner of education to form a Teacher Vacancy Task Force to address alarming educator shortages. Initially, the state planned to invite superintendents and human resources directors to serve on the committee without a single teacher member. Two teachers were added to the 26-member task force just prior to its public reveal. Its goal was to explore staffing strategies and regulatory changes that would make it easier for schools to fill vacant positions. The question of why teachers are leaving was barely an afterthought. Unsurprisingly, teachers reacted with outrage, and ATPE rightfully complained that their voices continued on page 31