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As Miami-Dade continues to deal with a high rate of COVID-19 infections, classroom teachers and district staff are calling on state legislators to prioritize public schools. Education professionals report students dealing with a range of educational, emotional, and social challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis in a survey conducted by the United Teachers of Dade, which represents nearly 30,000 education professionals.
Educators recommend that funding should be applied to providing direct health care by qualified medical personnel in every school, expanding counseling services, and adding sufficient instructional personnel to lower class size ratios for both face-to-face and distance learning.
On the full re-opening of schools, United Teachers of Dade President, Karla Hernandez-Mats noted that “prioritizing vaccinations for teachers and district staff in the earlier waves of access would expedite in person learning and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations.”
State legislators can follow Governor Ron DeSantis’ proposed budget which maintains local property tax rates and still affords modest increases to teacher salaries to help recruit educators, which are currently ranked as the 48th lowest in the nation. However, educators point to more that could be done to retain experienced teachers in traditional public schools as well. If opening schools is viewed as critical to our economy, funding must be enhanced to help schools deal with the increased financial burden of operating in a pandemic.
Parents, educators & administrators have coalesced around several priorities:
● Increase funding for Miami-Dade County Public Schools to allow increases to attract and retain high quality employees.
● Increase funding to provide safe conditions for healthy learning and teaching due to the pandemic.
● Protect and improve our opportunity to have local referendums to fill in revenue gaps caused by the legislature.
● Protect the Florida Retirement System (Senate Bill 84 proposes ending this) so that career public servants can retire with dignity.
● Create additional summer school and recovery options for students who have fallen behind during the pandemic.
● Advocate for an increase in the supply of vaccinations and prioritize them for teachers and staff in order to re-open schools quicker.
● Provide flexibility for students, parents and teachers to not be harmed by high stakes testing during the pandemic.
Educators warn of three particularly troubling bills this legislative session. Teachers are concerned that Senate Bill (SB) 84 is being pushed through Tallahassee, they believe, due to lack of public scrutiny because of COVID-19 precautions that specifically limit public access to lawmakers. If passed, SB 84 would strip away the right to retirement with dignity.
Another wasteful bill would require existing teacher unions to re-establish their union every three-years. For Miami-Dade County Public Schools, this would waste tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars just to make bargaining more difficult for teachers who have gone above and beyond during the pandemic.
Lastly, parents and teachers believe Senate Bill 48 would expand education savings accounts as a back door to funnel more public dollars into private schools while removing transparency and oversight of our taxpayer dollars.
“As an MDCPS parent, I hope that legislators in Tallahassee see the opportunity they have to support kids changing needs with funding that meets their needs right now, and avoid wasting taxpayer dollars on measures that punish kids and districts who are trying to do the best they can,” said Parent Teacher Association activist Beth Berglin. “Increased funding for teachers, counselors, and summer education would help kids catch up their earning losses. But they’re prioritizing ending pensions, attacking unions, using testing to penalize children during a pandemic, and sending public dollars to private schools. It’s wasting the short time they have in Session to address the needs of kids.”
State legislators always have difficult decisions to make in crafting good education legislation and setting the state budget, but this year presents unprecedented challenges to set the state on a path towards recovery. Fortunately, federal funding is expected to supplement available state resources and provides the opportunity for a responsive legislature to make necessary investments in traditional public schools to assist in recovery efforts by prioritizing students social, emotional and material needs.
