Senate and House Committees of Education Debate Texas Education Bills, The Future Loss of Students and Teachers Due to Low Quality Ed and Pay is Looming
Hello SAISD Parents,
Welcome back from Spring Break and I hope everyone had some fun. Unfortunately, this week wasn’t a vacation for our Senate or House Committees of Education as they debated different bills. As I read some of these bills, I wondered what our education system would look like if these bills became laws. This SB9 states it would “help” our current teachers, but it also wants to change how a person becomes a teacher.
We may be looking at our politicians taking over every aspect of our educational system, which could cause us to lose more teachers, which then leads to our children falling further behind in their basic classes. As you read SB9, it states it would ‘provide an allotment for an educator mentorship program for those that teach Pre-K children’, then it says ‘there is no specific language about across-the-board teacher raises’. They mention an “incentive teachers allotment”. To understand how the state defines this allotment you can read about on their website at: https://tiatexas.org/about-teacher-incentive-allotment/. After reading this I encourage everyone to walk a mile in our teacher’s shoes because every day, they have to teach our children, ensure they have met every student’s needs, and fill out a mountain of paperwork. After their long days, as they go home, they have dinner for a few seconds, and then it’s back to grading work or writing next week’s lesson plans.
As a parent, I know our job is 24/7, and even after a long day at work, we still come home to make sure our children eat dinner and help them finish homework. So, we are all struggling to get everything done for our children. I understand we all have to report to a boss, but our teachers have many from their principals, school board members, and the state. It’s hard to understand why these politicians can’t find better ways to help all of us parents, children, teachers and staff because it takes a village to raise a child and everyday we are all a part of their village.
Now as they begin this week with new questions, listening to many testimonies from parents, teachers and others we will see where these House Bills and Senate bills end up. The process of changing or creating new laws takes a lot of work and it’s an overwhelming amount of writing and rewriting along with getting to the final vote. So let’s hope that the “bad bills” will get lost and not become new education laws in Texas. If this legislative session cannot find a way to raise our teachers’ pay, provide more resources that make sense and cancel HB4545, then we all may be unnecessarily overwhelmed.
Lastly, parents, we don’t need school vouchers because, like most districts in Texas, SAISD offers “school choice,” If we could send our children to one of these schools, then we don’t need vouchers for private schools. We must remember that if they pass these vouchers for private schools, we lose our fundamental rights, and so will our children, and these schools will not be accountable to TEA. Parents, it has been proven that school voucher programs do not work, and most children return to their public schools. But what happens when our public schools are gone? No one on these Educational Committees has given us an answer; instead, we were left in the dark with no idea if our schools would be there tomorrow. Today we need solutions, not more changes in educational laws that cause our teachers more stress and not knowing if they will have a job tomorrow.
If anyone has any questions or concerns please email me at lena.lopez@saobserver.com. Also let’s make sure that all of our Teachers know that we respect and appreciate all they do for our children.
Have a Blessed Week,
Lena Lopez
