I have written this letter and sent it to my governmental representatives in the wake of the latest and most drastic round of announced and planned cuts to my already struggling school. Please help me by making some noise!
Dear America
I am a teacher in a rural school district in Florida. My school has struggled to overcome our image as the "ghetto" school, the school where "those crazy black kids" go and, just this year, we have begun to see the results. Parents are not afraid to send their children to our high school, people from other schools are beginning to recognize the high standards of academics and of behavior to which we hold our students. However, in the midst of the deepening budget crisis all of that is at risk.
Just this week our principal learned that our district intends to merge the middle and high schools, without adding buildings and while cutting staff. Suddenly we will be faced with class sizes of 40 or more in smaller classrooms and with fewer resources. Already our curriculum offerings are as limited as they can be and still meet state requirements! Our legislators wrangle and argue, while ignoring the real issue: small districts like ours have nothing left to cut! At this time when our school is poised to make the final leap into excellence, everything will be snatched away from us. Snatched away from our students.
America, it is painful, truly painful, to look into the eyes of my students, who have worked so hard and come so far, and tell them that their community, their state and their country will not invest in them. That they are not important enough to matter. My students, who come from some of the most awful circumstances a child can emerge from, often find their only refuge in the safety and love that we provide for them at school. It is only through having those needs met that they can then perform to the academic standards that we have set for them. And, America, they do perform.
This isn't about me, or about my job. This is about my students, the remarkable, amazing and wonderful people who come through my classroom door every day begging for someone to care for them, help them rise up and overcome their backgrounds. The budget cuts, the delays in finding a solution, they threaten all that.
Please, please, America, help us. Help the teachers who struggle every day to find ways to reach out and lift up the children we see daily. Help the children who have absolutely no say in the budget mess but who will pay for the solution with their futures. How can we, as Americans, as citizens of the greatest democracy the world has ever known, do anything less than invest in their future, because it is ours also?