I’ll Stay Out of Politics When Politics Stays Out of My Classroom

Last month, we shared SDEA’s strategic plan with members. As we shared, we are not engaged in separate small battles but one big fight for the schools our students deserve.

It is our contract campaign that is the foundation for all our work moving forward.   Our success   depends on building deep and powerful structures at our schools and in our programs.

We must build these structures to win our contract fight, which we all know is connected to our fight to elect a pro-public education school board.  These battles are also connected to the fight to pass the Schools and Communities First initiative that will infuse more than $11 billion dollars into California’s schools, public services, and neighborhoods.

As you can see, much of this work is political.  Working to elect school board members, lobbying legislators, and putting funding initiatives on the ballot are our new reality.

For too long, we hoped our local and state elected officials would do the right thing when it came to public education. Now, we see that we cannot always depend on those folks to make good decisions, even when they run on pro-public education platforms.

Whether it’s class size or Special Education or even what time our schools start, there are lots of people out there, most of them non-educators, who like to tell us what we should be doing in our classrooms.  There are even more who want to see our classrooms transformed into private spaces that generate profits, as opposed to well-educated citizens who have the skills and knowledge to demand a better world.

We must be proactive in making sure the right people and the right policies are in place so that we have a true voice in what happens in our classrooms.

SDEA hasn’t always made politics a priority, but we can no longer ignore politics because politics won’t ignore me or you or our classrooms.

Together, we can raise our voices over those of the privatizers and reformers and advocate for ourselves and our students. Together, we can ensure that there are enough resources to build the schools our students deserve.