All 119 Teachers In Flint, Michigan, Called In Sick This Week And The Reason Will Devastate You!
Except it actually will, *because it is devastating*.
On Wednesday, 119 teachers in Flint, Michigan (which is all of the teachers in Flint, Michigan), called in sick. Was there a mass food poisoning situation? Another deadly Legionnaires outbreak? Nope. The teachers called in sick to protest the Flint Board of Education rejecting the agreement teachers and administrators had come to that would have raised wages for teachers in Flint, which boasts some of the lowest teachers salaries in Michigan.
This is partly because back when the Flint water crisis was at its peak, teachers agreed to pay freezes and pay cuts that were supposed to be temporary and have yet to be restored.
The specific purpose of this sick-off was to convince the Board to sit down and meet with them in order to discuss the issue and hopefully come to an agreement.
While the Board initially did not want to reveal why it had rejected the agreed-upon bargain, they later admitted that it was because of a $14 million deficit … which they knew existed and discussed prior to the original deal being struck.
United Teachers of Flint, the union representing the teachers, says it has set a date for a strike if its demands are not met, but is not yet revealing what that date is.
It is illegal for teachers to go on strike in Michigan, but exceptions have been made in the past when the teachers could prove in a court of law that the Board was not bargaining in good faith — which they did. Also, given the fact that these 119 people are the only people they are able to get to teach in these schools, it’s not as though they can replace them with scabs.
The teachers are doing this for themselves, sure. They don’t want to lose their homes (as one teacher said she did), they don’t want to have to work second jobs, and they’d like not living in poverty, just in general. But they’re also doing it for the students, who deserve to have enough teachers and teachers who are not exhausted because they had to work a late shift at a restaurant in order to make ends meet.
Flint is currently suffering a serious teacher shortage, because “Hey, come to Flint, Michigan, where the water is almost close to being potable and you can make $38,000 a year teaching in our schools!” is a pretty hard sell.
One teacher told reporters that the school was so reliant on substitute teachers that students “can go from one grade to the next without ever having sat in front of a certified teacher.” On the bright side, they’re all probably experts at “Heads Up Seven Up” by now.
The really unfortunate thing is that the students in Flint need a lot more from their teachers, as the whole lead-contaminated water situation has led to some serious cognitive impairments, as well as physical, emotional and behavioral issues. The demand for special-ed teachers has vastly increased, but there’s no one available to fill those slots either.
As the New York Times reported in 2019:
In 2016, months after the water contamination was made public, the Flint superintendent at the time, Bilal Tawwab, told Congress that schools were bracing for an “evolving, educational emergency.”
“We need resources to measure the intellectual and emotional damage done to each and possibly every child,” he said.
Instead, as the district’s special education rate rose by a third, the Michigan Education Department demanded more budget cuts and a salary freeze. Last school year, when one in five students qualified for special education services, one in every four special education teaching positions was unfilled.
Bethany Dumanois, who has taught in Flint for 25 years, works two jobs to keep teaching because she said she cannot abandon children whose discolored, rash-covered skin and chunks of exposed scalp haunt her.
Parents and the community at large have been on the side of the teachers, who have received overwhelming support on social media. As much as the parents may have been inconvenienced by all of the teachers calling in sick, and as difficult as it may be to deal with a strike should that happen, they want the school to pay the teachers more in order to keep the teachers they do have and hopefully recruit more.
These teachers are obviously very dedicated and self-sacrificing — they’re not running to the suburbs, where they could make thousands more a year, they’re choosing to stay and teach kids in Flint. The Flint School Board needs to realize that they are lucky to have so many teachers like that and pay them what they are worth.
PREVIOUSLY:
@Aitchellay says below that no one writes better on labor issues than Robyn. While true, it reminded me of another aspect of this crisis.
The right wing view that education should be a pragmatic preparation for entry into the workforce poisons special education specifically because kids with disabilities aren't seen as future workers. Now, I could talk about how that's not true and yammer on about some guy hawking physics books as if that's the normal, expected result of educating kids with disabilities. But I don't actually fucking care whether that's the normal, expected result -- or even if it's an abnormal result but is economically productive enough that these few situations "pay for" the education of all children with disabilities.
The value of educating children is not calculated in the profits to be made from their work in a capitalist system. So long as we continue to set the value of education according to entries in capitalism's ledger we concede that the less likely a child is to be a billionaire, the less money and effort we are justified in spending on that child's education.
I do not so concede.
While we should not ignore how education has the capacity to affect the futures of individuals and societies, our children are not investments in our future in any capitalist sense. As hard as it may be while we project our own hopes onto the next generation, children are entire human beings, and are ends in themselves.
Meanwhile, billionaires exist and throw resources at making their little egos feel better. It just pisses me off so much how our money is allocated as a society.