Commentary: New Mexicans deeply love our children, and we believe in family and community. Somewhere along the path, we seem to have gotten stuck in a cycle of mistrust and blame when it comes to collectively nurturing and educating our children. As a veteran middle school teacher from a low-income school in southern New Mexico, I know that if we work together towards funding and give ourselves time, we can rebuild trust in our public institutions that serve our youngest citizens through adulthood. Our children are depending on those of us who govern and make decisions to get it right.
Some argue that our educators should be feeling grateful after receiving a 6% raise in the last legislative session. The truth is, I wish we could be feeling grateful. I know there are other priorities in our state, and that our funds are limited, even in good budget years. But the reality is that our schools are in a state of crisis. Many of us have become numb to our persistent ranking at the bottom for education and child wellbeing, but given my position representing our state’s educators, I hear the stories of our schools every day.
When I hear about another exceptional educator leaving the classroom, I know this means a classroom of students, many of whom likely already struggle with instability, will now join the thousands of students in our state who will endure a shuffling of long-term subs and make-shift supervision while overworked administrators desperately scramble to hire a replacement, often unsuccessfully. These students deserve a caring professional. We owe them that.
I wish I could feel grateful for the inkling of hope from last year’s budget, but as I continue to hear story after story of educators not only leaving their current posts but the profession in general, and I see the dwindling classes in our colleges of education, I feel desperate – for our schools, for our educators, and for our students.
The reasons educators leave is not simply just because of their pay. They yearn for the joy of teaching that has been crushed by over-testing and unfair, inaccurate, and unscientific evaluations. They yearn for the autonomy to make the decisions they know are in the best interests of their students, to be trusted as professionals and not treated like machines following static instructions from Washington and Santa Fe. They yearn for more resources in their schools to meet the needs of the many students who are hungry, sick, homeless, and whose families are struggling every day to survive. We need to fix those issues as well. But right now, the issue we can make a difference on is paying our teachers a livable, and dare I say, competitive salary so they can stop working second jobs, take care of themselves and their families, and be there for our students this year, next year, and for years to come.
We need to rally around Speaker Brian Egolf’s proposal for at 10% raise for educators. We need to support the Legislative Education Study Committee’s recommendation for a 6% raise for educators. We need to understand that the Governor’s proposed 4% raise and the Legislative Finance Committee’s proposed 3% raise are simply not enough.
And please make your voice heard in Santa Fe! Our state must adequately fund public schools. Call Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (505) 476-2200 or use her input form: https://www.governor.state.nm.us/contact-the-governor/ . Do not forget Representative Patricia Lundstrom, Chair of House Appropriations and Finance: (505) 986-4316 Patricia.lundstrom@nmlegis.gov
Our NEA-New Mexico Facebook page includes daily updates on education bills. Please “like” our page to keep tuned in. Visit our website at www.nea-nm.org