When teachers leave, we all flunk

Over the past couple years, I’ve offered advice to our governor about a variety of subjects. Generally, my words of wisdom come from this column or from my fourth -floor balcony overlooking a parking lot. She and the automobiles act similarly. They don’t honk in appreciation.

Here is my latest advice. The governor sent 109 National Guardsmen to the Texas/Mexico border. I think it’s time for her to activate the guard again. They need to guard the borders. I don’t mean the Mexican border to keep people out, but our own state borders to keep teachers in. She, of the balance-the-federal-budget party, proudly said it was paid for with federal dollars. They were diverted from money intended to pay for COVID related costs. Today the Guard, however many it takes, however much it costs in state money, should guard our borders to keep fleeing teachers in. Teachers leaving is a greater threat than drugs or the hungry coming in.

Lifelong Iowans who teach are waving goodbye and our kids and grandkids will suffer their absence. Those who stay, as well as those who run away, say “I’m burned out.” What does that mean? It means their day begins with the fear that a crazy could choose her school, maybe her classroom, to shoot and kill teachers and students. It means another day of “don’t say gay” when she or he feels the need for it. It means fighting with the book banners. (Basic supplies may not be available. As school begins every year, our senior apartment complex collects pencil and pens and erasers and glue, and money among other things. We should not be a supply closet.)

Teacher pay is not as high as it should be for a middle-class life. A beginning salary is higher than the minimum wage at a fast-food joint, but students are not hamburger. We light the match every day for burnout.

Gallup says 44% of teachers feel burned out. Thirty-five percent say they are likely to quit in the next couple of years., another 25% are thinking about it.

Burnout is not cured by exercise, an aspirin or prayer. It requires sufficient staff around the school, from janitor to principal. It means an adequate take home pay. It means less outside interference by busybodies who insist that they decide which books can be read and which topics can taught. Today’s shortage of teachers will be nothing compared to tomorrow if we let this go on as they are.

There is also the governor’s voucher program which will deprive public education of tens of millions of dollars this year. That the money will go private and parochial schools is absurd, and I think it makes a mockery of the separation of church and state. I happily pay my taxes and would pay more to support public education. That my money would go to schools that have taught that Jews, like me, are the anti-Christ on earth and to be shunned, is beyond ridiculous.

More than half of Americans, including me, don’t attend church. Public schools should get all our tax dollars. That might begin to stop burnout and departure.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”