Stay focused, stay engaged and tell the candidates what our students need
Answer the door. Accept the call. Click the link.
This is the time of year when politicians are reaching out looking for votes and for information about what their constituents care about. Please, don’t ignore them.
However tempting the idea of disengaging until after Election Day may be, especially after the chaos of the past few weeks, we should try to stay focused and hopeful.
The candidates must hear from educators about what we’re seeing at our worksites every day, our financial struggles and our visions for public education.
If they don’t hear from their constituents one-to-one on the doors, on those calls and through those texts, they won’t know how important the educators’ priorities really are.
Instead, they may listen to the think tanks with very different goals for public education. For example, take the notorious Project 2025 from the right-wing Heritage Foundation.
Defunding public schools through vouchers is a core principle in the group’s blueprint for American education. The intent is a national program that sends taxpayer money to private and religious schools that can and do discriminate against certain students.
Project 2025 also calls for the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and eventually eliminating Title I, a key source of funding for schools with large populations of students living in poverty.
It would weaken the federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws, including those that prohibit sex- and race-based discrimination, and it would eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that has canceled millions of dollars in education debt held by Minnesota educators.
At the state level, many state House candidates this year enacted the largest increase in state education funding in a generation, which is paying for free school meals for all students, the largest pay raises most educators have seen in 20 years, free college tuition for many families and unemployment insurance for ESPs.
These pro-education candidates need to know about what we need next: More pay raises, pension improvements, workplace safety and someone to rein in greedy health insurance companies before they price more of us out of the profession.
To reverse the educator shortage and to deliver the world-class education our students deserve, we must make our case, educator-by-educator, to the candidates who will control the policy agenda and the budgets for the next few years.
Demand to know where the candidates for U.S. Congress stand on Project 2025’s plans for public education, loan forgiveness and reproductive health care, the environment and labor unions.
Ask direct questions of the state House candidates about what they are willing to do to improve our worksites and our profession. Are they ready to make the largest corporations and wealthiest Minnesotans pay what they truly owe in taxes so every student can attend a school that prepares them to pursue their dreams?
If we get closer to Election Day and you haven’t contacted your candidates directly, watch for endorsements from Education Minnesota. Local educators screen the candidates and make recommendations based on their responses.
But if you’re like me and sitting and waiting isn’t your style, step forward. Get involved with your local union’s political program or volunteer for a candidate.
That knock on the door, call on the phone, or person behind the link? It might just be another educator trying to elect a candidate who will work for all of us.
Together,
Denise Specht
Twitter: @DeniseSpecht
