Brunswick Beacon, 08.24.23
A recent social media post showed a teacher remarking that she left teaching for a job bartending, and that she made more money in 15 hours a week behind the bar than she could in 40-plus hours a week in the classroom, with far less stress.
North Carolina faces a serious teacher shortage this year. With over 5,000 teacher vacancies, we’ve put our children in real jeopardy. MAGA Republicans’ solution? Offer veteran teachers salary increases of $250 spread over two years. No, that’s not a typo; that’s what they think teachers are worth. North Carolina already ranks dead last in school funding per student according to the Education Law Center's “Making the Grade” annual report.
Radical Republicans evidently feel that we’re wasting valuable taxpayer resources on our public schools. They’d probably prefer that teachers leave the profession, so that they can redirect your tax dollars to fund vouchers so that the wealthy can send their kids to private and charter schools.
No other profession has been so systematically vilified by MAGA Republicans as teachers. Hardworking, caring teachers face baseless accusations of sexual “grooming” of young children and teens, exposing students to allegedly pornographic reading material, teaching America’s actual history including the horrors of slavery, promulgating left-wing propaganda, undermining parental authority, all while costing the taxpayers too much money.
Folks don’t go into the teaching profession to get rich. To the contrary: many pay out of pocket for classroom supplies and other basic needs. Nobody could blame them for changing careers in the face of such unrelenting stresses. The teachers who persevere and provide our children with a quality education in the face of restrictive legislation, appalling underfunding, and slanderous allegations are heroes. It’s time that we fought for them as fervently as MAGA Republicans fight against them.
Robert Bannerman
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