It's a small town in rural Nebraska (albeit an atypically growing/affluent one compared to most small towns in the Plains) so keep that in mind.
From the outside looking in, I'd argue that COVID was the breaking point for a lot of unsustainable pressures. The profession has been underfunded and overworked, and under siege from culture warriors and anti-government/anti-public sector politicians for a long time. BUT--I may not fully appreciate how much COVID (and the horrible public policy decisions in response) changed the landscape all on it's own. It's telling that in places like Florida, Republicans are addressing this crisis largely of their own making through new recruitment practices rather than focusing on retainment. They're actually not sorry at all that they've chased so many professional educators out of the profession--I don't think they see this as a crisis at all. It's an opportunity to continue dismantling public education. soccernutter states this more succinctly:
It’s interesting that some politicians do quite well with wages and retirement benefits. Prolly because they vote for them. Then they vote for teachers salary’s.
What is our children learning? ‼️NORMAN BOOK BAN- A close source tells me an English teacher has already been removed at Norman High for providing students a qr code link to the Brooklyn Library and informing them there are free e-books there. This caused further fallout among other teachers in the district...— Wendy Suares📺 (@wsuares) August 23, 2022
Sounds about right. It always surprises me how many voters are fine with Republicans demonizing teachers. Democrats don't call out occupations that don't vote for them. You won't hear Democratic poliiticians insult cattle ranchers, or truck drivers, or Baptist ministers. But Republican politicians don't have any problem publicly attacking their fellow Americans, and Republican voters, who claim to be patriotic, don't have any problem watching and hearing their fellow Americans be attacked. As you can gather from how I phrase that, I doubt their patriotism. If you only love the half of the country that shares your political views, then you're not actually a patriot. At any rate, yes I can see why teachers have had enough.
Teachers- the only other adults who have a clue about how shitty a parent you are. That's really what this is about.
This is behind a paywall, but I've seen a summary. And that's enough for me to make comments, right? Basically, Hasidic schools are the worst, they don't teach anything useful, on purpose. I will leave it to those who live in NY to explain how this is tolerated and legal. In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Yeshivas Flush With Public Money - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Right, but they’re doing it with public money. Don’t they have to deliver education? Aren’t they audited?
It turns out that the conservatives are correct. The government should not be funding private enterprises.
Thank God that's not a madrassah (sp?). The shit that hit that particular fan would get on everything.
Just drop the H. Yes, it absolutely would. I'm leaning toward a Muslim school not really being able to be overlooked.
The problem for politicians who want to take on the Hasidic community on this or any topic is that they get high voter turnout and tend to vote as a block (I remember reading this a few years ago regarding the 2020 election). That makes them a group many local politicians don't want to rub the wrong way.
Young voters would get so many more goodies if they operated the same way, instead of complaining that the politicians don't speak to their generation.
Mormons used to vote in a block a century ago, and were a big reason why they were pushed from town-to-town, as they would migrate en masse and quickly overrun local politics. In Utah, as they were trying for statehood in the late 1800s, Mormons leaders told congregations to vote in federal elections for parties based on whether they sat on the pews on the left or right. Since Reagan, and Ezra Taft Benson, Mormons in Utah probably vote consistently over 2/3rds GOP all the time, every time. Utah is also making a big push to make it easier to send kids to charter schools, where they most often get shit education, while at the same time starving public education of much needed funds and students. Carson v. Makin ruling last year just made this easier. Mormon kids were (and maybe still are?) allowed to skip a class per term in order to attend seminary as an elective, which is located right next to many/most public high schools. It seems to me like many of these seminaries are being phased out, but I'm not certain what the status and reason for this is exactly. (I attended Mormon seminary for a couple of years, starting in 9th grade, finally deciding to do early morning classes so I could take all the academic classes I wanted. Imade it 1.5months in the early class before deciding it was a complete waste of time.)
So the big resignation is still a thing: Big red flag: K-12 education lost more than 21,000 workers in September.Public education remains one of the least recovered industries from the pandemic. **There are 309,000 fewer teachers and support staff than pre-pandemic** pic.twitter.com/XadWUERu3X— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) October 7, 2022
DeSantis administration rejects inclusion of AP African American Studies class in Florida high schools https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/politics/ron-desantis-ap-african-american-studies/index.html “In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion,” the letter stated. Uh, what?
Reason #16743 why parents should never be permitted to determine public school policies. A group of Fox News Cancel Culture parents are working to ban books with LGBTQ themes in the local schools, because, among other things, they might be used by "groomers." Central Bucks school board has ties to a Christian nationalist group, and is considering removing 4 LGBTQ books from its libraries | WITF Forty-five years later, it's Anita Bryant redux. Parents gonna parent.
In the article there was one quote I particularly enjoyed: Apparently, if you're a single mother, your child is not part of your family. If you aren't married but have been together for 20 years, those biological children of yours are not part of your family. The utter stupidity of these people never ceases to amaze me. If they really want to ban a book, I know one that has stories about a sister having sex with her brother, the latter is a heroic figure in the story and is related to another man who impregnated his two daughters. You'd think they'd want that book banned too, but no they actually want the children to read it because it's the Bible.
That is not just anti-LGBTQ+. It includes a book on poverty and racism. But it is easier to make people afraid of LGBTQ+. It is a White Christian Heterosexual Supremacy effort.