State mostly to blame for teachers fleeing classrooms
To the Editor:
I agree the state is mostly to blame, but the cause goes way back to previous legislative decisions, criticism of numerous superintendents of public education who tried to do what was best for the children of Indiana and the teachers who needed positive reinforcement to face the days with schools taking on more parenting roles to make up for the upheaval in society.
Police in even suburban districts now, metal detectors at many schools and arrests for violent actions, even by grade-school students. How many students are bragging about their ankle bracelets during class time?
We need whole families, a return to “yes, there is a right and a wrong” and that is unacceptable behavior, a move away from “what I want when I want because I want” mentality and a return to my family and civic responsibilities. It takes a village, but when the mantra from a first grader is “you’re not the boss of me” and a parent or administrator or court backs the student rather than a teacher, who’s trying to help prepare them for a successful future? The present state isn’t surprising.
The miracle is that some good people still choose to go into and stay in teaching their entire careers.
Then Tony Bennet under the direction of Gov. Mitch Daniels and the legislature went about trying to destroy public education with their disrespect toward public school teachers. Unfortunately, the schools by that time had been pulled and tugged by numerous mandates out of their control that led to the decline of control by the local people, and a focus on drastically cutting spending because “teachers make too much money.”
Then the state’s decisions led to a huge need for administrative paper pushers to comply with state and national reports. Look at the increasing number of administrative positions, the number of administrators with few years of teaching experience behind them, compare their salaries to those of teachers, then look at the gap between their benefits and retirement packages and those of teachers.
Patricia O’Connor
Indianapolis
