On social media, I’m seeing lots of photos of proud parents and way-too-young looking students posing for prom and graduation pics.
It’s amazing we are at this stage given the past 15 months of COVID-19. The sadness, turmoil and anxieties of 2020 and 2021 will be studied for a long time, but there is one observation I would like to make now — love them or hate them, the importance of public schools was brought into sharp focus during this pandemic.
We, as education advocates, fight for more funding and local control of schools; teachers across Kansas and the nation work diligently to find new ways to better educate students; school administrators are constantly shifting and pivoting to try to improve student results. Given all that, however, I think 2020 and 2021 has shown us that simply having this huge functioning system called public schools is the foundation of our society.
Think of it, in Kansas alone, nearly half a million students go to a school building every day where they are joined by their peers and led by teachers. With the kids safe in school, a half million Moms and or a half million Dads and grandparents and guardians go to their jobs keeping this state and nation going. Without public schools, the entire family structure and society would be thrown into turmoil.
That is one reason why KASB and other education groups fight so hard against private school vouchers and Education Savings Accounts because we see these as threats to the public school system. We get that thrown in our face a lot by those who support vouchers. The voucher proponents will say, “We’re trying to help kids while you’re defending a system.” For the record, we like kids too, but it’s also true what our detractors say — we are defending a system, and proudly because it’s a system that has stood the test of time to help develop us into the leading nation in the world.
Don’t believe me? Here was an interesting thing that happened during the past legislative session. The proponents of vouchers, who are very critical of public schools, also invited to the Legislature parents of students who were angry about their districts relying on remote learning during a large portion of the school year. The meeting at times seemed like it was orchestrated to beat up on public schools. But the reasons these parents were so angry was because they said their students were missing out on the academic, extracurricular and social and emotional support that their students got from going to their public school. While unhappy with the remote policy, the parents were making our case about how important public schools are. For many, public schools in and of themselves — the act of getting up every morning and stepping into a classroom where there are probably as many people unlike you as like you — provides the very social and emotional supports and experiences that we want our students to have.
So, to all the graduating seniors this year and last year, my best wishes to you. Congratulations to the parents, guardians, teachers, administrators and school staff. The celebration photos on my social media feed somewhat disguise what we’ve been through these past 15 months but they can’t hide the fact that as go our public schools, so goes our future.
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