Episode 55: How can we address the crises in Virginia teaching?

There are so many wonderful teachers out there. Teachers who don’t just view it as a job, but as a calling. Which is why it’s so disheartening to see education policy bandied about in state capitals by so many lawmakers who’ve never taught a class or asked a teacher what they need. Today, we’re looking at the state of public education teaching in Virginia… The serious shortages in teachers and substitute teachers across the state. The bogeyman of critical race theory. And the need to attract new teachers – and what’s getting in the way of that.

Machine-generated transcript. Blame the AI for any errors:

Nathan Moore 0:00

This is Bold Dominon, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore.

Nathan Moore 0:07

I grew up with teachers. My mom and dad were both teachers. My grandmother was a teacher, my great grandmother was also a teacher. So when I got to college, maybe that's why I took an interest in education policy. Why I started reading books by John Dewey, Paul Goodman and Jonathan Kozol, especially Kozol, he took an ethnographic approach to describing the inequalities in our education system. Public education is sometimes purported to be this great equalizer, but Kozol showed me that it so often ends up replicating or social inequalitie. Or as Kozol himself put it, children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available. wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state. And there are so many wonderful teachers out there and teachers who don't just view it as a job, but as a calling. They want to change the world one child at a time. Which is why it's so disheartening to see education policy being bandied around in state capitals by so many lawmakers who've never taught a class. When I was growing up, my parents would sometimes gripe about new directives and fan curriculums that they had to deal with. Not that every idea was bad. But pretty much every new idea was presented as if the teachers themselves didn't really know how to do their jobs. It always seemed like the teachers were just the tools to be used by the consultant class. It's remarkable. We don't treat any other profession in this way.

Mary McIntyre 1:37

It needs to become a profession that is highly respected, and not one that is viewed as something people go into just because they they weren't smart enough to do anything else.

Nathan Moore 1:48

That's Mary McIntyre. She's a reading specialist at Jack Jewett Middle School, county. Today, we're looking at the state of public education teaching in Virginia, how parents already have the ability to be involved in their children's learning, and the serious shortages and teachers and substitute teachers across the state, of course, the boogeyman of critical race theory, and the need to attract new teachers. And what's getting in the way of that, we start off today's show with Becca Saxon, she's a uniserv, Director at the Virginia Education Association. And she takes us through the heavy influence of the state legislature and how it's adding to the challenges.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 2:26

Just to start off, can you talk a bit about your work with the Virginia Education Association, and what prompted you to get involved?

Bekah Saxon 2:33

Certainly, so I am a, what is called a uniserv. Director. And we are the field staff people who are assigned to offices around the state of Virginia, we work directly with our locals. So I have 12 locals that I work with around the state. And then I, among other things, you know, serve as a liaison between the our headquarter staff and our national affiliate and the local leaders who are in the buildings. And so right now, the big focus I have is on our collective bargaining campaigns.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 3:15

And for those who might not be familiar with the term, could you just explain what collective bargaining means and how it relates to teachers?

Bekah Saxon 3:23

Certainly, so collective bargaining is the process of a union negotiating the contract for a group of workers in Virginia in 1977, collective bargaining for public sector employees, including teachers was made illegal. And in 2020, after that sweep of all three, the governor's mansion and then both branches of General Assembly, that Democrats overturned that ban. So it was a 43 year ban at the time that got overturned. And then it was supposed to go into effect that July, July 1 2020. It's a permissive law. All it says is that you're allowed to bargain it doesn't set any parameters for how that works at the local level. So it's kind of being built as we go. It got delayed by Governor Northam when COVID hit and there was the massive amounts of shutdowns and so it finally the law ended up going into effect may of 2021. And so now public sector, employee groups all over the state are all able to organize now and unionize and then work together to negotiate a contract

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 4:46

and what type of tangible benefits our teachers hoping to receive through collective bargaining in Virginia.

Bekah Saxon 4:53

So I think the last two years, has shown first through COVID and Then now with kind of the quick turnaround that has happened with the advent of the young can administration, teachers have seen that public education is really at a crisis point, not just in the state of Virginia, but across the country, and that they really have very little say, in what happens. So the COVID reopening plans across the country, showed teachers just how important it was, for there to be some agreements that they had been full participants in, as opposed to all of these major decisions being at the whim of a school board, or now the governor, where he can just come in with the stroke of a pen and cause this much chaos in the curriculum and in the oversight of the schools and instill this much fear in people and even seeing how the mass issue has unfolded in the last couple of weeks, where there had been negotiations, there had been conversations going on. And then he can just and you know, there were lawsuits, to negotiate to try and navigate the implications of what he had done, done with his executive order. And then a law can just be passed, you know, at the whim of legislators, and we see this major change in what happens in the classroom.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 6:32

And so since the spring of 2021, roughly 33 million Americans have quit their jobs in this massive historical event that's been dubbed the great resignation, our public school teachers also taking part in this movement.

Bekah Saxon 6:46

I think a lot of our vacancies in public education. Now our teachers who are eligible, were eligible for retirement benefits, and had been planning to keep teaching, and then decided it just wasn't worth it. And so they have gone ahead and retired, and not necessarily early, but you know, earlier than they had intended to, and then and we're seeing, I think a lot of younger teachers who are realizing that the salary they make as a teacher is not worth the amount of stress. And so moms have young children, especially with how difficult it is to figure out daycare right now, if they can afford it. They're, you know, on a leave of absence, or they've quit their job and are hoping maybe to go back to it later, but are not, you know, may or may not be looking at being in a classroom when they go back to work.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 7:43

So So you talked a bit about teachers authority being undermined by sweeping executive orders, are there other big challenges that public school teachers specifically in Virginia are facing?

Bekah Saxon 7:57

I mean, if there's one thing we have seen in the last map, now, you know, going into our third year of it, you know, kids have not learned what they would have historically been on track to master. And whether that's, you know, some people would say, that's because virtual school wasn't as effective. Some people would say, it's because children have gone through an incredible period of upheaval themselves. And it's a little bit unreasonable to think that they're going to still master academic milestones, at the same level, they would have had there been no disruption. And so there's a lot of pressure right now by a lot of people to get, you know, the schools back on track and to get the kids caught up. And I put caught up in quotation marks, because I don't really know that there's a way to catch them up after what they've been through. And so some teachers are really it's showing them that this is almost a level of educational malpractice that they're being asked to engage in, because it is not paying attention to the needs of the children and the children are not the focus of what's happening in schools right now, because of the competing energy and needs of so many other people that folks are saying, I this is something that I can continue to be part of.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 9:17

Do you think it's substantially harder to be a teacher, a public school teacher in Virginia compared to in other states in terms of salary or just other aspects of the job?

Bekah Saxon 9:28

So we have definitely seen if you look across the country, that teacher turnover while it's bad everywhere right now, it is especially bad in states and in localities that do not have the stability of a collectively bargained contract. Right now, teachers it you know, if you don't have that contract, you're kind of at the whim of everybody else. And so your classroom boat just sort of blows where the wind goes from If you've got that contract, at least the courses set out for you. So yes, we are seeing that it is harder, both in terms of the amount of money you make, but also in terms of the amount of control you have over the day to day decision decisions of your classroom, that teachers in Virginia have a really difficult time of it. I mean, we've got the the largest gap in Virginia between what teachers make and what other college educated graduates make, but we are one of the wealthier states. And yet our schools are chronically underfunded. And that money does not make it into the pockets of the educators. Nobody goes into teaching to become wealthy. And so really, people start talking about their salaries in two situations, it's when they can't afford to live, which is what we're seeing right now for educators. And it's when the amount of non teaching related stress that they're put under makes them say, you can't pay me enough to put up with all of this. And so right now, we're seeing both of those things.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 11:01

So Governor, Glen Younkin, made education a big part of his campaign platform. And he specifically promised to give parents more authority over what their kids are learning in schools, how do you respond to concerns about parents not getting enough of a say, in their children's school curricula?

Bekah Saxon 11:22

So I mean, it's ironic, because the entire reason we have the Sol program that we have, you know, the State Standards of Learning, and then the, the high stakes tests that go with that is because of a Republican initiative. And that's really what drives the majority of our curriculum, and the majority of the learning cycle in a school. And so for the Republicans to say, we're going to come in and give parents more control over that when the vast majority of what is covered in a year is set, not by the schools, and not by the teachers, but by the legislature. And it was created when it was a Republican dominated system really shows, I think that there's a whole lot of messaging that the Republicans did really well. But that it's not necessarily the reality, that it's the teachers and the school board and the principal who are stopping them from being able to have this control. I think we we need to allow localities and families to work together to come up with what are the values of this community that we want to see communicated to children?

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 12:38

So what kind of role do you think parents should play in deciding what teachers are choosing to teach students?

Bekah Saxon 12:47

I think that there have always been, or there should have always been opportunities, looking at what's happening in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, there have been some changes in what they teach in terms of history and the novels that they choose. And you know, there have been issues with the way they've changed the math curriculum. And typically, when those things happen, the school system does a huge amount of outreach, you know, has parents seminars on this is the new math curriculum that we're going to be using. And here's how you can help your child with their math homework from now on. And the same thing can happen with some of the history. I mean, it's a great opportunity, if we're focusing on local history for the first time ever, in a real meaningful way. And in an authentic way. Doesn't it make sense that we make sure that the families are learning that alongside their children, so it demystifies it and then buzzwords like CRT? And, you know, all of that stuff don't have as much power?

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 13:48

How would you characterize the state of public education in Virginia right now,

Bekah Saxon 13:52

I really think that our democracy is based on a couple of things. One of those things you know, is who has access to the type of education that will lead you to be an informed citizen, to be an aware citizen who has compassion and empathy, and who is able to engage in the civic process to make the changes that we need to make. And so what I really think we're seeing right now in Virginia, is a fight over that access to our democracy. And because our public schools are one of the bedrocks of our democracy, it's unfortunate that our kids are being used as a pawn. But it's not surprising. And so I think we're going to see that this continues for a while. I think that the Republicans have found a winning message, but ultimately, what they want is not to do much to the public schools. They really want to create Second Avenue for publicly funded schooling where it is controlled by businesses and by a boards that are unaccountable to the electorate by creating these charter schools and these lab schools in this, you know in vouchers for private schools.

Nathan Moore 15:19

Becca Saxon is a uniserv, Director at the Virginia Education Association. Stick around in the second half of the episode, we're getting a boots on the ground perspective from a current middle school reading teacher.

Nathan Moore 15:31

You're listening to Bold Dominon, a state politics explainer for changing Virginia, visit us online at Bold dominon.org. I have a friend who's trying to get into state politics. Well tell 'em about this show. And then subscribe. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever find podcasts are served up. Hey, and while you're there, go ahead and leave us a five star review. We like those. Bold Dominion is a member of Virginia audio collective, online at VirginiaAudio.org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective from science to history to music to community affairs. We amplify the voices of people in our community, and help them tell stories that matter. You can listen and subscribe at VirginiaAudio.org.

Nathan Moore 16:14

So now Republican governor Glen Younkin campaigned hard last year on education issues. But carrying out younguns proposals is no simple matter. And meanwhile, Virginia is facing teacher and substitute teacher shortages. And we need to attract more young people to the field. Our next guest has her boots on the ground with these issues. Mary McIntyre is a middle school reading specialist at Jack Jouett middle school, you know, Monroe County.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 16:39

So what have the past two years been like for you as a public school educator?

Mary McIntyre 16:44

Wow. Well, difficult is a word that comes to mind immediately but complex, intense, challenging, frustrating. And there there are a lot of those seem like a lot of negative words, but in the same in the same time, it has been rewarding. It's been a time of growth and connection for us with our students. And it has pushed all of us in the school to level up our skills, we've improved our use of technology, our communication with families and connection with students just had to improve because of the pandemic and Virtual Teaching and virtual learning. So it wasn't all bad. But but it has been a very hard past two ish years.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 17:31

So I know that there's currently a teacher shortage in Virginia, have you and the school you work at been personally affected by the shortage? Has it affected every day in our workings of the school?

Mary McIntyre 17:45

Yes, in a few ways, we, we had openings that were posted for different positions in the school and and we were not getting applicants. And so in the past in our school division, we would have for one opening 10, maybe 12 applicants and we had job postings that were just sitting for a very long time, if there were applicants, they weren't perhaps licensed or qualified in that particular area. So it did affect my school in particular, but it is affecting the division. And what it means is that the class sizes of the teachers that we do have had to be higher than we would like them to be. And that makes both teaching and learning harder when you have teachers who have more students in the classroom than is ideal. They can't spend as much time individually, it's harder for students to ask questions and get their questions answered. It affects us because of the substitute shortage. I mean, we just cannot get substitutes to come into the building. And I understand why it's it's not just because substitute pay is so low. I mean, the there are not many people who are willing to be on call essentially, and take a job at the last minute a lot of people would like a regular schedule. It is a challenge because they're limited by the quality of the lessons that are left for them. And then as we all know, kids love to give subs a hard time. So it's just tough to go from room to room. And and subbing in general, I have done it and it is it is a hard job. So they did recently raise the pay in our division from it, I think it was around $95 And now it's at about $140 per day, and that's a significant increase. It does not seem like it is bringing waves of people into our schools though. So because we have not had subs we are losing our planning time to cover each other's classes. We're we're struggling to teach content that we don't have any experience in I am a reading specialist. You do not want me to try to teach people math but I've done my best. And it just it becomes a major major stressor for us the shortage.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 19:53

And do you think it's largely as a result of pandemic that people are leaving their teaching careers or are there other driving factors,

Mary McIntyre 20:03

the pandemic was the last straw or has been the last straw for a lot of people. But it's certainly not the only reason. This has been a very slow moving thing. We've seen it coming for a long time, I think we've been predicting that there was going to be a teacher shortage because the teacher training programs that the universities and colleges have been saying they have fewer applicants, they have fewer students coming through. And that means there will be fewer teachers graduating and becoming a professional educator. So unless we do something significant to try to attract young people into the profession, and it's not just money, they need to be passionate about educating and working with young people. Certainly, I think paying teachers more money is one of the things that is going to, it's just, it's going to have to be part of the equation of how they are trying to both keep the teachers that they have, but also recruit new teachers, but also benefits working conditions, we need more planning time, we want smaller class sizes, we want to work in buildings that are not falling apart, we would like there to be enough buses to get all of our children to school, we would like schedules that do not run us ragged all day long, we would love bosses and administrators who ask us what we need, and then listen, when we tell them and then try as hard as they can to give it to us. And so some of those things, the things that they could do to make our jobs easier, don't cost any money, and doesn't seem like it's genuinely going to happen, that they're going to make the changes that we request.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 21:45

And the changes that you just listed, where would those have to happen? Is that at the state level is that with the school board's on a more local level?

Mary McIntyre 21:54

Well, a lot of the control of schools is at the local level. So some of that are decisions by the school board some some decisions or building level decisions. I mean, only part of each school divisions budget comes from the state. So while yes, we need the state contribution to schools, public schools budgets to to be higher, for sure, that's an important thing that needs to happen. It's up to each locality to make some of these decisions for themselves. And so the leadership, the staffing ratios that they use, those are all come into play. And that's a local decision. It's not necessarily mandated, unless it's related to something like federal funding, or state funding. So for instance, special education, the money that is specifically allocated for those kinds of things, the locality does not have as much leeway with them. But some some decisions like schedules could be even at the building level. And so when you have one school on one kind of a schedule with one kind of staffing, and then right on the same street, but a few miles down, you have another school that has a completely different experience, you can run into situations where it makes it hard, not that every school needs to be run exactly the same way. But I think that part of the process that no one really wants to talk about is that we need to have teachers involved in some of the decision making. And we need to continually be seeking feedback from the teachers as far as what is working.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 23:27

Just shifting gears a bit. But I want to talk about what it's been like teaching under the new governor, what has been your reaction to youngins education platform and policies?

Mary McIntyre 23:40

Well, he hasn't been governor for that long. So I think some of it still remains to be seen. I think raising salaries is a really important thing. And so I hope he follows through with that campaign promise. We do have to acknowledge the governor only has control over certain things. And so I think some of the things that he has said he wants to do or not even really in his power to do. But salaries he can influence for sure. So I hope that he does. The tip line kind of made me laugh because I I mean, what's divisive to one person could be completely not divisive to another. And so I think where does it end? We don't even know where it begins and where it ends. I would be interested to see what kind of complaints people are getting because what I've seen with my eyes and heard with my ears and experienced both as a parent with children in public schools, and as a teacher who works in one every single day. I just don't see a lot of divisive discussion, or suppose it indoctrination happening in the schools. And so if people have evidence of that, or it truly is a thing, then I suppose that that evidence is going to come forward. The mask mandate you know, luckily the surge is going down. And I think that it is going to become become more safe to be around people who are not wearing a mask. I still think that it seems like an easy way that we can try to keep each other safe. And I understand people want it to be a parent choice and personal choice, but it does make it difficult. There are some parents who say that they want us to force their children to keep their mask on all day, when the when the mask mandate is finally lifted. And there are some parents who this entire time have been trying to say, No, I don't want my child mask. Well, we are not the ones making this decisions, we have very little power, but we're stuck in the middle of this. Also, I'm a little bit worried because we cannot predict the future. And we don't know if another surge is going to come and the way that the law was written. Well, the governor's executive order and then now what has been passed into law, there cannot be any more maths mandates. And I worry that we've taken away a really important tool to protect ourselves in the future.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 25:59

Critical Race Theory has been big thing in the news, this national debate of a critical race theory and what teachers should be teaching students is that happening at the local level as

Mary McIntyre 26:09

well, to my knowledge, I don't know anyone across Virginia and I have colleagues and friends that teach in school districts all over the place. None of us know what people are talking about discussing race and it especially when we're teaching history and things about civil rights. That is not critical race theory, trying to teach the truth about the history of our country is not critical race theory to my knowledge. But I think that, that in some instances, there are parents who have just heard what other people have said and believed it instead of actually trying to find out what is being discussed in the schools and what we actually are doing. And I know it also has pushed forward. Parents saying that they want more transparency in what is being taught in the schools. And some some people want teachers to have to post all of their lesson plans online ahead of time for parents to review. We have been putting our lessons online for years, we use a platform called Schoology. And our homework, or assignments are slideshows, it is all there for parents to see. And so few parents have ever logged in to even look at it. So I'm just not sure that that the desire is really there. I think that there are a few people who became very upset and concerned about it. And they have kind of gotten a lot of attention and made it seem like there actually are more people upset by this than really are. But with that said, locally here, our school division passed an anti racism policy in 2019, and has actively made sure that our staff is focused on anti racism, and that we are doing our best to have all of our students succeed, and remove barriers for them and eliminate the opportunity gap.

Esther Eriksson von Allmen 27:55

What do you think local and state policymakers should do to improve the situation for teachers to recruit more teachers, aside from like higher pay, as we discussed and benefits? Is there anything else in particular?

Mary McIntyre 28:08

It's a good question. It, it's very expensive to get a college degree. And when you are going for a four year or a five year degree and you're leaving with massive amount of debt, if you didn't have parents who could pay for your education for you. It's, I think that one of the things that they could do is to either subsidize or perhaps provide very low rate loans for people who are intending to go into education if they're majoring in education at the at the college level. I think there are certainly ways that they could recruit people into the teaching force at young ages, they could allow students have internships in high school, they could create specialized training programs, just like we have in vocational schools. I think that that benefits are important retirement benefits are are certainly something that a lot of people worry about because it has increasingly become investment based and based on the market. And very few people want to know that if the market crashes, they could lose all of their retirement savings. So it needs to become a profession that is highly respected, and not one that is viewed as something people go into just because they they weren't smart enough to do anything else.

Nathan Moore 29:28

Mary McIntyre is a middle school reading specialist in Albemarle County. Thanks to her and also to Bekah Saxon from the Virginia Education Association. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Bold Dominon. Thanks so much this week to our producer Esther Ericksson von Allmen and to our editor Katherine Hansen. You can find us online at BoldDominon.org And don't forget to subscribe. just a click away