School Districts Announce Closures as Teachers Plan May 1 March

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School Districts Announce Closures as Teachers Plan May 1 March

Published: Tuesday, April 23rd, 2019 @ 1:13 pm
By: Carolina Journal ( More Entries )

Publisher's note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal, and written by Lindsay Marchello, Associate Editor.

A participant in the March for Students and Rally for Respect last year in downtown Raleigh. (Photo by Don Carrington)

    Once again teachers will descend on the state capital to call for more public school funding, Medicaid expansion, and a $15 minimum wage for all school workers.

    The North Carolina Association of Educators, in partnership with several other advocacy groups, is planning a teacher march May 1 in downtown Raleigh.

    Because so many teachers have requested time off, some school districts have announced plans to make May 1 an optional teacher work day. On April 8, Durham Public Schools announced its intention to cancel classes. More than 550 teachers have asked for time off for the start of May.

    "On a typical day in May, DPS has 213 teachers absent. We are able to muster approximately 167 substitute teachers on such a day," the district said in a news release. "At this time, given the lack of available substitute teachers and the likelihood of more requests for personal leave, it will not be possible to have adequate student supervision or instruction on that date."

    Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools and Lexington City Schools are also canceling classes for May 1.

    State Superintendent Mark Johnson has urged march organizers to pick another day for the event.

    "The protest organizers should choose a non-school day," Johnson said in a statement. "The legislature will be in session in Raleigh for at least another three months, a time period that spans dozens of days students are not scheduled to be in school, including spring break and summer break."

    Johnson voiced concerns that closing schools would undermine classroom instruction and hurt students who rely on schools for meals.

    The focus of the march includes several demands:

Provide enough school librarians, psychologists, social workers, counselors, nurses, and other health professionals to meet national standards
Provide a $15 minimum wage for all school personnel, 5% raise for all ESPs (non-certified staff), teachers, admin, and a 5% cost of living adjustment for retirees
Expand Medicaid to improve the health of our students and families
Reinstate state retiree health benefits eliminated by the General Assembly in 2017
Restore advanced degree compensation raises ended by the General Assembly in 2013
Thousands of teachers marched at the legislative complex last year, demanding higher per-student spending, increased educator pay, and for a moratorium on school choice options. At least 40 school districts and one Durham charter school closed for the May 16 march and rally. More than 60 percent of North Carolina students didn't have school that day.

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Bobby Tony said:

( April 24th, 2019 @ 11:58 am )

We went down this road when we delegated a parents responsibility to provide the moral and character foundation of our children to public education system. We should not be too surprised when those same 'teachers' stray from teaching their subject to propagandizing their students.

It is almost always the ones who are secure in their publicly funded job that demand more from the endless trough of public money confiscated from the producers. I am sure we have all had teachers who were dedicated and made a difference in our personal life. We may even have had a few teachers who exhibited a standard of behavior that exceeded what our own parents required.

Teaching in its most admirable form is based on motivating individual students to excel and achieve goals they themselves set while at the same time maintaining a minimum level of proficiency for all students.
But at it most elemental form it should serve only two functions:

• Teach the subject they are paid to teach.
• Provide a yardstick to judge each students progress against the performance standard established for that subject.

Perhaps the first sign of a system gone astray is stated in the article.

"The protest organizers should choose a non-school day," Johnson said in a statement. "The legislature will be in session in Raleigh for at least another three months, a time period that spans dozens of days students are not scheduled to be in school, including spring break and summer break."

To elevate a profession above its core curriculum because it somehow involves young impressionable minds, it to create a society that will eventually have to learn the hard lesson of life later on:

"EVERY TUB REST ON ITS OWN BOTTOM"

"Professionalism is based on the quality of performance not the line of endeavor. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." John W.Gardner and or Cavet Roberts

Stan Deatherage said:

( April 24th, 2019 @ 10:25 am )

I thought that was the day that the arsenal of Mother Russia rolled on before the Politburo in great fan fare. This whole socialism thing is really catching on.

Charles Hickman said:

( April 23rd, 2019 @ 10:40 pm )

Marxist groups have been funding and organizing rallies, protests and riots for decades on May Day. It's sad to see North Carolina teachers joining the fray.

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