1. The fact that I live in Oklahoma House District 98 and Oklahoma Senate District 33.
2. ESAs......oh wait I mean vouchers.
3. Holy crap the OCPA....ooops sorry for my foul mouthed ways.
4. Netflix removing Doctor Who.
5. The fact that I can't get wine ice cream in Oklahoma.
For the Love....these things are making me lose sleep at night, okay maybe not 4 and 5. Well...only every now and then.
I know what you are thinking, but Meghan where are your fun loving and happy unicorns. Right now they aren't so much happy unicorns as they are angry ones poking people with their glittery magic horns.
Let's start with number one....I live in Oklahoma House District 98 and Oklahoma Senate District 33. Currently both of these offices are held by two men that aren't exactly the best of friends to public education. I email these two almost weekly, and the majority of the time they don't respond. But when they do it is golden. After they rip apart about every part in my email they sign off with something like "Thanks for all you do...." or my personal favorite "Keep your head up, you do good things." Excuse me as I vomit.
My state Representative serves on the House Common Education committee, he is the one that introduce the bill to give us teacher pay raises that actually messed with our health insurance plans. Annnnndddddd with so many citizens speaking out against the bill he voted to send the lovely ESA bill out of committee. I'm over it. Both Representative Rogers and Senator Dahm are up for re-election this year, clearly things need to change. I'm not okay with them.
Number Two....ESAs...I'm not okay with this one at all. With overwhelming public support against this legislation, I honestly thought that I was going to die in committee, at least my unicorn and rainbow ways thought it would. But it was voted out of committee and sent to the main floor for the entire house to vote on. In order to get this bill out of committee they had to bring in the House leadership to break the committee tie vote, both of these leaders are term limited and won't be running again...frustration.
I have two major issues with these Educational Savings Accounts...I'm sorry I did it again they are vouchers. Issue number one: We should never use public dollars, tax payers public dollars to fund educational endeavors in private schools. We should be using that money to make our public schools the best in the nation. Our students deserve it, we as teachers deserve it, and our state deserves it.
Issue number two: money used from these ESAs go to private schools with no accountability. As a public school teacher I am held to high standards, as I should be considering the important work that I do, you know educating the future. With that comes accountability. I have no problem with accountability, we need it. However I am going to have to go through a Teacher Leader Effectiveness evaluation, my school has to go through the flawed A-F school evaluation model, and my students have to take the huge amount of High Stakes Testing that is given to them. It only makes since that private schools that are receiving public funding need to have the same accountability. Teachers in this state are already feeling beat up and devalued and this just makes it worse. I'm not okay with this.
3. Oh the OCPA, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs...what can be said about this lovely little group. Nothing good. I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm not okay with them.
4 and 5. I'm just going to have to realize that some people just want to watch the world burn.
Fear not my friends, now that I have got all of that crazy off my chest, I will go back to the For the Love, happy unicorns and rainbows that you have all come to love or at least tolerate. Love your students and colleagues well this week, I challenge you to seek out one student that needs a little extra love and attention this week and try to make their week a little brighter! Now...I'm going to eat a donut and binge watch Gilmore Girls.
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