Reflections on Education: Public School as Political Battleground

It's not about the kids, stare decisis.

It's about the adults.

What is going on, then, and how is this apparent.

The on-going political machinations at every level.

Look at Leuzinger High School, where the press made a point of publishing to the widespread community that the principal received a no-confidence vote from 80% of the teachers.

The question that comes to mind: So what?

If teachers do not like the administration, have as little to do with him or her as possible! If really inclined, they can resign their position there and go somewhere else.

Since when did the ongoing conflicts between teachers and administrators dominate so much time, space, and energy, that everyone has lost sight of the real focus-- student learning.

Public teachers' unions are to blame, in part.

Unions represent unions, pure and simple. They have made it a point to bad-mouth school boards and leadership ongoing. At what point did individual educators decide that the best way to foster reform in a school was to instigate ongoing conflict?

Throughout the school year, I listened with some dismay how students were so keen on the political wranglings shaking up their schools, from Lawndale to Leuzinger. How teachers were telling their students what School Board members were "plotting", how the involuntary transfer of teachers from celebrated havens with respected and friendly colleagues was surreptitiously disrupted. Teachers crow that the transfers were retaliatory. The District leadership argues that the reforms were necessary, or schools would be converted to charters or shut down entirely.

At the end of these political wranglings, the obviated questions becomes rather obvious: what has all this hassle back and forth accomplished in the realm of preparing young people to make sense of themselves and their place in this world?

And this questions begs a greater concern: what exactly are we all doing here?

One principal has posted proudly in his office, "I believe in Public Education." What does that mean? The phrase is so broad and vacuous as to be meaningless, which just about describes the inane bell to bell, day by day trickle of students in and out, teachers home and back again.

What exactly are we all doing here?