Fairfax County is the Devil
It is the trend in this day and age to take about exorbitant sums of money like it means nothing at all. Our government shelled out $700 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. Fairfax County Public Schools face a $200 million deficit in their much-demonized FY 2011 budget. Perhaps the world around me has gone mad: I’m still pissed that I have to shell out $30 (a mere zero) as a cover charge to go to a bachelorette party this weekend (where we will, no doubt, discuss the conundrums facing Fairfax County schools and Wall Street at length).*
Educating every single child in a county is expensive, that’s for sure. Paying their teachers, staff, providing them with buildings with heat, computers, school buses, meals, and enrichment activities costs a pretty penny. What is possible in boom times isn’t possible in lean times. Something has to go, or perhaps, freeze. Many teachers in Fairfax County are angry over the proposed salary freeze, the second year in which teachers will not receive their yearly, modest pay raise in an attempt to manage the gaping deficit facing the county. “It’s an outrage!” many teachers cry.
But is it?
Fairfax County isn’t cutting salaries, they are freezing them. This isn’t a case of the greedy businessman not sharing his profits with employees (though pay freezes are common in the private sector, too). This is a case of the local government simply not having money right now, a situation in which many localities currently find themselves in this “Great Recession.” Nearly ten percent of the workforce doesn’t have a job right now, full stop.
If you entered education for the money, we might well ask if you’ve received a good education. As one of my students asked me on my first day as a student teacher in a Fairfax County middle school, “Why do you want to be a teacher? You aren’t going to make any money. You should be an IT tech person.” (Source: an 8th grader who never comes to class with a notebook, pen, pencil, or homework yet is somehow still endearing). You become a teacher because you care about learning. You care about equipping young people with the tools to one day run our schools, hospitals, laboratories and government. There is no monetary glory in store for us. Even a perennially unprepared 13-year-old can see that.
Teachers (good teachers) work hard. Teaching is difficult, and many times thankless. But the point is not to get your $1000 or so increase every year, especially when this is just one (small) measure to try to keep schools running in the same manner as they have in years past. If you flee the county because you are missing out on two years of a meager raise, you’ve got your priorities screwed up. Your actions are telling your students what matters: is this a message you really want to send? I like money as much as the next person, mostly because it enables me to do the things I like (such as eat). But I really like seeing young people in an 8th grade civics class think about their world around them critically, to talk to each other about Obama’s recent State of the Union address, or voice their opinions on the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding campaign financing. You cannot put a price on that. By leaving the school because you aren’t getting “your due”, you are. And that’s not a good lesson to give.
Mary Steinberg is a teacher intern at Whitman Middle School in Fairfax County. She spends her days desperately trying to get 13-year-olds to care about government.
*Mary Steinberg did not attend said party, as she had pink eye, in typical lame fashion.
Comments