The following is a letter I submitted to the Monroe Enquirer Journal for publication on 7/31/2013.
Letter to the Editor August
1, 2013
The Enquirer Journal
Most of the laws
enacted by our present North Carolina
legislature were expected, but a few were not only unexpected, they sort of
boggle the mind. So, here is my question,
with background.
Why did our three
legislators want to hurt Union County Schools, the very magnet that has made Union County
so attractive to the outside world? The
new laws will hurt our schools, immediately and for years to come. One very revealing
part of the law, the part that stops payment for advanced degrees, was nothing
but political payback and strikes at the core of what it is to be a dedicated
teacher.
Teachers who want
to remain in the classroom have one career advancement possibility, higher
pay. Therefore the most motivated
teachers will seek higher degrees in most cases. They also get national certification,
which gives a small bump in salary.
People may not enter teaching for the money, but they are as motivated
to earn salary as any worker. People who
have paid for the extra year of college will not come to North Carolina to teach. We have tried for years to increase the
quality of the people entering teaching, and in one stroke, that is over!
I know the chorus to their song; “We were
doing this to increase the effectiveness of our schools.” That is absurd!
When I saw the
part of the law that told teachers that they could not get more money for
higher degrees, I remember what Mrs. Clyde Collins, assistant to Superintendent
Dan Davis and my second and third grade teacher, told me in 1966. “Aubrey”, she said, “you do not want to teach
here because the people here do not care about education.” As Yogi Berra said, seeing what this
legislature did, was daja vous all over again.
Here is an angle
that really makes the decision strange.
This was suppose to be a jobs legislature. The geography of North Carolina, with its
hundreds of small towns, most of which once depended on textiles, tobacco, or
furniture for jobs are what is dragging our employment numbers down. Many of
these towns are dying and their unemployment rates are very high. We do not trail other states in employment
because of our tax structure, it is because our three primary industries that
built these towns are gone, mostly to China. Union
County and Monroe are perfect examples.
So what is
keeping Union County employment better than most
counties? People coming here to start
their own businesses is a prime reason. What is Union County’s
biggest draw? Far and away it has been its public schools. Our Union County
legislators not only voted against our schools, they also voted against
business development in the county by doing so.
I have lived
through more geniuses telling us that they know how to fix schools than I care
to recount. Early in my career, it was
the schools without walls, straight from England. Since then every savior wannabe has had some
theory, with the latest being “No Child Left Behind” based on contrived data
from Texas
schools. Now ALAC and the North Carolina
legislature have delivered this “new beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.”
You might be able
to go into Charlotte
and argue that the voucher program is a good thing, but I doubt it. For Union County,
it is a loser. There is no way you are
going to get better private schools than the public schools we have here, not
even in Monroe. This decision makes no sense for our county.
And, will these
new ways of funding schools hurt the education that your children will get here
in Union County?
With all due respect to the professionalism of our faculties, it has to
hurt because the jobs of people have been threatened for no good reason. I have two sons and a daughter-in-law
teaching in other places, all with master degrees, two with national
certification. You should hear what I hear from them.
This breaks my
heart. Sarah and I prepared our children
well for teaching if they so chose. They
want out, now!!! The one in Pennsylvania
was to move to North Carolina in a couple of years and that is now a dead
issue, he would have to take a $15,000 drop in salary since he can not get paid
on a masters degree here by then.
Every teacher
has a story, and every story is built on hopes and dreams and hard work. This legislature just told them that they do
not matter. You figure out whether your
children will have as good a school to go back to this year. It doesn’t take a genius to see the answer.
Our local legislators voted to make sure they are put on a death spiral.
Aubrey Moore
3901 Wesley
Chapel Rd.
Matthews, N.C. 28104
704-283-1805
Aubrey.moore@gmail.com
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