Fort Worth Star-Telegram. March 15, 2024.
Editorial: Educators are struggling, leaving Texas schools. What can we do to help right now?
It’s no secret that Fort Worth-area educators are struggling — not just teaching our community’s kids but to even stay in their demanding jobs. We need a solid curriculum, parental involvement and of course, students to fill the classroom, but without teachers — the backbone of education — communities will not have public schools.
At over 20%, the turnover rate for educators for the 2022-23 school year remains at an all-time high, up more than 4 percentage points from the previous year, according to a local teacher group. It’s even higher at some Fort Worth campuses. According to Texas AFT, a statewide teacher group, an alarming 69% of teachers surveyed said they might leave their jobs.
We’ve known that dissatisfaction has been brewing. Lawmakers have attempted to address this but have fallen short. About a year ago, the Governor’s Teacher Vacancy Task Force released a report with suggestions to keep educators from leaving, including discovering patterns of dissatisfaction. The panel recommended pay raises and improving working conditions, among other things.
These seem like good ideas, but implementing them is difficult. Lawmakers had a chance to pass a pay-raise package last year, but it failed after some House Republicans refused to vote for a package that included school vouchers, as Gov. Greg Abbott demanded.
We know from statistics and anecdotal evidence that Texas must pay teachers more. With the minimum salary not even at $34,000, their pay has remained low and stagnant, failing to address spikes in the cost of living, let alone reward a job well done.
That’s not all. Large classroom sizes, a workload beyond the classroom and most of all, awful student behavior that make teachers feel stuck, unsupported or even afraid, have made the job truly thankless. When teachers leave the profession for good, it’s not always about money. It’s about simple respect and being able to focus on why they got into education in the first place rather than a child’s raucous behavior or a looming STAAR test.
It’s past time that lawmakers raised pay and began to put in place some of the suggestions we already know they need, such as additional support to handle behavioral issues. However, aside from lobbying legislators and local school boards, between sessions there’s little the average citizen can do.
But there is one thing we can do for students now, and that’s encourage them and their parents, as a community.
JD Cashion, a resident of the DFW area, experienced this dynamic himself. A former teacher of 10 years, he now works to help teachers outside of the classroom. He didn’t have an education degree but taught high school math. He told our Editorial Board behavioral issues and lack of pay were the main drivers that forced him out of a field he enjoyed.
“What behavioral issues boiled down to was lack of parental support,” Cashion said. “Not necessarily in terms of not supporting what teachers were doing but parents not actually parenting at home. That is an epidemic.”
We know that family dynamics at home, including everything from poor socioeconomic conditions to parents struggling with mental health or even violence, can be associated with behavioral problems at school. For students to do well at school, they must feel safe and loved at home. For parents to facilitate this at home, they must prioritize their own mental, emotional, and physical health, too.
Children and teenagers must also receive the message at home that poor behavior at school will be addressed at home, with serious consequences. Some teachers report more parents saying that it’s up to schools to deal with discipline or actually become defensive when schools attempt to render consequences to kids. That simply isn’t sustainable.
We need teachers to be able to focus on teaching for our school districts to thrive. Policy can address issues such as pay and class sizes. As a community, we need to help encourage students and parents in their mental and behavioral health. It’s a long, complicated approach, but better student behavior will vastly improve teachers’ experience — and get more to stay.
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Dallas Morning News. March 13, 2024.
Editorial: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton adds targets to his revenge tour Paxton proves the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It should go without saying that those with great legal and political power have a special responsibility to wield it in the careful pursuit of justice, not retribution. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues to opt for the latter in what seems like an ever-expanding revenge tour since he eluded removal from office last year.
We emailed Paxton’s office to ask about this apparent trend, which includes suing several school districts, backing challengers to Court of Criminal Appeals justices and targeting a Catholic nonprofit for aiding migrants in El Paso. So far, we’ve heard only crickets and have concerns that the revenge tour will have additional stops.
The three judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals found themselves in Paxton’s crosshairs after the all-Republican panel’s 8-1 decision in Texas vs. Stephens blocked his attempt to expand his authority to investigate voter fraud with near impunity. The appeals court panel concluded that Article 2 of the Texas Constitution, which governs separation of powers, does not allow any Texas Attorney General to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud anywhere in the state without coordinating with local district or county attorneys.
Miffed by the ruling, Paxton set voters against incumbents Sharon Keller, Barbara Hervey and Michelle Slaughter, absurdly depicting them as aiding and abetting voter fraud. At the time of the ruling, Paxton tweeted that the Court of Criminal Appeals’ “shameful decision means local DAs with radical liberal views have the sole power to prosecute election fraud in TX — which they will never do.” The trio lost to Paxton-backed challengers in this month’s primary contests.
Paxton also turned his enforcement powers last month toward Frisco ISD and several other North Texas school districts, dragging them into court over his claim that the districts’ support or opposition to certain political candidates or policies constituted illegal electioneering. Paxton said he took legal action to ensure that public officials don’t use public resources to illegally influence elections. “Elections are the foundation of our republic,” he said in a press release. “They must be free and fair.”
In fairness, statements released by the school districts did skirt the line of using official resources for politicking. And some may have crossed it. But our concern is that Paxton took a scorched-earth approach to the situation rather than to warn the districts that could be violating the law.
And he’s taking the same iron-fist approach toward Annunciation House, a nonprofit that provides basic shelter, food and clothing to migrants and asylum-seekers. Paxton skips over facts, inaccurately portraying Annunciation House’s humanitarian good works as criminal behavior, a distortion that this newspaper criticized in a recent editorial. On Monday, a state judge rejected Paxton’s attempt to close the nonprofit, calling it an unfairly harsh move that also calls into question “the true motivation for the attorney general’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides.”
It’s hard to think that Paxton is acting in good faith. Paxton pushed the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and his integrity unit in 2021 tilted at election-fraud windmills, made dubious, unsuccessful attempts to indict election workers and failed to find widespread voter fraud.
After surviving scandals and impeachment, Paxton’s abuse of his office and position to target political or ideological opponents is increasingly petty, ideological and dangerous, proving the adage about the power of power to corrupt.
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Houston Chronicle. March 15, 2024.
Editorial: ‘Uvalde Strong’ continues to be tested after nearly two years
Those of us fortunate enough to have been spared direct involvement in a mass shooting perhaps assume that communities undergo stages of grief, so to speak. They move through initial shock and disbelief, to horror, to a communal coming-together — “Uvalde Strong” — in support of those who have suffered grievous loss and then, ultimately, to acceptance. Perhaps we assume it’s a process similar to the five-stage model of death and dying pioneered by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. For survivors, for a community, Kubler-Ross’s final stage, acceptance, would be necessary for life to go on.
However apt the comparison, the experience of most communities is not that simple. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators, has been battling truth-deniers for more than a decade. Members of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, survivors of a mass shooting that slaughtered 26 Sunday morning worshippers, are fighting the federal government over a financial settlement more than six years after the worst mass shooting in Texas history.
Uvalde is the most recent aching example of the lingering devastation of a mass shooting. Uvalde survivors and family members, to put it bluntly, continue to get kicked in the teeth.
Nearly two years after the small southwest Texas city lost 19 of its precious youngsters and two of its teachers in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary, emotions are still raw, still jagged. Too many of those in a position to help ease a community’s suffering — politicians and law enforcement in particular — continue to fail those they presume to serve.
The latest outrage is an independent investigation commissioned by the Uvalde City Council and conducted by a retired Austin police detective turned consultant. The 182-page report exonerates all 25 Uvalde Police Department officers who, for the most part, responded to the shooting on the morning of May 22, 2022, by standing around in a school hallway and doing nothing while children died in nearby classrooms. The 25 were among some 400 law enforcement officers from eight local, state and federal agencies who showed up at the school and waited as children and teachers were trapped for an agonizing 77 minutes with the 18-year-old shooter before officers killed him. The consultant concluded that the Uvalde officers acted in “good faith.”
Don McLaughlin, the former Uvalde mayor best remembered for cursing at then-gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke for interrupting a news conference Gov. Greg Abbott was holding, told the Texas Newsroom he was shocked at the conclusion exonerating the acting Uvalde police chief. “I don’t fault the officers as much as I fault the leadership, because those officers were put on hold at one point and were waiting for somebody to do something,” he said. “I honestly believe if those officers had been told to go in they would have.”
The report says that the acting Uvalde chief had no doubt the school was under the jurisdiction of the school district police chief. Written “in anticipation of legal defense,” it also says the only officer who violated policy was a nine-month pregnant woman who did not ask a supervisor’s permission to deliver ballistic shields.
Parents and family members attending last week’s news conference were more than shocked. They were outraged. They directed their ire at the cowboy-hat wearing consultant, Jesse Prado, who not only refused to answer questions but left the building before the crowd chanting “coward” and “bring him back” shamed him into returning.
“I’m insulted by this report,” said Councilmember Hector Luevano, as reported by the Texas Tribune. “The families deserve more, the community deserves more.”
Councilmember Ernest “Chip” King III apologized to the angry crowd, many of whom walked out in disgust when Prado blamed family members for trying to break through police lines at Robb Elementary and rescue their own children when it became obvious law enforcement was doing nothing.
Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez, who was on vacation in Arizona during the shooting, said last week he will step down April 6, after 26 years on the force. His parting comments only added to Uvalde’s injury. “Together, we have achieved significant progress and milestones, and I take pride in the positive impact we’ve made during my tenure,” he said in a statement. He didn’t mention May 22, 2022.
Rodriguez’s glib resignation letter and Prado’s absurd findings come two months after the U.S. Justice Department released a massive report that found “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.” An investigation by the Texas House of Representatives and various media outlets have reached similar conclusions.
Unfortunately, the people of Uvalde have come to expect careless and irresponsible treatment, beginning with the governor communicating misinformation about brave law enforcement personnel rushing the school building. They have been stiffed by the Texas Department of Public Safety when they sought information. State lawmakers last year listened to them plead for some kind of gun-safety legislation — and then, after the Uvalde residents got into their vehicles and began the long drive home, proceeded to ignore their pleas. And now Prado comes along to insult their intelligence.
Uvalde is bracing for the next potential blow. District Attorney Christina Mitchell launched a criminal investigation into the police response months ago. A grand jury was summoned earlier this year, and some law enforcement officials have been called to testify.
City officials, accusing Mitchell of refusing to provide them with information from other responding law enforcement agencies, sued her late last year. Family members of the victims fear a whitewash is in the works.
Uvalde residents no doubt welcomed last week’s surprise visit by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, but the city, still suffering, needs so much more than celebrity attention. So does every other community in this nation — too many of them to mention — that have been scarred by gun violence.
If our elected officials — if not the American people — have come to accept the consequences of a gun-saturated society, if they have come to accept the reality of periodic mass killing in our schools, churches and other public gathering places, then surely they have a responsibility to deal with the consequences. Texas elected officials — and their counterparts in Washington — continue to ignore sensible gun-safety measures, but the least they can do is fund an army of grief therapists on call for the next grim inevitability, on call for months, even years at a time. Acceptance, as the people of Uvalde will tell you, does not mean closure. The pain may ease, but it does not go away.
We would vastly prefer the sensible, life-affirming approach to gun safety that Great Britain, Japan, Germany and almost every other advanced nation have chosen, but those nations are not America. Their way is not the American way, especially not this version so distorted by Second Amendment absolutism. For that they’re no doubt grateful.
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Lufkin Daily News. March 15, 2024.
Editorial: Let the Sun Shine: Open government means transparent government
James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
He was a smart man who knew the power of information and the power held by those able to control it. He also recognized that without an informed citizenry, any nation was doomed to fail its citizens. So it’s no coincidence that Sunshine Week, an annual observance intended to raise awareness about the importance of open government and access to public information, is held to coincide with Madison’s birthday.
But Sunshine Week — which runs through Saturday this year — goes beyond the interests of journalists and the media, whose jobs require access to information. It goes, as Madison noted, to the heart of our representative democracy. The only way for this grand experiment in self-governing we call America to survive and thrive is with a free flow of information, with an informed citizenry.
Yet every year, it seems, it gets more and more difficult for citizens to find out what their government is doing on their behalf. An open government means our government must be transparent. The effect of half-truths and non-truths mixed in with a little bit of truth here and there only obscures the truth by muddying the waters.
This is particularly important in an era when our elected leaders often taunt the media and refer to stories critical of their actions as “fake.”
But the idea of replacing facts we don’t like with falsehoods we do is anathema to the notion of democracy. There is a reason, after all, that the Founding Fathers codified “Congress shall make no law ... abridging freedom of free speech, or of the press.”
There is a reason they included it in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In too many cases, though, those who were elected by the people to do their work tend to believe that government works best in the dark; that the opinions of their employers, the people, is an impediment to their work instead of a basic requirement.
That is the crux of Sunshine Week. Each day, The Lufkin Daily News serves as a conduit between the government and the people, providing information as routine as a calendar of events or as important as how governmental entities are spending your tax money. In the process, we provide the public with information to help them make informed decisions.
Reporters have always relied on trust to do their jobs — the trust of subjects that what they say will be accurately reported and the trust of readers that stories are factual and fair.
We and hundreds of other legitimate news operations continue to do our jobs as we always have, by interviewing all sides, by gathering information from reputable sources and by revealing to readers what we have and how we got it. And when we get it wrong, we own up to it and run corrections.
This Sunshine Week, take a minute to learn more. The open records laws are listed by the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press ( rcfp.org/open-government-guide ). State groups are listed at the National Freedom of Information Coalition ( nfoic.org ). Visit the Sunshine Week website ( sunshineweek.org ). Want to file a records request? Try Muckrock.com.
Madison wrote he believed “there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
It seems clear: We must watch over freedom if we wish to keep it. The same idea applies to open government. Keeping freedom fresh is up to you, your friends and your neighbors.
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