No More Pencils, No More Books, No More Teachers... by Geoff Carter

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

Summer is drawing to a close. School will be starting soon. It’s the time of year that parents usually welcome and kids usually dread. We’ve already started to see the avalanche of back-to-school ads from Target, Walmart, Old Navy, and the other big box stores. This is usually a happy time—children look forward to getting reacquainted with old friends, making fresh starts, getting new clothes, and resuming their learning, but these days, schools in Wisconsin, particularly Milwaukee, are struggling. They have been under back-breaking stress.

Milwaukee Public Schools, like the rest of Wisconsin, has—for a variety of reasons—been experiencing an acute teacher shortage. And despite Governor Tony Evers’ recent ingenious manipulation of the budget, public schools and educational programs are still severely underfunded—and have been for years. In an attempt to fill over two hundred teacher vacancies, MPS has resorted to hiring international teachers, bringing in sixty for the 2022-2023 school year. They will also be bringing in one hundred and forty educators for this current year from Nigeria, Jamaica, Mexico, Albania, and the Philippines.

Working as a district mentor to new MPS teachers last year, I had the pleasure of working with a number of international teachers. They came from all varieties of of circumstances. Some had to leave their families behind until they could arrange to bring them over. Others came with nothing but one suitcase and the clothes on their backs. One of my teachers had a law degree from back home but decided that teaching high-school French in the U.S. was a better opportunity for her. Almost all were dismayed when they discovered that their visas allowed them to work only for MPS. So, if they couldn’t get a summer school job, they couldn’t work. Some were astounded at student behavior, saying, “back home, the students would stand up and greet me when I walked into the classroom.” Welcome to America.

Despite all these hardships—and more, including varying degrees of culture shock and homesickness, these teachers have for the most part done excellent work. Some, just like new American teachers, are overwhelmed by the workload, the stress, sometimes spotty administrative support, and adjusting to life in a new land, but most are figuring it out. They want to do good work and they want to do it in America. This feeling is not exclusive to international teachers. Most of the new domestic teachers I’ve worked with are committed idealists who truly want to make a difference in the classroom, but the truth is teaching is not a competitive job anymore. Many good, even great teachers, are leaving the profession after a few years.

Since Wisconsin passed Act 10, the law which eliminated collective bargaining for public employees (including teachers), educator wages and benefits have been slowly eroding away. Attendant to the Act 10 legislation, the Republican legislature made massive cuts into public school budgets while simultaneously expanding the voucher program and allowing public funds to pay tuition for private—and even parochial—schools. As wages stagnated and health insurance dwindled down to bare bones coverage, fewer young people have gone into education. Tack this onto the exodus of veteran teachers from MPS after Act 10 became law, and we suddenly had a full-fledged crisis. As a result, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has loosened licensing requirements.

It used to be that to become a licensed Wisconsin teacher, a student had to earn a four-year education degree or supplement their existing BA with a two-year teaching certification. Since the teaching shortage became acute, however, the DPI began a variety of licensing programs through various venues, including some online institutions. Now someone with experience as a paraprofessional or an assistant in the classroom can earn their license while teaching in an MPS classroom—sort of on-the-job-training. While this has resulted in allowing a number of outstanding people a chance to teach, some of the results have been less than exemplary. While they might have classroom experience and be very good with the students, some candidates are ill-prepared to lesson plan or perform instruction. While mentoring and licensing programs attempt to bring everyone up to snuff, it’s a very difficult process to prepare and groom an instructor—which is why university educator programs require four years of coursework and one semester of student teaching. Once again, they’re figuring it out, but unfortunately, providing qualified and quality educators and giving them the proper resources to perform their jobs are not the only problems facing Wisconsin public schools. They are under fire from the people they serve.

Starting last year, on the heels of Republican created and fueled controversies about critical race theory, far-right extremists in many states began running for local school boards for the purpose of controlling curriculum and access to learning resources—particularly books.

According to the Miami New Times, over three hundred and fifty books have been banned in Florida school districts. This is on top of banning an AP African American Studies Course, restrictions on the teaching of American history—particularly slavery, and the prohibition of gender-identity discussions. Thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida is the now bellwether state for extremist social agendas. They are eviscerating diversity training, the American history curriculum, and the literary canon. And this disease is spreading.

According to the Wisconsin Examiner, conservative activists ran in over fifty-three races Wisconsin school board races last April, running on hot topics like race in education, coronavirus policies, and gender in schools. While these candidates won a majority of seats in Waukesha and gained ground in Kenosha, they lost in Beloit, Eau Claire, and La Crosse despite heavy financial support from the Republican Party.

While somehow—and somewhat miraculously—avoiding having these aggressively retrogressive candidates setting school policy, Wisconsin’s fight is far from over. According to a report from WORTFM.org, “In Wisconsin, six school districts banned 29 books in the 2021-2022 school year. That report also showed that many of the books banned in that time period addressed LGBTQ themes or had prominent LGBTQ characters. Additionally, 40% of individual books banned prominently featured a character of color.”

The Wisconsin legislature has also been attempting to restrict student access to books and other resources in both school and public libraries. According to a report in The 74, the “Protect Childhood Innocence” bill proposed by Republican Representatives Scott Allen and Senator Andre Jacque that would ban a list of books deemed “inappropriate” and prosecute teachers and librarians who violate that ban.

Between choking off funds to public schools and restricting the curriculum to a narrow-minded Caucasian-centric world view, Wisconsin Republicans are slowly killing public schools and stymying young minds. And because of declining enrollment and revenue loss, rural Wisconsin schools are also getting hit hard. They too are suffering chronic teacher shortages and a severe lack in funding.

The beginning of the school year is usually a time of hope and optimism, but because of short-sighted and self-serving educational and fiscal policies, Wisconsin public schools are in trouble. Between slashing funding and attempting to restrict the free exchange of ideas, the far-right is well on its way to destroying one of the foundations of American society and democracy—but perhaps this is what they want, a clueless and obedient electorate who satisfied—and grateful for—the status quo.

Public school is run by the people through elected school boards and paid for by our taxes. They are a public institution that should not and cannot be commandeered by a set of narrow-minded and power-hungry tin gods.

Take back our schools. Take back our history. Take back our freedom of thought before it’s too late.