Governor Lee just announced a Special Session for Education on January 19th.
Apparently he is very concerned about learning loss...I sure wish he had been concerned about this learning loss when we tried desperately to address it in budget amendments in March and June-before we had learning loss and could have prevented it!
We literally told him this would happen, and he refused to act. We had amendments to provide funding and the GOP voted every one down. They are never proactive and refuse to make education a priority in the budget.
And when you read the posts of my fellow GOP in Knox about how they are going to save education in this special session, please remember they ALL voted NO in March and June when we brought amendments to address it.
In this post, save should be “save”
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Thread On 12/10/20 I was on a zoom w/School Superintendents across East TN, these were their asks: teacher raises, holding students/teachers harmless on evals, hold systems harmless for BEP, more nurses/mental health, broadband, allow us to select our own programs, & NO VOUCHERS!
Tonight I’ve been talking w/ teachers. They are exhausted, they are working double & triple time, they need more support staff, more time for planning, and a safe work environment. They need the vaccine. They need to make more money than they did 20 years ago.
I talked to parents tonight too. They want their kids to be safe and healthy. Some are concerned about the meals they miss at school and hope the “distance lunches” could be healthier. Some are afraid their kids will bring home the virus.
Thread👉🏽 Some of you may have seen @6News tonight, for those who didn’t, they asked for my thoughts on Bill Dunn’s new gig at the State Dept of Education, so I gave them. Here they are...
It is a slap in the face of educators, students, and parents to give this position to someone who has no teaching/education background.
There are hundreds of educators across this state who could do a huge service in this position, actually helping the legislature understand what is needed in our classrooms-literacy experts with PhDs in this field.
Well, it's Tuesday and another of Gov Lee's signature pieces of legislation has been stopped by the courts. That is 2 unconstitutional bills heard this week--he lost on both--again. tennesseelookout.com/2020/09/30/fed…
He sure is costing taxpayers a pretty penny defending legislation that we pointed out from the start was unconstitutional.
This particular amendment to the heartbeat bill was added in the middle of the night and I pointed out in discussion on the floor that this procedure was not medically approved...
I spoke in Ed. Committee about holding high stakes evaluations for students and teachers in the most difficult school year in modern history. Members have no idea the unbearable stress that conducting the evaluations will bring to students, parents, teachers, and principals.
Why test when there is no plan to use the scores? Why test when we have nothing to compare from the previous year? Teachers conduct testing and benchmarks throughout the year, they know where the students are and record this--this is not the year for high stakes tests.
Teachers are doing the job of social workers, custodians, nurses, and tech experts. When teachers are out and there are not enough substitutes, other teachers have to cover extra classes and in many cases principals are covering those classes along with their endless duties.
It seems the Education Committee meetings Tuesday and Wednesday were not to slap Schwinn’s hand as some thought. They asked every hand-picked speaker to weigh in on virtual versus in-person learning to set up for this, yet showed us absolutely none of this “data” they have.
They only invited rural districts with low transmission to weigh in on school reopening. Those situations are nothing like what is happening in Knox County...or the other larger counties.
I’m really eager to see this data collected in the first few weeks of a chaotic school opening during a pandemic.
In June we knew the summer slide was going to be pronounced, this is why we had the $150 million education funding amendment to give educators the resources to help students catch up. Though it was paid for, the supermajority voted it down.
Ultimately, their budget cut $70 million from education and eliminated teacher pay raises at a time when their job got 3 times as hard.
For years, my GOP colleagues have PROTECTED a taxpayer-funded virtual school run by a for-profit corporation (and campaign donor) that has consistently failed its students.