My Point of View by Peggy Bennet

Kids love to write out their wish lists for Christmas and birthdays. I always enjoy reading those painstakingly written columns full of all the things they want most.

Teachers have wish lists of sorts too, and you might be surprised at what is at the top of that list. If you were to ask a teacher what he or she would like most for teaching, here’s what you would hear most often from almost every teacher: time.

Time to teach and time to plan — one of a teacher’s greatest needs. As an elementary school teacher of 33 years, I have experienced this lack of time myself, particularly in the last decade. It has frustrated me greatly.

The bureaucracy that has hounded the medical field for years has now descended upon our schools. More and more state and federal mandates and dictates are piled onto educators every year. The result is a swirling vortex of curriculum directives, endless meetings and reams of paperwork.

Meetings and more meetings and piles of paperwork now consume much of a teacher’s time, not to mention that of administrators and support staff. The costs of this in time and money for our schools is exorbitant. Ultimately, the real loser in all of this is the student in the form of lost educational opportunity.

Some meetings are good and adequate record keeping is important. However, balance is key and we have lost that balance. Legislators and educational bureaucrats, both state and federal, have pushed to an extreme what was once a reasonable level of reporting and mandates for schools — and they’ve pushed it to the point where it has become counterproductive for education.

An additional outcome of this regulatory overdrive has produced an added financial burden upon our schools in the form of unfunded mandates. According to Albert Lea Area Schools Superintendent Mike Funk and school district Finance Director Lori Volz, two of the costliest unfunded mandates for schools are the new bullying law and testing requirements.

Our schools will spend an additional $20 million a year statewide to accommodate the new bully bill mandates as well as spend millions of dollars on unfunded testing each year. The cost in dollars for our schools is huge, but even greater is the cost in educational opportunity that following these mandates takes away from our students.

So, what is the answer? We have got to bring some balance and common sense back to our schools by reducing unfunded mandates and burdensome regulation. We can do this by bringing much of educational decision-making back down to the local level, putting it into the hands of the local educators and parents who know our children best.

It doesn’t mean we get rid of or ignore important issues like bullying or testing. It means we address them at the level where we can tailor these things to bring the most benefit for our children.

We also need to bring local decision-making into the funding equation for schools. School districts’ hands are tied in many cases by budget mandates and regulations. We need to bring more financial flexibility to our school funding by allowing the professionals at the local level to prioritize school budgets according to the educational needs of our children — not according to a one-size-fits-all state or federal design.

Lastly, our schools need a longer budget cycle. The current two-year funding severely limits our schools’ ability to plan programs, plan teacher numbers, and it impacts the educational process of our children. Instead of just throwing money into school programs according to bi-yearly state directives, let’s bring some real financial reform that will make a lasting difference for our schools. We need to fund our schools properly and fund them smartly by putting the decision-making into the hands of those who know our children’s educational needs best.

I have full confidence in our local teachers, administrators and educational leaders and their ability to work with parents to bring high quality education to our children. It’s time to get rid of the bureaucracy and untie the hands of our educational professionals to let them do what they do best: teach!

 

Albert Lea resident Peggy Bennett is a Republican candidate for the House District 27A seat. She is a first-grade teacher at Sibley Elementary School.