Connecticut teachers’ voices were heard by state legislators, resulting in additional school funding and the passage of numerous bills that will improve teachers’ working conditions, but there’s still more work to be done to address the growing teacher shortage crisis crippling our state. That includes recognizing teachers for the work they did during the pandemic and ensuring that new state funding is used to improve recruitment, retention, and enhancement of the teaching profession.
We are grateful to the legislators who took the time to meet with teachers in their districts and at the Capitol to hear directly about the issues they are facing and what they need to do their jobs more effectively. We thank Representatives Jeff Currey and Kathleen McCarty, Senator Martin Looney, and all the legislators who supported our dedicated educators and voted in favor of bills that will enhance public education.
Those bills include requiring play-based learning in pre-K and kindergarten and allowing it in first through fifth grades, raising the kindergarten start age, improving classroom safety, revising the teacher evaluation system, prohibiting edTPA from being used to determine qualifications for teacher certification, allowing teachers with elementary certification to teach kindergarten, including teacher leaders on the Connecticut Advisory Council for Teacher Professional Standards, and other bills that make significant strides for public education in Connecticut.
Legislators recognized that passing these and other teacher priorities will have a positive impact on students in the classroom and will improve teaching and learning in our public schools.
While we appreciate the additional $150 million for education funding in the state budget, we must work to ensure those funds will be used to specifically address the recruitment and retention of educators. With the teacher shortage crisis deepening by the day, we will continue working with policymakers, urging them to utilize the new funding to enhance teacher salaries and support the profession to ensure students have qualified teachers in their classrooms.
We are disappointed that legislators continue to disregard the herculean efforts teachers made throughout the pandemic. State and private-sector employees have been recognized, yet teachers have been ignored for their efforts during the pandemic and the issues they continue to face caused by the pandemic, which resonate in our schools in the form of trauma, dysregulated behavior, and mental health issues. Connecticut’s dedicated, hard-working teachers kept our schools open and kept students learning throughout the pandemic so that businesses could remain open and parents could go back to work, and they must be acknowledged for their efforts.
We will continue working with legislators and the governor to ensure that teachers are recognized and that new state funding will directly impact teachers and the students in their classrooms.
