“Education is a right, not a privilege, and we need to fund it,” high school math teacher and Manchester Education Association President James Tierinni tells WTNH Channel 8 anchor Laura Hutchinson in a key takeaway from an interview airing tonight. Watch Educating Connecticut online at 8 p.m.
Tierinni was one of several Connecticut public school teachers and counselors Hutchinson spoke with last week about some of their biggest challenges, including educator salaries and shortages, disconnected youth, school cell phone policies, student mental health and behavioral issues, and inequities in education funding.
Community lift
In the roundtable discussion, which led off with the subject of Connecticut’s 119,000 disconnected youth, educators described students stuck behind a wall of poverty and facing additional hardships that can feel insurmountable.
“The teachers I know do everything they can to support their students,” said Danbury social studies teacher Julian Shafer, adding that he encounters children who come to school without having their basic needs met.
Many students who are late, absent, exhausted, or disengaged from school spend long nights working or helping care for family members, he and his colleagues noted. For students whose families lack transportation, missing the school bus typically means missing school.
“We try to make sure our students have what they need to thrive,” said Shafer, “so when we talk about solutions to disconnected youth, we need to look at all of these challenges.”
“Having someone you can connect with who really sees you, hears you, and understands where you’re coming from matters so much,” added fifth- and sixth-grade teacher and Bloomfield Education Association President Gail Jorden. “This is why we need to continue diversifying and elevating our profession, but we need to also recognize that teachers cannot do it all. It truly is a community lift.”
Leveling the playing field
Inadequate and inequitable funding play a major role in the education and services students receive, CEA Vice President Joslyn DeLancey explained. The fifth-grade Darien teacher pointed out that well-funded districts benefit from smaller class sizes and more resources.
“These include a higher number of school social workers and psychologists to address student mental health needs, allowing regular classroom teachers to provide more instructional time,” said kindergarten teacher and CREC Education Association President Lisa Cordova, who teaches in Glastonbury.
“Top-rated districts are typically those that prioritize and invest in their schools,” DeLancey said, asserting that changes are needed to Connecticut’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula to make it more equitable and to ensure every district has access to the resources it needs.
“Our state must also fully fund special education excess costs, which vary year to year and district to district,” she said, making it especially difficult for many school systems to anticipate or manage costs.
Underpaid, overworked
Teacher salaries were another key topic in a conversation that centered on addressing Connecticut’s persistent teacher shortage. A recent CEA survey examining teachers’ top concerns found that low salaries were high on the list.
Cordova, a 35-year veteran, began her career when Connecticut passed the Education Enhancement Act, raising teachers’ salaries in a way that brought more people into the profession and made it possible for them to earn a living without taking on a second job—as many teachers have to do today.
“Those salaries have not kept pace,” said Cordova. “It’s time for our legislators to look at increasing them. Investing in education and educators ensures our communities flourish.”
“A lot of us went into this profession because it’s what we love to do, and it’s probably the most fulfilling profession you can be in,” DeLancey acknowledged, “but at some point you can no longer sustain the salary that doesn’t match the workload, the conditions, the stress, and the mounting expectations. It’s not working. We have a shortage of more than 1,300 teachers right now, all over the state, and we continue losing educators.”
“Between positions unfilled at the beginning of the year to teachers leaving in the middle of the school year, the educators who remain are taking on extra classes, more students, additional after-school help, and more,” said Tierinni. “There’s a leak in the dam, and the number-one thing we can do fix the teacher shortage is raise salaries so that we can attract and retain more educators.”
Listening to teachers
Other concerns raised in CEA’s survey are teacher stress and burnout, student behavioral issues, lack of respect for the profession, and educators being left out of political decisions that impact what they do.
“It’s not only stressful, it’s painful—hurtful—when you know you cannot give students the resources they need,” DeLancey remarked. “You know a student would be thriving in a class of 18 students instead of 30, or doing well with additional support or extra time to prep and plan for this child, but the investment isn’t there. There are also contradictions between what teachers are asked to do and the constraints put on us—for example, take every student’s social emotional learning into consideration and meet them where they are, but also you are bound by a pacing guide or curricular expectations that don’t meet students’ needs.”
“There’s such a disconnect, and it’s why we need to be at the table, because not only are teachers aware of these problems but we’re also problem solvers,” said Jorden.
“Recently, CEA helped pass legislation that raises the kindergarten start age and supports play-based learning, and those are examples of good policy that happens when teachers are part of the discussion,” DeLancey said.
“When we empower teachers, listen to them, and bring them to the table, that’s when we find the best solutions—whether we’re talking about student behavior or making the profession more attractive,” said Tierinni. “As long as we listen to teachers, we’re headed in the right direction.”