Ted Eytan
The viral video of Louisiana teacher, Deyshia Hargrave, getting arrested on January 8 is chilling. After being told to leave a school board meeting in Vermilion Parish, where she is a middle-school teacher, Hargrave can be seen thrust to the ground by a security officer, her voice becoming hysterical as she asks him what he is doing. “Stop resisting,” the officer tells Hargrave, her hands cuffed behind her back. “I am not resisting,” she insists.
Yet she was resisting. Not the officer and his attempt to arrest her, perhaps, but Hargrave was resisting nevertheless. Before being pushed to the ground and handcuffed outside the school board meeting room, Hargrave had dared to stand up (twice) during the meeting’s public comment period and question how the school board could justify giving its superintendent, Jerome Puyau, a $38,000 raise when teachers and school support staff were struggling with increasing class sizes and stagnant wages.
Hargrave openly resisted the idea that Puyau, whatever his actual or presumed qualifications, deserves a raise—a raise she says comes from the sweat of teachers, cafeteria workers, and other school employees who are continually being asked to do more with less. Anybody in a “position of leadership getting a raise . . . feels like a slap in the face,” Hargrave told the board members prior to her arrest. As Hargrave continued questioning how the $38,000 bump in pay could possibly be justified, Puyau grimaced and twisted uncomfortably in his seat.
Anybody in a “position of leadership getting a raise . . . feels like a slap in the face,” Hargrave told the board members prior to her arrest.
Shortly thereafter, Hargrave was escorted out of the board meeting by the officer who put her in handcuffs. According to The New York Times, she was cited for “remaining where forbidden and resisting an officer.” Overnight, Hargraves became a folk hero of sorts, inspiring a hashtag or two on Twitter, and the charges against her were quickly dropped.
Welcome to 2018. Will this be the year of the teacher? The year of the education activist? The year of a Hargrave-like resistance to the anti-labor, anti-student nature of much of the education politics and policy in this country?
It is too soon to say, but there are signs of hope on the horizon.
First, there is a growing sense of change in the politics around education. On January 5, a Texas-based group called Pastors for Children took to Twitter to express, with glee, that local leaders from churches, schools and the business community have “awakened and are committed to preserving and protecting #txed this election season.” These leaders will be “voting for pro-public education candidates,” the tweet declares, before directing readers to check out the website of an affiliate group, Texans for Public Education. This site provides a direct challenge to the ever-encroaching push for vouchers in Texas while still acknowledging the typically deep-red politics of many Texans.
One anonymous testimonial, published on the front page of Texans for Public Education, puts it this way: “I will leave my political affiliation at the door, and until this state has regained its sanity in regards to public education, education will be the issue which drives my vote. Will you do the same?”
It is acceptable now, it seems, to have open declarations of support for public education, even in a state like Texas.
It is acceptable now, it seems, to have open declarations of support for public education, even in a state like Texas. This is a significant shift that should be noted, since various school choice schemes (including those that pull money out of public education funds and divert them to private schools through vouchers) have been the largely bipartisan, cure-all way to solve every “education crisis.” (Another example of this: all three Democratic candidates for governor in Massachusetts are “running on an anti-charter school platform.")
In response to the January 5 tweet from Pastors for Children, Tim Krug, a public education supporter from Douglas County, Colorado enthusiastically weighed in, saying, “Yes! Yes! This same spirit is spreading throughout Colorado, too. Voters of every affiliation are banding together to prioritize children over politics.”
As a resident of Douglas County, Krug knows what he is talking about. In December, 2017, a newly elected Douglas County school board voted unanimously to end a controversial school voucher program put in place by an earlier, more conservative board.
Why did they vote to end the program? In the words of school board member Krista Holtzmann, it is as simple as this: “Public funds should not be diverted to private schools, which are not accountable to the public.”
Still, in 2018, it will be important for education observers to watch for continued pressure on state legislature to support a variety of market-based education reformers, perhaps most prominently being the push for more “tax credit scholarship” programs. These deals, which are essentially vouchers by another, seemingly less offensive name, divert money from public education coffers by giving wealthy individuals and businesses a tax break for donating to private school foundations.
Where school vouchers have fallen out of favor as too explicitly tied to defunding public schools, such “scholarships” have gained traction. Cautionary tales do exist, from early-adopter states like Arizona and Florida, about the pitfalls of pushing public resources towards private schools. Still, once-reliably Democratic states like Illinois are jumping on the tax-break and school choice bandwagon, making this a key education issue to keep an eye on in 2018.
The new federal tax bill also creates a more favorable climate for the diversion of taxpayer money from public education into private schools. The bill brings a reduction in the amount homeowners can claim in state and local taxes—known as SALT—and may cause “wealthier people to pour more money into tax-credit scholarship funds to reduce their state tax burden,” according to a write-up in The Washington Post. Of course, this reduction in revenue for public education could help further the idea that there is a crisis in education that only school choice schemes can address.
Outspoken advocates remind us that resistance can also bring results.
But outspoken advocates like Louisiana teacher Deyshia Hargrave, or New Jersey’s Mark Weber, who has kept vigilant tabs on “teacher-bashing” in his home state, remind us that resistance can also bring results. Hargrave’s public pushback on the idea that workers and students should suffer while education dollars enrich administrators has garnered an outpouring of local and national support. Her fellow teachers held a rally on January 11 to show solidarity with Hargrave and to send a wider message that they “will not be silent,” according to Vermilion Association of Teachers president Suzanne Breaux.
Silence, in the face of potentially devastating tax and revenue cuts, may simply not be an option for public school advocates in 2018.
Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer whose work has appeared in The Progressive and other local and national publications.