Laid-off teacher writes the Alaska Senate Majority

To the Alaska Senate Majority:

After my first year guiding the academic and social-emotional development of my community’s children, I have lost my job due to the inability of you to finish yours. I am angry at how you are treating me and the other educators of Alaska. We are being treated like disposable, replaceable, and nonessential pawns in a game of chess. I am angry because this political game is destructive to the lives of hundreds of Alaska teachers and all of the students now without a teacher. Along with our jobs, teachers are losing our health insurance, our financial stability, and our sense of worth and belonging to our community, and it is forcing some of us to find a sense of security outside of Alaska.

When your destructive game drives highly qualified educators outside, it destroys Alaska’s future. When we lose good teachers, our kids lose, and our future is then lost. Before a child can learn to their greatest potential, they require safety that is built and maintained in structure, reliability, and most importantly, relationships. When the adults that cultivate a culture of safety in a school are removed, a sense of the unknown ripples through the community, destabilizing that critical sense of safety needed in a child’s development. When you play a game with Alaska’s schools, you become a destructive force upon our future.

Rather than “business as usual” and pink slips every year while you debate how important education is, try thinking beyond money. I guarantee you, without a doubt, that Alaska’s children are worth every penny in taxes you levy that fully fund (or even forward fund) education. I guarantee you that money doesn’t mean a thing if we don’t provide for our children’s future. It takes a village to raise a child and a village is doomed if it doesn’t live up to the task. To spend money on education today is to invest in our future; the return on that investment will be a highly qualified, strong, and capable workforce and community.

Please finish your job so I can do mine. Please invest in our future by fully funding education.

Brent Ramsay

Laid-off intermediate teacher at Denali Montessori School, Anchorage.