Find a Funding Solution

By Margaret Moore, First Grade Teacher from Medford, OR

My school is one of the largest elementary schools in our district. I’m a first grade teacher, and I have twenty-four 1st graders. Many of my students have serious challenges at home — foster care, parents who are incarcerated, temporary housing situations. Every day, as I learn more about my students, I realize that almost everyone has challenges at home before they get to my classroom. I can’t fix these problems, but I can try to take that tiny little body that is going through flight, fright, or freeze and help them get into learning mode. That’s where my heart really lies: fostering resilient learners, no matter what happened before they arrived at school.

Unfortunately, state funding for our schools doesn’t support students in this way. We have the pieces and parts of public education but not what students really need to be successful. At my school we have a counselor, but she is only here 2 days a week because she is responsible for 3 other schools. We have a bully prevention and empathy curriculum, but it’s completely out of date (from 2002) and doesn’t address many of the issues we are dealing with today.

So many students are not getting the supports they need — and then become behavioral challenges in the classroom. They affect others children’s ability to learn, and they affect my ability to teach. One child dealing with trauma can disrupt the entire productive learning environment for the whole class.

When SB553 was passed, preventing the suspension or expulsion of elementary age students, I fully supported it. It is statistically proven that isolating students from the classroom for behavioral issues have a negative impact, and that makes sense. However, in my experience, this became simply another unfunded mandate. Yes, it’s a great idea to tell educators and schools that we need to keep students in the classroom because that’s where learning happens. However, right now, there is no funding for the supports needed to effectively counsel disruptive students, or deescalate a child’s violent behavior.

Teachers know that neither the revenue nor the necessary supports are there to give students the best education possible and that our students and their families face serious struggles and challenges. But we still go to work every day and do our best. My job is to make sure that a student throwing a chair across the room goes from survival mode to learning mode, that no one gets hurt, and that we have a productive learning environment. So, that’s what I want my elected officials to do — come to work and do their job. Find a funding solution for our schools. Oregon needs to find a revenue solution that’s steady and sustainable, and it needs to happen yesterday.

Margaret Moore is a first grade teacher in Medford, OR.