In the Lower Hudson Valley, educators are piloting revolutionary experiential learning programs like veterinarian technology. They are serving unprecedented numbers of English language learners and students with disabilities. They are supporting students’ entire families outside the classroom by connecting them with community resources and social services.
But they need elected officials to back them up.
“Each body can only do so much, and so I think we are really stretched thin,” Kara Lyons, White Plains Teachers Association president, told congressional candidate Mondaire Jones during a roundtable aboard NYSUT’s Common Ground Over Chaos bus on Tuesday.
“We are really grateful and happy to be able to do this work, but the well runs dry and people are stretched and burned out,” Lyons said. “We love and care about our kids and want to provide the best we can, but we do need the funding, federally, to make sure that that can happen."
Jones described himself as “one of those kids who benefited from Title One, growing up in Section Eight housing on food stamps, attending East Ramapo Public Schools.” He knows how strong, well-funded public education can transform lives.
“We have to make sure that our lower income school districts get the federal funding that they need, not to just survive, but thrive,” he said.
The Tuesday discussion was part of NYSUT’s Common Ground Over Chaos bus tour, which will encompass the entire state before Election Day with nearly 40 planned stops.
It’s also a time for endorsed candidates to connect with the local issues affecting members, public schools and communities, such as the steep revenue losses being experienced by the Hendrick Hudson School District after the closure of Indian Point nuclear power plant. Jones promised to prioritize federal support to buffer Hendrick Hudson schools while officials seek a long-term solution.
Educators told Jones why the More Teaching Less Testing legislation in Congress is one of NYSUT’s top federal priorities. High-stakes testing has incited anticipatory anxiety for students as young as second and third grade, they explained. And it's made students risk averse and unable to think critically about their mistakes, said Michael Lillis, a physics teacher and president of the Lakeland Federation of Teachers.
“What you're really getting is kids who are a bundle of nerves about every single assessment. But when you do physics, if you don't get things wrong, you're never going to proceed,” Lillis said. “You can't do hard things if you're always going to be expected to do them correctly, and we have to renormalize what it means to learn in a normal and healthy environment to take a risk – instead of in a high-stakes environment.”
The ethos of the Common Ground Over Chaos tour – promoting a political environment where democracy, healthy debate, and compromise are valued – will be essential to tackling the challenges educators in NY-17 are facing, Jones said.
“I’m optimistic about the future of this country, despite all of the division and all of the horrible rhetoric and the name calling, frankly, the lies that we see, it feels like the American people are waking up and deciding that it's time to go in a new direction,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to the next 28 or so days and getting back to the kind of pragmatism and seriousness that this district here in the lower Hudson Valley deserves.”
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