Our Students Shouldn't Have to Fear Coming to School

Weeks ago, ICE agents detained Noe Bartolon Rodriguez during his lunch break outside Omega Restaurant in Niles, handcuffing him and putting him in an unmarked car. Days earlier, agents used the parking lot of Maine East High School in nearby Park Ridge to transfer a detainee between vehicles.

These aren't isolated incidents. Since the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement last month, federal agents have stormed apartment buildings with helicopters and deployed tear gas near schools across Chicago and its suburbs.

My history and government students walk into my classroom at Niles North High School in Skokie asking questions about our democratic systems: How is it that this administration is able to break precedent and norms? Who can check the expanding power of the executive branch? Why does it seem like Congress and the Supreme Court are choosing to do nothing?

They're asking the right questions. But they’re asking them out of fear, not out of a student’s usual curiosity.

I'm honored to be joining the Illinois Federation of Teachers as Secretary-Treasurer alongside Cyndi Oberle-Dahm and John Miller, under incoming President Stacy Davis Gates, at a moment when students need educators who can teach and who can address that fear by fighting for them at the same time.

As president of the North Suburban Teachers Union Local 1274, I have represented more than 20 councils across 45 schools in these northern suburbs for the past four years. Now as Secretary-Treasurer of the IFT, I’ll be part of representing our 100,000 members across the state.

Our work is more important now than ever. When students can't focus on learning because they're worried whether their parents will be home when they get back from school, those causing that worry have failed them and those trying to address it are stretched beyond what we should.

I know of several students whose immediate family members have been detained or deported in recent weeks. These are families who have lived in this country for decades without any significant criminal records. One of my students was in tears after her father was arrested and sent to an ICE detention camp out of state. The father of another student, who has lived in this country since he was a child, was arrested and sent to a different out-of-state facility. Neither family knows when they'll see their father again.

With this transition of leadership at IFT, our state’s educators and students have even stronger advocates to protect each other and put a stop to the attacks we are witnessing. In Chicago, CTU’s Stacy Davis Gates has led the winning of contracts that brought smaller class sizes, a nurse and social worker in every Chicago public school, and protections for immigrant families. She knows how to organize under pressure. We need that now, especially because the attacks we are facing reach beyond ICE raids.

The Trump administration has laid off about half the Department of Education’s workforce, cut $600 million from teacher training grants, and cancelled millions in grants for civics, literacy education, and college readiness for K-12 students.

The federal cuts are coming on top of our state government being woefully behind on getting current on its debt to our students.

Springfield at least $3.3 billion to fully fund our K-12 schools and at least $1.4 billion for universities, and federal cuts threaten to erase those gains.

We need to fix the Tier 2 pension system. I've watched talented educators leave when they realize they can't retire with dignity. We cannot recruit or retain quality educators if the system punishes them for staying.

We need to fully fund higher education. State support for colleges and universities ranks near the bottom nationally, while tuition in Illinois is among the highest. So many of our students and their families are stressed about the skyrocketing tuition costs. Too many students are shut out of college or career training.

As newly elected leaders of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, our next step will be launching the campaign to follow the trend of other states like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Maryland, and to make Illinois No. 1 in funding our education for the state’s children.

The way we answer our students’ question if our democracy still works is to create the strongest model of it in Illinois. That means fighting Trump cuts with investment and showing that when we have a supermajority in our legislature and the Governor in power that we create a beacon and a model for the entire country to follow.

— Pankaj Sharma is the newly elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and President of the North Suburban Teachers Union IFT AFT Local 1274. He teaches history and government at Niles North High School in Skokie.