Labor Day Greetings From Kansas Teachers: ‘We Love Someone Else’s Child’ | Opinion

By Mark Farr, The Kansas Reflector

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Sept. 4, 2020

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Mark Farr is president of the Kansas National Education Association.

Labor Day 2020 has taken on a different meaning this year — that, I think we can all agree on. COVID-19 has changed our work and our lives, perhaps forever.

But as the Kansas National Education Association, a 25,000-member organization, our union values haven’t changed in the least. Perhaps they have grown stronger.

The confluence of a global pandemic, racial injustice and record unemployment have laid bare the importance of NEA and Kansas NEA’s core values that have been in place long before this tumultuous year. Our values of equal opportunity, a just society, democracy, professionalism, partnership and collective action couldn’t be more important than they are at this very moment.

As outgoing NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia said recently, we as union member-educators “are part of the collective voice and collective power that refuses to be silent” and that we “fight for an America worthy of us all.” She also said: “It’s our time because we are the educators and public servants of America. We live in every community. We love someone else’s child.”

We love someone else’s child. Let that sink in for a moment. We not only fight collectively for our union members but we do so with just as much vim and vigor for our students because we know, as we’ve always known, of the profound impact we have on the lives of those we teach.

We officially formed the Kansas State Teachers Association in 1863 when Isaac T. Goodnow, of Manhattan, became our first president. In 1969, our members voted to change our name to the Kansas National Education Association. Over the span of 157 years, we have always worked hard for our Kansas children.

NEA’s president-elect Becky Pringle said it best: “We cannot — we will not — put off for one more second creating schools that serve the needs of all our students regardless of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, immigration status, or language. Now is the time to address the systemic inequities that beset our most vulnerable students.”

On this Labor Day, we stand up and applaud the health care workers who are risking their lives, many of whom have paid the ultimate price, to care for us and our loved ones who have contracted COVID-19. We stand with all who continue to demand fair wages and safe working conditions in their professions. But most of all, we stand with our teachers who are in the process of going onto the new “front lines” to educate our children in the midst of a pandemic that has no defined end in sight.

While COVID-19 is dealing the teaching profession some astronomical challenges, we as Kansas NEA have stared down adversity, whether it has been decades-long fights over adequate school funding or bargaining rights. But as a union, we have stayed strong because our core values keep us centered and protect against attacks from extreme ideologues who may rise from either end of the political spectrum.

“A new and frightening threat is the attack currently being leveled on public education by what has come to be known as the Radical New Right,” said former Kansas NEA president Nancy Lindberg in 1981. “These attacks are obviously related to support for tuition tax credits which could transfer millions of dollars from federal support of public education to private institutions. The New Right is capable of soliciting huge sums of money to oppose legislators who are friends of public education. … The time to stand up and fight is now.”

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? We have weathered many storms and will continue to fight for our students and our union values.

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