The public school system is a mess. Let’s be honest.
It doesn’t matter how much money the state throws at it, or doesn’t.
Teachers are experiencing out-of-control students. The demands are too vigorous and the dynamics are too complicated.
The districts generally claim they are short of money. The state claims it has no more to give.
Schools used to be comprised of a teacher at a blackboard with kids a variety of ages, learning at different levels and paces.
Now, learning is less individualized and more systematized.
People think you’re weird for homeschooling, but really government-run schools are the new experiment - if you look at the last few hundred years.
Classrooms and the education establishments that manage them keep growing. Specialists, contractors, curriculums, trainings, supplies, transportation, facilities, staff. The list of expenses does not end.
Now, a Cheyenne judge has ruled each kid in the state is entitled to a computer and a counselor also.
Establishment lawmakers and conservatives differ widely in their opinions on this.
A former representative who lost his last election decided in April to roast me on this.
Now in retirement from his political career, he had a lot to say about my opinion piece discussing the mental health aspect of the Court’s previous ruling.
The reason people in former House Speaker Albert Sommers’ camp lost their elections, is that they don’t really get it.
The issue is not as easy as whether you support services.
Moreover, many of the Freedom Caucus and other conservative candidates unseated incumbents because the former have a desire to downsize government and reduce cost to the taxpayer.
Most blue-collar individuals were struggling in big and small ways.
It’s hard for Mr. Sommers to understand that notion as he overlooks a multi-generational Wyoming ranching operation.
For example, until you choose between gas in your car and groceries because you can’t have both, you won’t really get why a fuel tax is harmful. But I digress…
The counseling issue in schools and how teachers should handle discipline will be one of the most complicated and hotly contested issues in Wyoming politics this year.
On one hand, the establishment lawmakers believe education should be funded to the fullest and the most protection should be given to the public education monopoly.
Others who are more limited-government-minded believe that schools should not be daycares or babysitters; and it is not the government’s role to intervene when things get messy – it is the proper role of the parents.
Then I think there are others like me, somewhere in the middle.
I have seen the problem from the inside and the outside. I have sat with people whose child passed away from suicide. I have represented the troubled kid whom nobody could understand, but whose life story would make your skin crawl.
I have listened to their stories and worked on their cases. I know others, with a different opinion, may see it differently. However, I believe that there could perhaps be no greater anointed purpose than helping to save a child’s life.
In politics, we have become so jaded to the idea of welfare, that we’ve turned our backs on simple ground-level compassion toward the children who need us.
While I do not believe that Wyoming has a constitutional requirement to provide counselors to students, I want us all to think about how we can help the mental health of our kids who are deeply struggling.
These struggles of course could be linked to socioeconomic factors. But I believe this is a generational issue and kids are experiencing a world unlike the one in which we came of age.
The combination of cell phones, social media, pornography, video games, desensitization to violence and sex – all contribute to a litany of emotional and developmental regulation problems. When compounded with family violence, trauma, abuse, or hunger – the results can be disastrous for the teacher who is tasked with managing not just the student but the entire classroom.
This education committee met this week and discussed the Teacher’s Bill of Rights. If passed, the bill could force parents to take parenting classes, allow for mandatory home visits, and provide no recourse for government overreach.
Disruptive and troubled students can distract others and endanger staff. But how should the government handle this? What is its role? Are there solutions on the ground that are better than creating more government processes and control?
These will be difficult questions for a Republican legislature to answer.
My suggestion is that we take control of the problem, before the problem takes control of us.
Cassie Craven can be reached at: ccraven.law@gmail.com
