When I arrived home from the School Board meeting, I looked over the agenda again. This time one item stood out more so than before. Listed under the Board’s Core Beliefs is this statement:
Families are valuable partners.
I read no qualifications on this statement. It does not read ‘Heteronormative Families”. It does not read “Married Parents”. It simply uses an encompassing term -- families. By doing this, it does not restrict recognition only to families that look a certain way or believe in a certain religion. It recognizes the task of public education, that is, to provide an education to every child. This task requires Milwaukee Public Schools to work in partnership with the family of every child. Therefore the Board cannot make decisions that will allow some families to receive recognition while others do not.
One obvious and important way for the Board to live up to its core beliefs is to support the extension of benefits to domestic partners of MPS employees. In doing so, the Board would not only be following its own stated values but provide an example to our children of doing what is fair and just. We teachers often talk about utilizing those ‘teachable moments’. I call upon the Board to do just that. This can be a valuable opportunity to demonstrate to our students the importance of equality—including equal pay for equal work. Not offering partner benefits to employees who choose not to marry or who by law of our state are denied the right to marry violates this principle.
I was disappointed that the Board did not take a vote on this resolution but having been to a number of school board meetings in the past few months, I’ve experienced frustration and disappointment before. Something was different at this meeting though and the first piece of evidence was when I walked into the auditorium and two police officers were standing near the doorway. The room was full. There were those with signs that read ‘NO’ and many wearing stickers with “YES”. The division was palpable. Instead of becoming stalled by such divisions, the Board now has an opportunity to facilitate reconciliation. In order to do that, it needs to call out and recognize prejudice and discrimination for what it is and help lead the entire community to understand how such discrimination hurts us all.
Many of those who spoke against the resolution also talked about their own lack or family members’ lack of health care coverage. Director Morales commented on this as well and I wish to extend her encouragement in working to resolve the crisis of the uninsured in Milwaukee and beyond. Instead of limiting who receives health care benefits by where you work or whether or not you are married why not recognize everyone’s dignity and work toward providing quality health care to all? Every year in the United States 18,000 people die due to not having health insurance. As educators and community members all of us can utilize this as a teachable moment for our children and demonstrate we are willing to work towards something better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Stephanie - well said. While I understand that folks are suffering because family members lack health insurance, the answer is not to deny coverage to others. We should not engage in a race to the bottom.
In my personal opinion, we need to work together to promote universal healthcare. There's a movement afoot in Wisconsin to do just that. Citizen Action of Wisconsin is one of the strong leaders on the issue.
Perhaps our school board should publicly endorse that effort when it (hopefully) passes Dir. Morales' resolution. Universal HC in Wisconsin would have an enormous positive impact on MPS students and families.
The MTEA legislative committee is also looking at this issue, and will probably make a recommendation to our own executive board sometime next school year.
Post a Comment