The Bill That Funds Everything We Do
I and well over a hundred other teachers from writing project sites from all over the country have been visiting our legislators, asking them to sign Dear Colleague letters that will allow the National Writing Project to continue to compete for funding from Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (otherwise currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act), which has not been reauthorized since 2007 but whose provisions remain in place.
Some teachers have a hard time on these trips, visiting legislative delegations whose members believe the Department of Education should be abolished, or who believe that education funding should be left entirely to the states (and thus to the wildly unfair system that uses local property taxes to fund education), or who’d just as soon see education privatized.
But the legislators from Connecticut—Joe Courtney, John Larson, Elizabeth Esty, Jim Himes, and Rosa DeLauro in the House and Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal in the Senate—all support funding opportunities for the National Writing Project, and so we received support from the entire delegation.
In years past, before the recession that began September 14 of 2008, I and other site directors used to bring several hundred teachers to this annual Spring Meeting, but for a while now it has been a much more modest event, and Bryan Crandall from the CWP-Fairfield and I often found ourselves talking to legislators by ourselves.
This year, however, I was fortunate enough to have the funds to bring four teachers with me to visit our legislators. Kelly Cecchini and Amanda Lister from Manchester High School and Steve Staysniak and Leslie Blatteau from Metropolitan Business Academy in New Haven are here with me.
We spent eight hours, from 8 till 4 today, walking back and forth and up and down Capitol Hill visiting our legislators. Usually, these trips mean visiting with education aides and interns, who are sometimes no older than my undergraduates, but this year we met personally with Jim Himes and John Larson, and were supposed to meet with Joe Courtney, too, till he was called away last minute.
We had great meetings with each legislator’s education aide, and bringing the teachers was awesome because I could allow them to tell stories about how the federal dollars manifested in actual programs and benefits for students in their schools and classrooms, rather than tell stories second hand.
You might think these aides are inaccessible or indifferent, but nothing could be further from the truth. They are happy to meet and talk, and are deeply interested in the subject of education. For one thing, it’s what they do, and meeting with actual teachers gives them some real windows onto the outcomes of their efforts. And, as I like to joke only half facetiously, they have office desk jobs that place them in front of screens for long periods of each day. The opportunity to get up and out and meet some real teachers and discuss education is always most welcome. And many come from teaching families or, in some cases, were teachers themselves earlier in their careers.
Some fun highlights this year were being able to walk the tunnels between the House office buildings. Do you know that all the buildings on Capitol Hill are connected by underground tunnels? We also got caught behind some security fences alongside one of the House office buildings and had to push them aside while armed guards watched us with detached amusement. Best of all was that the weather was nice. No cherry blossoms yet, but after some light morning rain, by afternoon the sun was out and it was in the mid-70s. I don’t know about you, but I still have snow piled three feet high alongside my driveway, so the warmth was an absolute blessing.
Anyway, I know it’s popular to rant about our elected officials, but I have been meeting with ours for almost a decade now, and I have to say it’s always a pleasure to talk shop with such dedicated people.
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