Dear MTEA Member: I’ve been a teacher, an educator, for 30 years. Over those years the profession I’ve chosen has become as much a part of me as the color of my hair or my eyes. It drives the way I think and the way I feel. It is a part of everything I do. I believe that’s true of every member of the MTEA, no matter what your particular job may be. The children of the Milwaukee Public Schools are in trouble – and that affects all of us. Seventy percent of our 10th graders can’t read or do math at grade level according to the latest available WKCE scores. However you feel about the WKCE – or judging students and educators on the basis of a single number – those scores tell us that these students are not getting what they need. None of us can accept that. Some would have us believe that this is solely the fault of educators. That’s not true. But we do share a responsibility to improve teaching and learning in MPS. We owe that to our students and we owe it to each other. We didn’t create the problems that plague our city – or our public schools – but anyone who thinks those problems will be solved without us is mistaken. Dozens of initiatives to improve teaching and learning in MPS have been attempted. Hundreds have been tried in other school districts across the country. The only ones that have ever worked have been designed collaboratively with the educators who have to implement them at the table. The teacher in me believes that we must be engaged in making things better in the Milwaukee Public Schools. I believe that as strongly as I’ve ever believed anything in my life. We are the experts in teaching and learning and we must be at the center of any efforts to improve the schools – from beginning to end. We need to be at the table when initiatives are designed, we need to be involved in how they are implemented and we need to make sure that there is follow-through to find out what’s working, what’s not and why. I believe that things can get better, and must get better, in MPS and I’m willing to work with the Superintendent, the Greater Milwaukee Committee, the African American Education Council and anyone else who shares that belief. I am willing to engage in this work with anyone who respects our members as professionals, honors our contractual rights and pays attention to the conditions we work under. We have begun a conversation within our union on how we can ensure effective reform in our schools. That conversation has been brought to the Executive Board, the EA Chairpersons, and the Building Representatives and, through them, to our members at their work sites. We want to know how these reforms are affecting you and your ability to do your job. The collaborative planning survey you received at your school earlier this year is part of this process. I urge you to contact me directly at 256-6745 or oulahand@mtea.weac.org if you have more to add to the conversation. The work will be hard. But the alternative, to stay out of the fight and continue to lose thousands of students and hundreds of jobs, is harder. The bottom line is that too many students aren’t getting what they need not only to get a good job, but to live a full life. Those who have changed their communities and our society during our lifetime - Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X - have had two things in common. They all knew how to use language and numbers masterfully. And they learned those skills in public school. We can be agents of reform like them, or we can be the targets of reform. It will mean working differently and it will mean working more, but the payoff, students who are not only able to participate in the future, but ready to change the future, is worth the sacrifice. Thank you. In Solidarity,
Dennis Oulahan