The Sad State Of Both Education And Politics In America And Appalachia Today

  An Update To Two Earlier Blog Posts

In two other blog posts from the last few days, I wrote about my decision to buy and publicly wear a baseball cap with the caption "Jack Smith Making America Great Again".  I had written about the fact that I had worn it to several businesses on this past Friday, February 9, 2024, and had not had a single person speak to me about the baseball cap either to thank me for wearing it or attempt to convince me that I was an idiot and had made a terrible mistake to support the work of Jack Smith, the Special Prosecutor who will, if there is a God in Heaven, send TRAITOR Trump to the federal penitentiary for the rest of his slimy, treasonous life.  I also wrote another blog post yesterday, February 10, 2024, about the absolutely dangerous and destructive Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the Kentucky state legislature and, in particular, a pending Kentucky State Senate bill (Senate Bill #4) which is intended to stop Kentucky school teachers from using their unused sick days to add to their service time upon retirement which has been a standing benefit provided to Kentucky teachers and other state employees for many years.  This is an absolutely asinine bill which will further exacerbate the state's ability to hire and retain competent teachers especially in light of the fact that their pay and benefit structure is already well below those of most other states.  In that particular post about the state legislature, I had also provided a link to the Kentucky State Senate Regular Session Record website from the Kentucky State Legislative Research Commision which provides complete information about every pending piece of legislation during the session.  I sincerely hope  that every concerned citizen of Kentucky or anyone else with a vested interest in the state will choose to visit and study that website, use it to inform and refine your beliefs and opinions about pending actions of the legislature, and then choose to speak out about, propagate, and vigorously defend those beliefs and opinions.  

 

Now, I am betting that most of my regular readers are wondering what all this writing about Kentucky Senate Bill #4 and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the state legislature has to do with wearing a baseball cap supporting the incredible work of Jack Smith and his investigative and prosecutorial team.  This is the story of that connection.  Yesterday, Saturday, February 10, 2024, I went as I usually do to my local Saturday hangout where I customarily eat lunch and spend time with two friends, one of which owns the hangout and the other who is a lifelong friend of that owner and my friend from several years.  It is also pertinent that the owner is a local business person with two businesses in the this county and has served almost twenty years in two separate terms on the county Board of Education.  I had spent probably an hour talking with my two friends when the owner's liberal son-in-law came downstairs from where he had been working without my knowledge.  This liberal son-in-law is also a friend of mine and we love to talk politics and other topics when we have the time together.  I called him over to show him my baseball cap which he appreciated greatly and we had a good laugh about it.  His father-in-law, the long term Board of Education member, then asked me, seriously, "Who is Jack Smith?" I told him, "the Special Prosecutor" and he never said a word further.  It is now pertinent for me to say that a Facebook friend of mine who is a retired college English professor had mentioned to me earlier that the reason I had not had anyone ask me about the baseball cap was because the people who customarily support TRAITOR Trump can't read.  I now have to admit that this friend was correct.  

My Board of Education member friend and I then continued our conversation in which I asked him what  he thought about Kentucky Senate Bill #4 and the fact that the majority in the state legislature was attempting to take away the right of Kentucky teachers to use their unused sick days to extend their time of service upon retirement.  To my surprise he said that the bill is a good idea and gave me a rambling justification that "when people retire the Boards of Education where they worked have to pay for that sick time at their current rate of pay instead of the rate of pay they were earning at the time they earned the sick time".  I asked what he thought about the probability that the bill, if it becomes law, will make it more difficult to hire and retain teachers in Kentucky.  He said,"Yes, it might but it's a good idea to pass that bill."  I was, to say the least, surprised if not shocked to hear that from a sitting Board of Education member in a county where I personally know that at least one teacher has been hired in the last year or two who did not have an education degree and all her prior work  history had been in a variety of public sales positions. Hence, she was hired under a special provision in the law which allows people with unrelated degrees and experience to be hired as teachers because of a hardship waiver if qualified teachers are not applying for the available jobs  I have no idea if it is relevant that the teacher to which I am referring is related to a member of my friend's extended family. But it is very relevant that he has a great niece who is a teacher and has chosen to work in another county located about two hours from this county where most of her close relativee live.  The county in which she works is one of the best counties in the state in terms of teacher pay and benefits.

But the most relevant aspect of all this for me is that I know a member of the local Board of Education who had no idea who Jack Smith is until I told him and is not concerned that every teacher in this state stands to lose a great deal of accumulated sick time, and therefore time of service which will lower their retirement pay when it has been a long standing aspect of employment in education in Kentucky.  And you can bet your sweet ass that if the Right Wing Radical Repugnican majority in the Kentucky State Legislature get away with taking that sick time feature of retirement away from teachers, their next move will be to take it away from every other employee of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  If Kentucky teachers don't Stand Up, Speak Up, and Speak Out strongly in their entire numbers against this legislation it will become law at a time when the current lieutenant governor is a former educator and she and the governor have fought tooth and nail for their entire time in office to try to force the legislature to give teachers a sizeable raise which would make them more equitably paid in comparison to their peers in other states. And, due to the veto proof majorities in both houses of the legislature any veto from the governor can only be a public statement of disagreement with the bill.  In fact, every state employee, both current and retired needs to be fighting to defend the teachers of Kentucky in this effort to stop this asinine bill from becoming law. If every state employee stood up with the teachers and expressed their intent to vote against any legislator who votes in support of this bill, it would never pass into law.  We should all be fighting to make Kentucky teachers the best paid and best compensated via other benefits in the nation.  When teachers are given excellent pay and benefits in this state, better qualified and more dedicated persons will strive to become teachers and to fulfill their careers until retirement.  Better teachers produce better educated citizens and those citizens produce better lifetime output than lesser educated citizens.  If we want a great state, we must hire and retain great teachers and pay them what they are worth in every other state in the nation.