Local opinion: National Teacher of the Year demands that Congress invest in our schools

My name is Juliana Urtubey, and I am proud to represent our nation’s educators as the 2021 National Teacher of the Year. In 2018, my professional career began to take a new direction when I became a National Board Certified Teacher. I quickly learned how to center my teaching and reflection around my students’ strengths and capabilities. Becoming a board-certified teacher helped define my purpose in my classroom and beyond, helping me stay in the classroom. In 2020, my career took another turn as COVID-19 greatly impacted our schools. I was prepared to confront the difficulties of teaching during these times, thanks mainly to the profoundly reflective process of becoming a board-certified teacher.

No matter how prepared, however, I could not have done my job without the federal education funding that kept my students fed when times were tough and gave our schools a fighting chance to recover. Federal funds allowed districts to decide how to support schools, teachers, and students locally. As a result, our students attended summer programming to support their academic and social skills, teachers received grants to access professional learning, new teachers had a mentor to support them in their first years, and many schools could now rely on nurses and social workers. Without these programs, more teachers would leave the profession, and educators’ ability to meet their students’ needs would be significantly inhibited. All civil servants, including legislatures, must protect public education as it is the backbone of our democracy.

This month, the House of Representatives will attempt to pass legislation that cuts the Department of Education’s budget by 28%. This includes an 80% reduction in funding for low-income schools, often used to pay teacher salaries. According to the National Education Association, as many as 248,000 teaching positions could be eliminated entirely if such a proposal were signed into law. Given that all 50 states report critical shortages in at least one subject area, this proposal would greatly exacerbate an already fast-growing crisis.

The bill also proposes totally eliminating 16 federal education programs, including Title II-A of the Every Student Succeeds Act as well as the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant program; both provide critical resources to teachers and communities to grow the number of board-certified teachers in their schools and to improve teacher quality. While the House of Representatives is working to pass legislation that guts public education, the Senate worked admirably in a bipartisan fashion to create a funding proposal that maintains our investments in these critical education programs.

As a National Board Certified Teacher myself, I understand how important it is to invest in programs that protect schools’ budgets and grow the number of accomplished teachers in our schools. Board-certified teachers have a proven track record of accelerating student achievement — research shows that while students in grades 3 to 5 will require 2 to 4 months of additional instruction to recover from pandemic-caused learning loss in reading and math, students who have a board-certified teacher may make up that gap about twice as fast. Students deserve access to a highly accomplished teacher regardless of zip code, and cutting off funding now would impede our ability to make that a reality.

As the House of Representatives works to pass funding legislation, I encourage them to invest responsibly in our children and teachers, who have been working courageously to make up for the learning loss suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our nation’s teachers depend on the House of Representatives to instead pass legislation that protects funding for critical programs such as Title II-A and SEED. Our children deserve a future they can believe in.