Joel Press, Board of Ed Trustee-elect, writes from rally

My name is Joel Press and I am one of your newly elected members of Baldwin’s Board of Education. This past Saturday I hopped on a bus with my wife and two school-age children to join thousands of others from across the state in Albany at the One Voice United rally in support of public education.

I take my place on the Board of Education on July 1 among the toughest financial challenges that I have seen since I moved to Baldwin 11 years ago. Baldwin has lost millions of dollars in state aid over the past several years, while mandated contributions to teacher and employee pension funds have increased dramatically. At the same time, mandated teacher and principal performance reviews and the new Common Core standards have to be implemented, along with additional testing. All of this has come without adequate funding from the state, and the tax cap has severely limited school districts’ ability to pay for it all.

In an effort to show our elected leaders in Albany that we are concerned about what they are doing to our children’s education, a group of about 170 people from Baldwin, Freeport, Hempstead, West Hempstead, Lynbrook, Rockville Centre, Roosevelt, Uniondale and Valley Stream boarded five buses at Freeport High School and headed to Albany.

After arriving in Albany, we joined the crowd in Empire Plaza. What we saw as we entered the Plaza were many thousands of people holding hundreds of signs protesting, among other things, that “Our children are not a test score” and “Art is not a frill.” We heard representatives of the National Education Association, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and the president of the United Federation of Teachers speaking out against the current teacher and principal evaluation system, and the overuse of standardized tests.

We also heard pleas for change and help. A teacher protested that reform will not come from excessive test taking. A superintendent spoke about dealing with the high poverty levels in his district. A principal argued that the art of teaching can’t be quantified as a number, and said his position had shifted from instructional leader to lead evaluator.

We headed back to our buses around 3 p.m. with the day’s events swirling in our heads. The long drive home afforded me the opportunity to engage in some lengthy discussions with the teachers on our bus about what we had heard that day, the impact of the failure of Baldwin’s budget on May 21 and concern about the upcoming budget re-vote on June 18.

What will come of this rally remains to be seen. But it’s clear that there are large numbers of people across the state who are passionate about our children getting the education they deserve. They are willing to fight to make sure that happens, and you can count me among them.