How Public Schools Fail Teachers

By Rhys Hedges

My cousin, Sarah, is one of the biggest education advocates in my life. She has always been a great inspiration to me, and I even followed in her footsteps and attended a school in San Francisco after I transferred from community college. She has been teaching for nearly a decade and has aspirations to become a school principal, but I have heard horror stories about the ways that public school underfunding has affected her and her students. One of these horror stories happened very recently, and it was extremely scary for everyone in my family.

Sarah was expecting her first child with her husband due during June. During the last weeks of May, Sarah experienced hypertension that sparked contractions, causing my aunt to take her to the hospital. The doctors found that on top of the high blood pressure, she was severely dehydrated. The doctors thought she might have preeclampsia, which could have been very harmful or even fatal to both her and the baby. She ended up needing to be induced weeks early and when the medication didn’t work, she had a c-section. She gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, but it was pretty scary for a couple weeks. They still aren’t entirely sure what happened, but she attributes the stress regarding this to the difficult conditions she works in. 

Sarah was under a lot of stress in her classroom. There wasn’t enough funding to have teachers for as many classrooms as they needed, so many teachers, including my cousin, taught combination classes. She was required to teach huge class sizes twice as much content in one school year. Additionally, the lack of teachers meant she got no breaks during the day, which also meant she intentionally drank minimal amounts of water because she couldn’t leave her classroom. The administration at her school pushes teachers to get every last drop of work out of them, without looking out for the health of teachers.

Sarah’s story is not an outlier. This happens at many schools across California, and this stressful environment not only affects teachers, but students as well. These students weren’t getting as attentive and personalized education as they could have if the school had enough funding, and that is not the teachers fault. Some schools in my home school district don’t even have school nurses, counselors, or specialized teachers, on top of having very few regular teachers. The public school system in California is in crisis, and everyone is suffering because of it. We NEED more public school funding, not only to improve our students’ education, but also to protect the health and safety of our students and teachers.