[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 11, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H12]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 RECOGNIZING EDUCATORS AND SCHOOL STAFF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Levin) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 
resilient, dedicated, and understandably exhausted, yet unflagging, 
educators and school staff across the Nation.
  I have spent my career advocating for an equitable education system, 
and I am a proud dad of four children who are products of Michigan 
public schools. In fact, my daughter Molly is currently a high school 
junior who is set to graduate next year. I can hardly believe it.
  That is why I have been especially disheartened when I meet regularly 
with educators and superintendents in Macomb and Oakland Counties and 
hear stories of how these frontline workers navigate from one crisis to 
another, seemingly without end. From multiple COVID-19 waves and 
politicization of commonsense public health measures, like masking and 
vaccines, to mass shootings, like the Oxford High School tragedy in my 
home county of Oakland County that we are still mourning, and startling 
learning loss and social delays.
  Mr. Speaker, our educators, school staff, and administrators are not 
catching a break. They are working tirelessly and meeting daily, even 
over holiday breaks, to make sure they can provide the best learning 
environment for our students. Across the board, they reported trouble 
finding teachers, finding bus drivers, finding kitchen staff and 
everything in between.
  Our students are returning to the classroom with immense needs in the 
midst of a teacher and substitute shortage. All manner of staff and 
administrators, including even superintendents themselves, are stepping 
up and entering the classroom as substitutes.
  One thing is very clear: We need a societal shift to address the 
issues around staffing, attendance, learning loss, and the social and 
mental health needs of our students. As the omicron variant continues 
to surge, we must prioritize education and consider it a sacred public 
good instead of an industry, and value our educators and school staff 
by providing living wages, safe work environments, and ending the 
attacks on educators and their unions.
  The pandemic has exposed long-simmering problems, as crises are wont 
to do. It is a time for a fundamental reset; time for us to realize 
that, while markets do a great job of distributing goods and services 
across the society, there are a few social goods that should not be 
determined by market forces but, rather, lifted up above them as a way 
to protect our democracy and make the healthy functioning of markets 
possible in the first place.
  One is public safety. Another is access to quality healthcare for 
every person. A third is an excellent public education for every child, 
from preschool to community college.
  We cannot continue to put our educators through the wringer. Longtime 
professionals in my district tell me they are hearing from new teachers 
who say they won't last a couple of years, much less decades.
  My response was this: We must restore the education profession; the 
dignity of the education profession; the worth and the standing of the 
education profession, no matter how difficult it is. We must train 
teachers and prepare them for success, offer them appropriate pay and 
benefits, and support them, not only in the classroom, but in our 
society with the dignity and respect they deserve.
  As a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, I urge my 
colleagues to join me in continuing the fight for robust investments 
and just policies to make sure our country, our economy, and our 
education system work for every American, not just the wealthy few.

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