The Utah Education Association’s outgoing president, Parkite Heidi Matthews, says news laws like HB 396, which seeks to address pandemic-related strains, will aid educators. It requires the State Board of Education to provide funding to schools to pay teachers for additional time spent to do their jobs.
“Well, it was 64 million which is really pretty amazing. It started as a $57 million request from the UEA and went through a number of different iterations. And by the time it was passed, I had unanimous support from both the House and the Senate, which is outstanding, and it will probably mean about 32 to 40 hours per licensed educator in in the state.”
As with most legislative sessions, UEA didn’t get all it hoped for and had to fight to keep some bills from becoming laws.
House Bill 234 would have required educators to publicly post all learning materials in advance of instruction for parent inspection. Matthews says that concept was part of a wave of cookie cutter legislation sweeping the nation and attacking public education.
“It’s coming out of Alec and the Heritage Foundation, DeVos, Cato, those types of institutes but wow that one struck a nerve and was early in the session and we put together a petition, we as the Utah Education Association that received almost 34,000 signatures in 48 hours. And it really had an impact not only to have House Bill 234 put aside, but in terms of kind of laying a foundation for the rest of the rest of the session.”
Matthews says the additional work that would have been required to post everything teachers were doing daily was unrealistic. She says that while HB 234 was overruled, it most likely will return in the future.
“I do think that on the surface, it seems like, oh, who would be against transparency who would be against parental rights? And, and, of course, we're not as educators, we want to work with our parents, we want to make sure that we have those important relationships, where the curriculum is, is sound, and what our kids are learning is really appropriate. But what these bills would do is they really attack the professional integrity of our educators sets them up for lawsuits, and really goal of undermining public education and privatizing it.”
Matthews says House Bill 11, which bans transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports, will hurt countless numbers of transgender students. She says such bills fly in the face of how many educators feel about their most vulnerable population.
While she’s hopeful for the future of public education, she says it is a difficult time, with record numbers of teachers leaving the profession and in some cases being replaced by people who must learn on the job.
“I think that the pandemic really brought to light the workload levels, the class sizes that matter, these bills that show that increasing disrespect and questioning of professional integrity certainly add to that. We're also seeing a number of our teachers as they're leaving, they're being replaced by people who are learning on the job. And thank goodness, they're here. But it unfortunately, that leads to even an increased turnover, because they're, they're, you know, having to learn these skills to be able to, to manage all the many things that go into a successful classroom.”
Matthews’ term as president of the UEA is over in three months. She will be replaced by Renee Pinkney, a social studies teacher at Park City High School and current vice president of the union.
