HARDWICK – Having graduated from Hazen Union in 2019, as well as attending Hardwick Elementary School, I consider myself familiar with the OSSU schools system.
As a student, each year I saw the faculty give it their absolute best, under continuously shrinking budgets. Some years, I recall the budget freezing mid-semester, halting instructional plans, activities, trips and more.
As a young adult in a position that requires knowledge of municipal and school budgets, I see now how convoluted and strained our current funding system appears to be. It is also plain that our educators deserve more compensation for their ever-growing breadth of responsibilities.
I can attest to the quality of education provided within our small but effective system of K-6 elementary education and the mixed middle and high school community at Hazen Union.
I saw classmates start successful businesses immediately upon leaving school, become a U.S. Marine or go on to attend Ivy League universities.
As I am only twenty five, there is surely more to come from my fellow students.
I believe these successes would be impossible without dedicated teachers and faculty.
Our devoted educators deserve more.
Echoing the sentiments of some other editorial contributors this week, I believe we must restructure the current funding system.
Teachers deserve fair compensation, classroom supplies and support.
They shouldn’t go to work making backup plans for a mid-semester budget freeze.
Time and again, educators are expected to take on more and more responsibilities. They are asked to educate students first and foremost, a large enough task on its own, on top of monitoring the physical health and emotional well being of students as mandated reporters.
In recent years, they have been trained to defend the classroom with their lives, in the event of an active shooter.
Again, there is no additional compensation, just ever-growing expectations.
Surely those tasked with shaping future generations should be compensated as such.
When I was a child, I assumed teachers made more than enough money to sustain themselves: an innocent, yet ignorant assumption.
I assumed everyone valued education, and thus our educators, as much as we students rely on them in our formative years.
The existing structure does not work and is not sustainable.
If there are steps to be made, we need to start making them.
As the nation must bargain with a decidedly anti-educator administration right now, we must rethink how we value education, and those that provide it to our communities.
With the attempted dissolution of the Department of Education and other roadblocks to federal dollars, I believe we must bear more responsibility as a state to incentivize educators to continue on their path of stewardship.
Our classrooms should not be where we cut costs. They should be the place where we invest in the future of our communities.
Raymonda Parchment, reporter
Raymonda Parchment is a Hardwick Gazette reporter. She recently graduated from Vermont State University - Castleton with a Bachelor’s Degree in English. She is a strong supporter of freedom of speech, and the right to publish information, opinions, and ideas without censorship or restraint. She is a lifelong lover of the written word, and is excited to join the team as a staff member.
