When a Texas task force set out to draft a plan for attracting and keeping more teachers in the state’s schools, it ran into its first problem before work ever began.
The group initially was composed of school district leaders and had no more than one teacher, recalls Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. That didn’t sit well with him or members of the Texas AFT.
“We started making a fuss about it, and they ended up getting an equal number [of teachers],” Capo says of the task force, which ultimately had 23 teachers and 23 administrators. “It actually was a tangible piece of evidence to see what we were talking about when we say there is a lack of respect for educators — when you don’t even want to have them on a committee to talk about what would keep them in a classroom.”
The changed makeup of the Teacher Vacancy Task Force, in Capo’s view, helped to surface one of the group’s key recommendations for how changes to working conditions could attract teachers to the state — and entice them to stay.
After somewhat predictable sections about low teacher pay and the need for better teacher-training pathways, the report includes a section on a topic so mundane it’s almost startling: “Demonstrate Respect and Value for Teacher Time.”
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