Open Letter from the 2015 Clay County Teacher of the Year

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

To my colleagues, friends and neighbors in Clay County:

     Justice Louis Brandeis’ famous quote came more than a hundred years ago as the United States was in the middle of trying to clean up the effects of the Gilded Age.  The Gilded Age was a time period that saw politicians and corporations manipulate laws and secrecy to keep the American people in the dark and rake in massive amounts of public money for their own wallets.  Through reformers like Justice Brandeis, President Theodore Roosevelt and many others, sunlight and transparency was restored to our government and America built the largest middle class the world had ever seen through most of the 20^th century.

Unfortunately my friends, we are now in a new era of forced darkness as those in leadership are aiming to keep us, the working people of Clay County, in the dark so they can manipulate our tax dollars for corporate greed and personal wealth.   One of the chief organizations that they are using to accomplish their twisted plot is our elected School Board.

The putting up curtains to keep the sunlight out of Clay County started in 2012 when election rules were manipulated to ensure that nearly half of Clay County voters would effectively not have a say in their elected superintendent.  Once elected, the superintendent and those who support him continued to fight to keep Clay County teachers, parents and voters in the dark.  You can see this manipulation on several issues whether it was using tax money to support groups with radical interpretations of US history, hiring of supporters with little experience, or money for lobbyists.  Due to arbitration that keeps opposing viewpoints out of county email, the superintendent is able to Their goal is to keep the working voters of Clay County out of the process to enrich themselves and their supporters.

Why this is important to keep in mind is because this same pattern has been and is continuing to be applied to the teachers and their contract in Clay County.  As a now former Clay County Teacher of the Year, I feel that it is my obligation to speak on behalf of my friends and great people that I met throughout Clay County Schools. 

In the last 8 years, student performance and achievement has continually improved throughout Clay County Schools.  Some like to claim that public education should be more handled like the real world, and in any other industry those responsible for the increased production would be rewarded financially.  However, the teachers of Clay County have received ZERO raises over the last 8 years.  In fact, with increased contributions for decreasing health care benefits, for their success in the classroom, Clay County teachers have received a significant PAY CUT. 

At the same time this has been happening, teachers have seen county-level administrator positions increase with pay raises, thousands of dollars to educational programs and countless amounts of money kicked back to the charter school industry. Now, the district is claiming poverty and making those responsible for the achievement in Clay County schools balance the budget out of their paychecks.  Even though an appointed, impartial arbitrator agreed that small teacher raises are reasonable, the leadership of the School Board is now pushing forward to ignore those rulings. 

In the discussion about the contract with the arbitrator, it was the belief of the superintendent that my leaving Clay County for a neighboring county was anecdotal and not related to School Board policy regarding teacher contracts.  However, that is completely false.  I left Clay County because as teachers, my wife and I felt that another county did a better job of taking care of its teachers.  In my 8^th year of teaching, I will finally see my first raise as a teacher, our health care costs will be dramatically lower with a growing family and after three years of successful evaluations, I will have contract protections that I could only have dreamed about in Clay County.  These are all measures that the Clay County School Board has had the option of enacting to support their teachers, but have consistently declined.

Again, in an opportunity to keep Clay County’s working voters and teachers in the dark about what is going on, they have scheduled this meeting in the middle of a workday.  This is consistent with their way of handling questions that are in the public interest.  They want to limit questions and criticism from those who they were elected to represent and protect.

A hundred years ago reformers throughout the United States came together to shine a light on elected officials and institutions that were demonstrating values that were un American.  In their handling of the teacher contracts and other issues within the school district, the School Board and its leadership has demonstrated the same values of the Gilded Age bosses of a hundred years ago.  I hope that with my letter and the concerns of other parents and teachers in Clay County, we can begin to shine a light on these injustices, as Louis Brandeis says, disinfect our system and return to Clay County a more perfect union.

Thank you for your time.  I will always have a special place in my heart for Clay County and the great people I worked and live there with.

David W. Fields, M.Ed

2015 Clay County Teacher of the Year