Here's how Brevard Schools can show thanks this Teacher Appreciation Week | Opinion
- Anthony Colucci
- Jun 9
- 3 min read
May 5 through May 9 marks Teacher Appreciation Week: Classroom supplies, discounts, words of gratitude, gift cards, and knickknacks abound.
As a former classroom teacher, this week always felt special and reinforced my love of teaching. Overall, our community makes us feel appreciated. However, if Brevard Public Schools is going to attract and retain effective educators, there are five issues that need to be addressed immediately.
First, Brevard Public Schools must start implementing creative solutions to bring down the cost of health insurance for teachers. As rewarding as teaching is, being around hundreds, if not thousands, of students a day takes a toll on teachers’ health. Unfortunately, premiums, copays, and deductibles continue to increase. The latest increases have made it difficult for teachers to get the care they need. While other Central Florida districts are using innovative methods such as direct contracting with doctors to reduce costs to employees, BPS has not moved in this direction. Instead, they are stuck doing business as usual at the expense of teachers’ health and money.
Next: The district must hold administrators accountable when they show they are incapable of leading a school. Year after year, some administrators are so unbearable that a significant number of their teachers quit teaching or transfer schools. Instead of dealing with the culprit in this situation, Brevard Public Schools has resorted to hiring international teachers to fill the void. While many of these teachers are fantastic, this cannot be the long-term solution. The district regularly gets rid of ineffective teachers, and administrators must be held to the same standard. In return, more teachers will stick with the district.
Third: Teachers’ non-instructional time must be freed up. The workload for teachers is ever-growing. It has become a situation teachers are retiring as soon as possible or leaving the profession for other work. Gone are the days when the teacher decided how and what to teach. Teachers are inundated with principal mandates, district mandates, state mandates, and federal mandates. Curriculum is now such that some expect all teachers to be teaching the exact same thing at the exact same time. Everyone expecting one more thing has become a hundred things dropped on the teacher’s lap. Teachers need a work-life balance. They need time to prepare their lessons, contact parents, and grade assessments. The district can eliminate many principal and district mandates to ensure that teachers’ planning time belongs to them.
Brevard Public Schools must support their teachers, not throw them under the bus at every turn. Teaching kids today is probably the hardest it has ever been. Distractions from technology, poor parenting, discipline issues, and a charged political climate are no small obstacles. Even our best teachers make mistakes, but I am regularly dumbfounded by some of the issues Brevard Public Schools decides to come after a teacher for when a simple discussion and redirection would do. Just a couple of years ago, I sat through a discipline meeting because a teacher gave the students popcorn on his birthday. The irony of this situation is that the district does not hold its administrators to the same standards. This year, no school-based principal or administrator was given a letter of reprimand or had a letter placed in his or her file.
Finally: The district needs to ensure the large workforce housed at the central office is doing what is supposed to do, supporting students and teachers. While there was talk of this changing with new district leadership, it has not improved. Day in and day out, the union is helping teachers with certification issues, health insurance problems, unruly students, pay questions and more. While we will always be there for our members, the fact is they often come to us because they have been ignored or dismissed by the very people at the district who are supposed to make their jobs easier. Have some of those employees working in the district office lost sight of the fact that they’re there to serve those working in schools?
If Brevard Public Schools is going to be the best school district in the state, it is time that leadership addresses pressing issues. Only then will it become a place where teachers come to stay because they truly feel appreciated.
Anthony Colucci is president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers.
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