TOPEKA — Buhler teacher Sam Neill worked late into the night Sunday, Jan. 29, networking with fellow teachers to sculpt a testimony that would adequately describe the issues educators are facing statewide.
After making the two and half hour drive into Topeka to give lawmakers her opinion on educational issues in the state on Monday, she was told by a lawmaker that people like her were the reason no one wanted to become teachers.
“It really took me off guard,” Neill said during an interview. “I was not expecting to have that kind of a response at the end of a very long day. I was asked to come up and share reasons why teachers are leaving the profession, and that’s what I did. And just because some of those reasons are not what wants to be heard, we can’t assume that that means they’re invalid.”
Neill has been teaching for 20 years. She was the 2018 Kansas Teacher of the Year and a 2021 Lowell Milken Center fellow, a prestigious national honor.
During the Monday House K-12 Education Budget Committee hearing, Neill asked lawmakers to support teachers by implementing better pay, giving teachers more of a voice in public education policy, and fully funding schools.
She also asked lawmakers to stop using harmful rhetoric, such as the “sexualized woke agenda,” and promoting false ideas.
“Here are some of the words that we hear every day as educators: Groomers, indoctrinators, indoctrination camps, agenda pushers, radicals, leftists, socialist, communist, government schools,”...
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