(FORGIVE MY SENIOR MOMENT–BEING SO UPSET WITH THE DAY’S NEWS, I MISTAKENLY PLACED ST. PAUL IN THE WRONG STATE, WHEN I KNOW IT IS ONE OF THE TWIN CITIES OF MINNESOTA. I HAVE LEARNED TO OWN MY MISTAKES.)
The teachers of St. Paul, Minnesota, are on strike. Their number one demand is the expansion of mental health services and counseling for their students. The #Red4Ed movement continues, as teachers become first-line protectors of their students.
Teachers and support staff in Saint Paul, Minnesota, are on strike for the first time since 1946.
The union says students need more counseling and mental health support than the district and current staff can provide.
The strikers are demanding a mental health team at every school. The team would include social workers, psychologists, nurses, and behavior intervention specialists, in numbers proportional to the number of students in the school.
Despite marathon bargaining sessions over the weekend, the district made no real movement on the core issues. The union rejected the district’s last-minute offer to call off the strike and take the contract dispute to arbitration instead.
“There are so many kids with so many issues,” said middle school teacher Leah Van Dassor. “Kids are depressed because they have problems at home. They don’t have anyone to talk to.”
St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) Vice President Erica Schatzlein sees a wide range of needs in her work as an elementary teacher with English language learners.
“A students that had a parent pass away, instead of acting out, becomes completely withdrawn,” she said. A newly homeless student “has a meltdown, and I have to evacuate the classroom.”
In addition to its mental health demands, the union is asking for more bilingual teacher’s aides and limits on class size for special education.
“It’s too bad that all these important social services fall on the shoulder of the schools, but they do,” said Van Dassor, who is also on the bargaining team. “We have to try to figure out a way to help.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Its minnesota
Stef,
Sorry for the error. I corrected it at once. My brain is on overload with so much bad news raining down all day.
No worries at all, Diane. So much news out there today it’s hard to keep it all straight. Thanks for all you do!!
Adding……..in the age of the corona virus, we need a full time nurse at every school. Actually, every school needs a full time nurse, counselor/psychologist whether there is a corona virus or not.
kids feel safest when they have many adults to help them out: instead the nation cuts directly-help-the-kids jobs and adds more and more distant armed security
From the district’s website, the demographics of the district are as follows.
Approximately 34% of students are English Language Learners
15% of students require special education services
70% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch
If this district has about 34% ELLs, I am positive that these students also comprise about half of the students that are eligible for free or reduced lunch as well. This is a high needs school district. I know for a fact that if students come from war-torn homelands, many students suffer the scars of trauma. I have served many of these students, but not in a school district than also served as many poor American students as well. Clearly, these students need lots of support that would be best provided if those wrap-around services could be available in the schools. Where I worked we had a family resource center that included a social worker and liaisons that could also speak the language of the student. They people worked with parents and even drove them to social services, when it was necessary.
These teachers must be pushed to the brink in order to call for a strike. They deserve our respect and support for standing up for their students. Overwhelming needs should be addressed, not ignored. Poor, troubled students require more attention and resources than affluent ones. If the community fails to provide them, it will pay in other ways through an increase in violence and students heading to the school to prison pipeline.
Thanks for sharing this. We brought food to strikers at several schools, including our oldest daughter, who teaches at one of the St Paul Public Schools, and teachers at our 5 grand daughters schools. Imho, district leadership has consistently failed to listen to educators, families and students about the most important priorities.
Just in
love that this Republican governor has friggin common sense. He was very inspirational in his talk today. And one thing he said was that they were going to not worry if they have to skip state mandated tests for school this year because it frankly didn’t matter and it’s not important. That’s the leadership we need in this country. He told us that Ohioans were strong and kind and that we will pull together. He appealed to our best selves. He told businesses to think of the child care needs of the parents who had to stay home. “These are not ordinary times. We are doing this to save lives.”
“We’re going to try to use common sense. We are all in this together. No one is going to impose a crazy regulation that doesn’t make sense,” the governor said. “This is a crisis.”
“As for the details, such as normally mandated tests, DeWine said: “If we can’t have testing this year, we will not have testing this year. The world will not come to an end.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cleveland.com/news/2020/03/ohio-gov-dewine-announces-3-week-spring-break-for-ohio-schools-to-control-coronavirus.html%3foutputType=amp
Kudos to this union. They put the lie to all those low-info anti-union cranks w/their claims of greedy union teachers out for themselves, not students. Sadly here’s another underfunded district grossly neglecting student needs, leaving the onus on teachers [& even secretaries] to do their own job PLUS dispense medicine, provide social & mental counseling, communicate w/non-Eng-speaking parents sans translator, etc.