Ask them.

Ask them the tough questions about how they are resourced and treated.

Ask them how they handle ever-increasing case loads, fewer resources, mountainous amounts of paper work, and the legal intricacies that they have to navigate on a daily basis.

Because if you are not one of the decreasing number of EC educators in our public schools, then you do not know.

I have been in public education for nearly 30 years and have a child in public schools who has an IEP longer than a 19th Century Russian novel, and I do not know. That’s why I ask.

And the EC teachers in WSFCS are stretched so thin that they literally are having to decide whether to stay in our classrooms for their own health and sanity.

We must do more to make sure that our exceptional children with law-binding IEPs get the services they require before lawsuits from special needs parents start gaining traction in the court system and ultimately make the district pay more in the end.

Please do not think that last school year was the worst we could go through as a school system. We may be out of the financial debt according to the bottom line, but the price we are still paying to be able to claim such an accomplishment has yet to be fully itemized.

Please vote for people who are pro-public education and who will make the state pass a better budget so we can help these EC teachers.

You have less than two months.