MILITARY BUILD-UP SHOULD BENEFIT OUR CHILDREN

The Military build-up will affect several areas in our public structure, Education being one of the most important areas. When deciding on how to accommodate this situation, we must keep in mind what would benefit our children. The military breakdown is reported to be 14,560 for military and 11,630 for dependents totaling 26,190. The expected outside of the fence population growth is 20,000. GPSS has a total of 26 elementary schools, 8 Middle, 5 High, and 1 alternative, all of which struggle with overcrowding even after the 3 additional newly built schools. The Civilian/Military Taskforce on Education has been meeting to discuss their plans in how we should handle the build-up. One of the solutions in addressing the concerns for GPSS is that “GPSS should consider re-negotiating the employee-union contract to maximize use of teachers’ time to assist during school hours and eliminate school aides, and incorporate the ability for administration to move teachers based on the needs and workload of the schools.” How does taking away school aides and adding more duties to teachers benefit our children? It is important that we keep in mind the safety of our children at school. Our school aides are responsible for ensuring the safety of hundreds of students before school, during lunch and breaks, and after school. We can’t take them away, it’s just too risky for such large populations we have in our public schools. Our teachers have a responsibility to prepare adequate learning material for our students, by adding more responsibilities will take away sufficient time from preparing their lessons. We need to do what’s best for our children and this is not the solution that would benefit them.