Thank you to the teacher who wrote this open letter to the Sarasota County School Board: I am a public high school teacher in Sarasota County. I am not able to attend today's 10am meeting because, like all district teachers, I am in a classroom doing the work this board most often discusses only in theory. I will begin with the obvious. This proposed resolution does not alter policy. It alters atmosphere. It introduces fear where trust should exist, and suspicion where safety is required. Its impact is not administrative. It is emotional. And emotions shape classrooms long before rules ever do. While this board meets, I will teach roughly 120 students. Seventy-five with accommodations. Most class periods, I will do this alone. Paraprofessional turnover is high. There is no behavior coach. That position was eliminated due to budget cuts. While this meeting proceeds, I will hear students whispering to one another about ICE - not because policy has changed, but because fear has been introduced. I will avoid answering questions about the walkout because no one knows what we're really allowed to say anymore. By 11am, I will have quietly given out at least 5 cups of ramen noodles to students whose lunch accounts are negative because it's too cold for a cheese sandwich today. While heartless and hateful words are spoken from the dias, I will carefully choose my words with a student who is intelligent and friendly but reactive because his parent is incarcerated for homicide - he is usually fine, until the days he isn't, and I can tell which kind of day it is within seconds of seeing his face. While the meeting agenda stretches on and you begin to check your watches, I will check in with a student who wakes before sunrise to drive his parents to work and his siblings to school before arriving or time himself.
While you sit here and pretend to know anything about what students need, I will teach one of my favorite students - a kid who earned Ds and Fs, until I noticed how carefully he took notes when given colored pens. So I bought him his own. He earned an A the following quarter. Sometimes he comes to school tired. If you observed him with his head down, you might think he's disengaged. You might roll your eyes and wonder if he's undocumented. He's in my ESOL class after all. But what you would not know is that he is always exhausted on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because his mother works nights 3 days a week and he cannot sleep until he knows she is home safely. These are not abstract problems. They are daily realities. I understand that issues like poverty, trauma, and instability are complex. I do not expect easy solutions. But I do ask this: please do not add more fear. More trauma. Please do not introduce more division into spaces that rely on trust to function at all. Students do not need symbolic resolutions designed to provoke reaction. They need adults who understand how fragile stability can be and how easily fear disrupts learning. Outrage and visibility consume immense energy. Applied to even one student's education, that same energy could change a life.
The #SarasotaCountySchool board voted 3-2 on a resolution, affirming full cooperation and coordination with law enforcement agencies, including #ICE.
The resolution was brought forward by school board chair Twatzi #BridgetZiegler 🖕🏼🤬😡
Please read a letter from a Sarasota teacher….
#SheShed
