‘Our Kids Won’t Have Any Teachers Next Year’: Texas Educator Shares Her Concerns
Texas educator, mother and podcaster Phylicia Jimenez recently posted a TikTok sharing her concerns about Texas schools and how they are being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jimenez starts the video by stating that she doesn’t think kids will have any teachers by next year from what she's observed as an educator living in North Texas.
Due to teachers being out with COVID-19 and substitute teachers not wanting to work and put themselves at risk, schools are combining classes or simply leaving students without teachers, leading to major complications.
According to Jimenez, eight superintendents have resigned and schools are extremely understaffed, leaving 50 to 60 kids in a class when the average is around 25 to 30 students per teacher. Some districts have even extended the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in order to handle the overwhelming number of COVID-19 cases and try to recover.
Jimenez also mentioned how nearly every district in Texas still don't require masks. This makes it even more difficult to maintain a healthy and safe environment for teachers and students alike. Putting teachers and students at risk by continuing to have in-person classes without masks or other safety protocols is dangerous, and is the reason why many teachers are not planning to return after this school year.
Jimenez ended her video by stating, “next year, teachers are not taking this abuse and we will have no teachers for our kids.”
It's incredibly sad knowing that these people that only want to best for our children are coming to their breaking point like this. I'm a strong believer that we should not have returned to the in-person classes like we did, and continuing to implement online courses would have kept all of these people healthier and happier.
I was still a student when COVID-19 first hit Lubbock, and I thought the school made the right move to finish the spring 2020 semester completely online as they did. But I think it should have stayed that way. I was fortunate enough to have mostly online classes available to me during my last semester at Texas Tech in the fall of 2020. This was also during the time that the university had a face mask and social distancing mandate in place. However, I can’t imagine how current students feel knowing that those safety precautions are no longer in place while COVID-19 numbers in Lubbock are so high.
I don’t blame teachers for wanting to quit in these conditions. If I knew that I was working for a system that didn't seem to care about me or my safety, then I wouldn’t want to continue working there either.