This is an open letter to Governor Rick Snyder and the Michigan Legislature. I am a public school teacher, and when I walked out of my building at the end of the 2011-2012 school year I felt battered, abused, confused and angry. I knew that myself and my peers were professional, resourceful, hard working, diligent, knowledgeable, caring, and committed yet we had just spent a year trying to do our jobs while the educational system was in complete disarray thanks to your work at “reforming” and “reinventing,“ and we were being told that it was all our fault. I hoped that over the summer sanity would return to Lansing and those making the decisions as to how public education should be reformed would see the mess they were creating and stop the nonsense. Alas, no sane person materialized and things only got worse. I spent the 2012-2013 school year trying to make sense out of a complete breakdown of this glorious institution that was created to form a knowledgeable citizenry able to benefit from the right to pursue happiness. I know what you are doing. I know that you do not care about the children of this state, so when you utter the words “it’s all about the children” you make me want to throw up. When you say that giving more money to the schools is not the answer I want to slap you up side the head and yell “You lying sack of doo doo, of course you know that adequately funding school districts will improve them and make it possible for all students to have the opportunity to achieve!” How do I know this? Well first of all, and probably the most in your face example is the fact that Governor Snyder, your children attended Greenhills, a private school in Ann Arbor that cost 18,000 dollars a year. It was acknowledged that that amount was not enough to provide the education that your children and their classmates deserve so fundraising takes place to get the additional money necessary to educate them in the way you, and the parents of their peers, want them to be educated. How can you tell the people of Michigan, with a straight face, that its not about the money? Glad I could work that in, now to continue with how I know that you all don’t give a damn about the kids you profess in your speeches to be working for. If you cared about the children of this state you would not be cutting the programs that directly aid the ones whose parents need assistance. If you cared about the children of this state you would be acknowledging that there is a crisis in mental health care and much needed facilities to help those suffering from problems that the schools are not equipped to fix. If you cared about the children of this state you would care about their mothers and not be circumventing their ability to get the medical care they need. If you cared about the children of this state they would not be considered “human capital” and therefore just another cog in the wheel of capitalism. If you cared about the children of this state you would be consulting those who are educated in child and adolescent development as well as those of us who teach these children everyday, as you seek to improve the educational system and not those who will profit from the additional testing you advocate for and the increased reliance on technology in schools that will also bring profits to those in that industry. If you cared one bit about the children of this state you would be doing everything in your power, and boy do you have power, to eradicate the villain that is the root of all of the educational problems, POVERTY. But you don’t care, not about the children of this state. I feel it is important to point out that with all of the quick changes, the lives of teachers have been greatly impacted. I am trying to remain articulate here, but my inner voice is demanding to be heard and is screaming “You are decimating people’s lives and you do not give a damn! How do I know you don’t give a damn? Because you keep passing laws that wipe out teachers’ jobs and put them in the unemployment lines creating stress that transfers to their children who now will have their ability to learn impacted and their tests scores will go down and it will be the teachers’ fault so you will have more reasons to point your fingers, close more schools and put more money in the pockets of the vultures waiting to pounce and reform their way to prosperity. So I am about to begin a new school year, I know that it will not be better than the last school year, it will in fact most likely be far worse. It will be worse because we are again faced with legislation that will demand things of us that we cannot produce because it is all happening too fast, and those at the top are more confused than those of us in the trenches. Those of you who are legislating know nothing about the daily job of educating the children you profess to care so deeply about, so you cannot begin to comprehend how your laws will impact their educational future, but then you just don’t care either. You are on a mission to make public education obsolete, to further divide students economically, to create opportunities for those with money to profit in the arena of education, and because your children will find success because money produces opportunity, you simply do not care about the rest of the children of this state.