By JENNIFER SIMON
To the Editor,
During American Education Week, I want to take a moment to highlight Education Support Professionals. These are your children’s food service workers, custodians, para educators, administrative assistants, library assistants, mechanics, nursing assistants, and school bus drivers. These are people your children see every day when they enter their beloved schools – people who keep our schools running and our students safe, healthy, and ready to learn every day.
I’ve been a Para Educator at Merrimack Middle School for thirteen years. I work one on one with students, and in classrooms. As a Para Educator, my relationship with students is different than that of classroom teachers. I’m not grading them, but I see them multiple times a day or even all day. I see students laugh, struggle, and succeed – all depending upon which class they happen to be in at that moment. My eyes teared up when a student after years of home life struggles and unregulated behavior found themselves able to fluently read to me for the first time ever!
I’ve had some amazing years at my school. I’ve giggled with students blasting “Rock You Like a Hurricane” during a severe weather project and with another who explained that Joseph Smith was killed by A mob not THE mob. I’ve also been brought to tears reading students’ stories of losing a parent to cancer or a child wishing people didn’t act differently around them simply because they use crutches and have a quiet demeanor.
To students, Para Educators are tutor, counselor, nursing assistants, sounding board, comic relief, and trusted adult. You know you have that trust when they share their pain of what is happening at home – from losing their pet hamster to sharing what life is like with Nana because mom is struggling with substance misuse and dad is gone. Those are difficult drives home.
My drives home are difficult for another reason, too. I commute over an hour each way to get to work. Merrimack has amazing health insurance for support staff, which I desperately need. Good health insurance for support staff is not the case in all New Hampshire school districts. However, I cannot afford to live near where I work. There are Education Support Professionals in this state who make as little as eleven dollars an hour! The average salary of an ESP in New Hampshire working at least thirty hours a week is $28,000.
Since the pandemic I’ve wondered what life would be like not working in a school. But more precisely, what it must be like to not spend thirteen hours a week in a car going back and forth to a job that doesn’t even pay me enough to make an actual living.
A new staff member said to me, “How lucky you are to have such a history here.” Is that why I stay? The history? The familiarity?
Perhaps. But I think it is something else…hope. It’s hope that after everything educators went through during the pandemic that our society will value all educators. It’s hope that after watching countless news stories about educators leaving the field and the thousands of open positions in schools across the country that citizens will finally give us a living wage. A living wage is dignity. A living wage is security. A living wage allows educators to focus on your children, instead of worrying about how we are going to afford to fix the car that transports us the sixty-eight miles each way for the good insurance.
Education Support Professionals take care of your children and make sure they have the tools to succeed in schools and classrooms; but as professionals, we are not currently provided with what we need to succeed.
This ESP Day – November 15th – vocalize your appreciation for the Education Support Professionals in your community. Thank them directly. Take time to speak up for ESPs at school board meetings and vote at annual school district meetings with the critical work they do to support student learning in mind.
Every day I see school support staff live up to the title, support. A Library Assistant purchasing shoes for a student struggling with homelessness. A custodian anonymously purchasing ice cream sandwiches for students so they feel seen. I’ve watched Para Educators during the holidays take a tag from our school’s giving tree to help out local families when they themselves would qualify for a tag. Those with the least, give the most.
Now it’s time for New Hampshire to support our Education Support Professionals.
With Hope,
Jennifer Simon
Para Educator
Vice President Merrimack Educational Support Staff Association
NEA-NH Education Support Professional Representative