ISEA President visits Lone Tree school

By Molly Roberts
Posted 5/10/22

On Wednesday, April 27, Iowa State Education Agency President Mike Beranek visited the Lone Tree Community School District to meet with students and educators. He read to preschoolers, served on a …

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ISEA President visits Lone Tree school

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On Wednesday, April 27, Iowa State Education Agency President Mike Beranek visited the Lone Tree Community School District to meet with students and educators. He read to preschoolers, served on a jury for a high school government class’s mock trial, decorated cakes with Culinary I students and even participated in the elementary band’s recorder day.

“I will tell you today, just from my very short time here at Lone Tree, this community needs to be incredibly proud of the education that’s happening,” Beranek said. “The critical thinking that’s taking place, the opportunities for conversation and exploration and the joy that’s here is tremendous. I would be pleased to send my child to school here because I know that the educators are providing high quality education, as they always have.”

The ISEA is a union that represents over 50,000 public educators, helping ensure they have the salaries and benefits necessary for working in the field, as well as supporting educators with maintaining licensure requirements, working the Department of Education to help provide appropriate and necessary curriculum, and other aspects of support to help educators do their jobs.

Beranek said the ISEA works to ensure that educators’ wages are similar to those of other fields that have the same kind of degree requirements. But Iowa has fallen behind in the past seven years, with a teacher’s starting salary remaining at $33,500 private industries’ have gone up.

“We strive to allow our professionals to do their jobs. They did go to college for this, and they are the ones who understand the pedagogy of the profession, so we represent their rights to make the professional decisions that are necessary for their students,” Beranek said. “We advocate for every aspect of education, and so we aren’t just a union that focuses on salaries and benefits, we are also an association that is deeply concerned about the quality of education that students receive, the kind of education they receive and the welfare of the students.”

Beranek said Iowa is currently in a crisis of finding qualified individuals to work in public schools and the crisis continues to grow as educators are facing unprecedented challenges in their profession. Taxes on public education, both through legislature and individuals, bills such as the Divisive Concepts Bill, demands for unrealistic transparency and demands to monitor classroom materials — all of these challenges are creating a situation where educators are considering hanging up their teaching licenses and moving on to something else.

“We have to and will teach every child that walks through our classroom doors, and we have to and will continue to teach the truth because our students need to learn our history, they need to learn the successes and failures of our history and be able to critically analyze those situations and work to make our future better,” Beranek said. “We currently are not supporting our public schools the way we should be; we are attacking our public schools.”

Beranek said many teachers are leaving their districts in the first one of two years of their career and even mid-career educators who have witnessed negative attacks on Iowa’s schools are considering leaving the profession. On top of that, enrollment in the ISEA’s pre-service programs across the state has decreased.

“Instead of developing things, instead of perpetuating a negative atmosphere in our schools, we need to be looking at recruitment and retention,” Beranek said.

Beranek, who is a third-grade teacher with the West Des Moines Community School District currently on leave to serve as ISEA’s president, travels throughout the state to meet with students and educators and get a first-hand look at what is happening in the state’s classrooms. He said he was once talking to a 14-year veteran of public schools who was unable to afford the insurance offered by the district and had to enroll in Hawkeye Insurance, an Affordable Care Act plan.

“Here’s a woman with a degree who has taught 14 years and she isn’t earning enough money to buy the insurance that’s offered by her district,” Beranek said. “Anyone who has been working in any field for that long shouldn’t have to reply on a public service in order to provide for their children.”

Beranek was raised in the Washington County area and attended Washington Public Schools. He said, because he grew up here, he is familiar with the exemplary quality of education happening at Mid-Prairie, Highland, Lone Tree and other area schools.

“I take great pride in growing up in this area, but we have become complacent in offering our support and gratitude towards our schools. My message that I travel around the state to deliver is that it’s time to take the narrative back from the minority of individuals who wish to attack our schools, who wish to instill their own beliefs, and we as a majority need to lift up and support our public schools and help our educators teach all the children that walk through the classroom door.”

“Our public educators are doing a fantastic job. I have traveled all over the state of Iowa, and I can assure you that none of our educators have a sinister intent and all of our educators are working to teach the truth,” Beranek said. “They are making sure that those students who walk through our classroom doors are seen in the materials they read and the content they learn. The fundamental purpose of us as educators is to teach children how to live in a democratic society. I’m very, very proud of the work that our educators are doing.”