🌅 🎙️ Teachers Union President Interview

It's Tuesday! I'm trying something a little different. On the second Tuesday of every month, I'm hoping to release an interview with somebody who is local and who matters to our daily lives and how we live here locally. This month I sat down with David Freeland, the president of the Education Association of St. Lucie, the union that represents teachers and support staff in St. Lucie County Public Schools.

The full interview is on Patreon. These deeper, longer-form projects take more time and more support to pull off, so if you're interested in seeing this become a regular thing!

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I have been wanting to have this conversation for a long time. David Freeland has been the president of the Education Association of St. Lucie, the union that represents teachers and support staff in St. Lucie County Public Schools, for years. He is a teacher himself, a math teacher, and somebody who came into this work almost by accident and never left. We sat down recently and talked for a while 🎙️.

The full interview is on Patreon. If you are not a member yet, this is a good reason to become one. But here is what the conversation covered and where we landed.

What we talked about:

We started with how David got here. He is originally from Wisconsin, came to Florida to be near family, stumbled into union work, and has been doing it for about 18 years now. He came from a state with strong unions and landed in a very different landscape in Florida, and that contrast has shaped a lot of how he thinks about this work.

From there the conversation moved into what is actually changing in education and why. His answer was direct. It is not students that are changing, it is the system around them. And the system is being pulled in a lot of different directions at once.

Some things he said that stuck with me:

On why he does this work: "Teachers should be focused on doing their work as teachers, as educators, working with students. That allows me to be their voice."

On the privatization of public education and what it actually means for a classroom: "If one student leaves, you don't get rid of a teacher and a bus and the building. We still have to keep the buses running, the building running, the teacher has to be there, the support staff has to be there. So we're stripping out money without eliminating any of those roles."

On what happens when a student leaves for a private school and comes back mid year: "If 50 students come back to the school halfway through the year with no funding, they're not going to hire more teachers. What they're going to do is make my class bigger."

On accountability and what public schools offer that private schools do not: "A parent can look and see exactly what we are teaching. If a teacher deviates from that, I end up in an office with a principal representing them because you cannot do that. That is what you get from a public school. Accountability."

On the future of public education: "There will always be public schools. The question is how well supported are they going to be by their communities. They may look different. We may have to rearrange the resources we have. But public schools, I think, will always be here."

Where we ended up:

We talked for a while about what the next decade looks like from where David sits. He did not sugarcoat it. He sees public schools being further stripped of resources before things start to swing back. But he also said St. Lucie County is in a better position than most because of a community that has chosen to support its schools. That matters more than people realize.

There is a lot more in the full conversation, including some things he said about curriculum, working conditions, teacher compensation and the difference between what is required of public schools versus private ones, that I think are worth hearing directly from him. This one is worth your time.

Watch the full interview on Patreon here 🎙️.

Thursday, September 10

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