I spoke in St Joe on the first night of the Northwest Missouri Democrat Days. It was held in the Pony Express Museum, and if you haven’t been, you should stop by. You can walk in the stables of the horses and learn the history of the fast-mail overland delivery by a pony express.

The Jesse James House is just down a few blocks. You can still see the bullet hole over the fireplace that killed the outlaw. It’s grown huge over the decades and now has plexiglass over it because tourists kept taking pieces of the plaster until the small hole turned into a gaping wound in the wall.

I’m just giving your brain a little rest before I hit you hard with the rest of this post…

Northwest Democrats Days is a three-day event this year, and the first night was focused on education. A topic I know well and one I speak on at least briefly everywhere I go.

I am always asked two questions when I speak: Are you running for office again and will you go back to teaching?

Maybe. And never…ever.

Last night, I listened to a 6th-year public school teacher from St Joseph tell a room full of people that while she is getting her PhD in Education, she will not stay in the profession.

That is an indictment on the lawmakers who have harmed our schools and teachers, but also a blunt expression on the difficulties of teaching. Especially in teaching in schools with kids in generational poverty with parents struggling with addiction and incarceration and low-paying jobs and housing insecurity.

I don’t blame this young teacher. We aren’t supporting those doing the work.

Personally, it was the politics and the pay that did me in.

The fact that everything is DEI or CRT or “political” is untenable for me. And, the pay would drive most folks out of the profession.

I left teaching with a Master’s degree and 16 years of classroom experience. I was traveling the heartland presenting to other teachers on how to incorporate Black and Indigenous History into American Literature…I left teaching making 41K per year.

That pay was never going to change. Yearly steps don’t even keep pace with inflation at this point.

I haven’t been in a classroom since 2021. Things aren’t getting any better either — they are getting worse for classroom teachers. And for Missouri students.

What is happening in Missouri to our education system is a preview of what the Republicans plan for the rest of the country. My state is the proving ground for extremism and right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.

Just yesterday, June 6, 2025, there was a report that state education leaders are in talks to close 12 Missouri schools…for children with severe disabilities.

My god.

Bruce Young employs people with disabilities in Columbia, Missouri and he said:

“I’m just not sure who else can serve those folks," said Young. "I hope that they get input from the parents and the family members and the students themselves before they make this decision. Sometimes that just doesn’t happen.”

The reporting also indicates that this is a staffing and resources issue, saying the state will save $13 million by closing the 12 schools meant to educate those with the most severe disabilities.

Cruelty is the point and so is spending less on education to send more to the wealthy, but we also need to recognize eugenics in this plan. Eugenics is playing a big part in the Trump regime — just look at RFK, Jr and his campaign to end vaccines.

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Missouri recently moved up a spot in starting teacher pay. We were 50th in the nation for two years straight — we are now 49th in starting teacher pay. I am not sure who is now ranked 50th, but it might be Mississippi.

I’ve heard “Thank god for Mississippi” is the new Missouri motto.

No shade to Mississippi…we are both in the fight for our lives and schools. A “hold my beer” situation.

Solidarity.

Missouri is also ranked 49th in educational funding — that is the money the state sends to public schools, but we are headed for dead last if our new Republican Governor and some of the folks he appointed to the new “School Funding Modernization Task Force” have any say in the matter.

You’ll not be surprised to know that not one teacher was selected to be on the 16-member task force. When I called Gov Mike Kehoe’s office and asked why there is not a teacher on the task force, Mary, who answered at the Governor’s office, said she wasn’t sure and would get back to me.

Mary did not get back to me, but I am persistent and called a few days later. She told me there was a former teacher on the task force who is now a lawmaker. Mary told me that she thought the former teacher was last in a classroom in 2008.

17 years ago…

Okay, so if a current teacher isn’t on the task force to modernize school funding, who is on the task force to decide how much funding public schools need?

Chris Vas is on the task force. He is a senior director for the Herzog Foundation, an organization currently working to implement school vouchers in Missouri. He previously served as the executive director of Liberty Alliance, a right-wing think tank focused on sending taxpayer money to private religious schools. Vas will serve as the representative for “non-profit organizations” working for billionaires to expand vouchers in Missouri.

Convenient.

Mike Podgursky is also on the task force. He is currently serving as the Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Columbia and a scholar at Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research.

I don’t know Podgursky, but I do know he supports sending taxpayer money to private schools and that the Sinquefield Center is funded by Missouri billionaire Rex Sinquefield.

Sinquefield also funds the Show-Me Institute. A nefarious outfit whose only goal is to rig the Missouri tax code to benefit the wealthiest Missourians — a goal that is at odds with public school funding.

Rex has been working against public schools and public school teachers for decades. His eternal goal has always been to end teacher tenure, unions, and teacher pensions.

Here is an ahistorical and inflammatory quote from Rex Sinquefield from 2012:

"I hope I don't offend anyone," Sinquefield said at a 2012 lecture caught on tape. "There was a published column by a man named Ralph Voss who was a former judge in Missouri," Sinquefield continued, in response to a question about ending teacher tenure. "[Voss] said, ‘A long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said how can we really hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives? And what they designed was the public school system.' "

Hmmm…

Also appointed to the funding task force is the Chief Operating Officer for the Soybean Association and the Senior Advisor for the Missouri Farm Bureau.

But not one current teacher.

This is all to say that the new Governor does not seem to want to send more money to cover rising costs and inflation and teacher pay to Missouri public schools. In fact, as the Missouri House and Senate approved $300 million more for public schools, the Governor is trying to reduce that amount while sending $50 million to private religious schools in the state.

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Missouri has been running the pilot program for Project 2025 for at least a decade. We have been under the boot of a GOP supermajority for 22 years. Republicans have purposely defunded our public schools for so long that 33% of Missouri schools run a four-day week.

But why?

To curate failure — to say that public schools are broken and public school teachers are inept all in a push to privatize public schools. To dumb down the populace. To demonize a system that educates over 90% of kids in this state. To send taxpayer money to grifters who will line their pockets while opening the fly-by-night private schools operating out of the old Pizza Hut buildings dotting the heartland.

It’s a scam. It’s always been a scam.

I will never forget Trump’s quote from 2016: “I love the poorly educated.”

Indeed.

~Jess