Pay Teachers, Not ICE

One of the many posters reportedly showcased at last weekends No King’s Rallies across the country is “Pay Teachers, Not ICE.”

That is referring to this MAGA Project 2025 Fascist policy, enacted through the Big Ugly Billionaires First Bill that increased ICE funding more than the F.B.I., the DEA, and ATF combined, allowing them to offer $50,000 signing bonuses and loan forgiveness to applicants that are hired to raid Americas streets and indiscriminately go after Latino individuals and families and detain them, sometimes violently and without due process up front, whether they are American citizens or not.

How about using those funds to increase pay for teachers, the people entrusted with shaping young children’s minds instead of giving bonuses to masked ICE-Gestapo goons who strike fear to all Americans?

Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation to raise teachers salaries to a minimum of $60,000, allocate them $1,000 for supplies, and to give education paraprofessional and support staff a living wage of $30.00 an hour.

At a July event with educators, Sanders highlighted the reasons behind the legislation including the stress teachers go through in the profession and the recruiting shortage in the occupation.

Senator Sanders is right to call teachers “the heroines and heroes in American Society.”

“When we talk about the future of our country, we talk about our children. And for those who proclaim great love for this country, one might think they would be doing everything that they can be doing to improve the lives of our kids. And yet in America today,…where we have massive income wealth inequality…we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost every major country on Earth…That should not be happening in America. We should have a generation of children who are blossoming, who are growing, who are healthy, not children who are living in poverty. Not kids who are sleeping in cars. Not kids whose parents are working two or three jobs to maintain the family…”

“As bad as things are right now, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will only make a bad situation even worse…”

“Public school teachers have the toughest, one of the most demanding and one of the most underappreciated jobs in the country.”

“A civilized, Democratic, humane society understands the importance of education…If we are serious about the future of America and our kids, we put education at the top of the list and we say thank you to the educators and we treat them with the respect that they are due…”

“Why do we have a massive shortage of teachers in our country?…The pathetically low pay that teachers in America receive…less than $47,000 a year… How are we supposed to attract the best and the brightest, which is what we want for our kids into the teaching professions on salaries of $40 or $45,000 a year?…”

Commenting to Blog for Arizona, Arizona Democratic Senate Leader Priya Sundareshan noted:

“It’s a clear encapsulation of Republican priorities: that minimum-qualified ICE recruits are offered a $50k bonus to harass law-abiding communities in service of authoritarian directives, all while Arizona teachers struggle to make a decent wage and the Trump administration dismantles the federal Department of Education. Our children’s future deserves more than what Republicans can offer.”

Sundareshan and Sanders are right.

“Our children’s future deserves more than what Republicans can offer.”

“A civilized, Democratic, humane society (words that will not be associated with ICE) understands the importance of education…If we are serious about the future of America and our kids, we put education at the top of the list and we say thank you to the educators and we treat them with the respect that they are due.”

The measure of an enlightened and forward looking society is its people treat the most vulnerable in its populace.

Children in this country deserve better from a government that feels paying street thugs who terrorize the nation’s streets signing bonuses to arrest their parents is more a priority than paying the people who educate and mentor them.