Scenes from the carnage inflicted on the unfortunate folks in Illinois, Arkansas and Kentucky by a 200-mile-long tornado cell were heartbreaking but the victims should be forewarned that their frustration is only beginning as the insurance adjusters move in to give insulting settlement offers to those who have lost everything.
And if they are duped into counting on FEMA, I’m afraid that frustration level will only increase.
But while that was happening, another heartbreaking scene, a manufactured one, was unfolding in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
No one was physically hurt (though I can’t vouch for any possible psychological pain), nor did anyone lose their home or possessions but the spectacle should be one that provokes shame and disgust for all Americans.
It seems that a mortgage company had what it thought was a magnanimous IDEA to dump $5,000 in one-dollar bills on an ice-skating rink and allow 10 teachers to dive in and scoop up as much as they could stuff into their clothing in less than five minutes to the cheers of onlooking hockey fans – whatever money they managed to grab to be used for classroom school supplies.
Has it really come down to this? We pay a damn football coach $10 million a year while public school teachers in South Dakota are reduced to scraping up dollar bills on an ice hockey rink while hockey fans cheer them on? Seriously?
We pay U.S. representatives $174,000 a year and U.S. senators $193,400 a year and the governor of South Dakota gets $114,000 a year and teachers are asked to get down on their knees and pick up as many one-dollar bills as they can in five minutes to the entertainment of a hockey crowd. Are you kidding me?
Do we not value our children and their education any higher than turning teachers into court jesters during intermission of a hockey game?
Isn’t it enough that underpaid teachers must reach into their own pockets to purchase classroom supplies?
Isn’t it degrading to know that a local Louisiana school board couldn’t even provide computers for a computer classroom but that an anonymous benefactor all the way out in California had to come to their rescue by donating the money for that specific purpose?
It’s bad enough when convicts in a prison rodeo risk their lives to grab a few dollars attached to an angry bull as paying fans cheer them on but to ask teachers to scramble out onto a public ice rink and to compete with fellow educators for a few dollars to purchase supplies and to pay for classroom repairs is just insulting.
Some might say I am overreacting, but I happen to hold teachers in the highest esteem – not because two of my daughters happen to be teachers but because teachers at Ruston High School more than 60 years ago saved my damn worthless life. I was a kid going nowhere until three English teachers, Miss Charlotte Lewis, Miss Maggie Hinton and Mrs. L.J. (Mary Alice) Garrett and two history/civics teachers, Earvin Ryland and Morgan Peoples, took a personal interest in my development and insisted that I was somehow worth salvaging. I would never have made it without their intervention, care and nurturing.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was equally appalled, tweeting that the spectacle “just feels demeaning. Teachers shouldn’t have to dash for dollars for classroom supplies. No doubt people probably intended it to be fun, but from the outside it feels terrible.”
I couldn’t agree more. To see the video of those teachers scrambling for a few dollars to help their students just broke my heart.
And to know it’s really no better in Louisiana is simply infuriating. Only the ice rink is missing.
Louisiana Voice 
It is horribly appalling, heartbreaking and infuriating and, sadly, on par with all the atrocities destroying our country today 💔.
Way back in the 1970/80s I was the District PTA President….needless to say it was challenging. However, one victory that we accomplished was to force the School Board to begin to give our teachers supplies funding. When we as informed parents, working with our professional teachers begin to attend the monthly School Board meetings and even getting on their Agenda to bring our concerns and solutions, we soon got results. However, I am not sure that the power of PTA has survived in our schools currently. It is almost impossible to perpetuate good things where I live. No matter what we do to make sure that our good organizations continue…those that have come after us just simply don’t seem to care about the difficult stuff. Not sure why this is but the children sure do suffer. End or Rant!
There has been no PTA at my children’s former elementary school since I was president in 2009! I still try to help with fundraising through the Box Tops for Education program, but now that they have an app, the school made $3 last spring!
It’s impossible to satirize anything that happens anymore. Nothing is ridiculous or unimaginable these days, and so much of what happens in this society makes the decadences and abuses of the Roman Empire look mild. When stuff like this is orchestrated by the rich and powerful, over time or directly, it’s horribly perverse.
I agree. I used to consider ridiculous the premise that the elites in the U. S. A. work to keep the rest of the population poor and uneducated because such people are easier to control and provide cheap labor. But now such a premise pales in comparison to various conspiracy theories and outright lies freely circulated by right wing sources, including those that attack trust in the most important aspect of our democracy – the vote of the people. The very foundations on which our country was created are ignored daily, including both civil and criminal laws.
How anybody cannot see the clear and present danger truly escapes me. I used to confront people on the other side with this, but all they could do in response was allege Biden is an idiot, Obama destroyed the country, Pelosi needs to go, we are being poisoned with vaccines, and even more ridiculous things having absolutely nothing to do with what is happening right now and/or lying about them. I gave up trying to communicate because it is impossible. If we can’t win at the ballot box, I have no idea what we can do to stop this.
Sorry, Tom, I couldn’t read the entirety of your post. I was sickened and teary-eyed at the sight of those teachers having to do that. What country do we live in?
At its conclusion did the sponsor of the event then (generously?) donate the remaining uncollected bills to the schools or were they returned to the coffers of the company?
How about the lowest collecting teacher be forced to give their “winnings” to the top collector?
A double or nothing option?
“What was, will be: what was done before, will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.”Ecclesiatstes1:9. So it is a query of how do we learn to profit from our mistakes. Obviously, EDUCATION!! Agree with Mr. Winham. We, this civilization, have learned how to destroy this paradise, and the educated will and are learning how to save it. Please do not give up, just ignore the assholes who support Trump and support as Tom says our teachers. Read Sword and Scimitar” by Raymond Ibrahim, 14 Centuries of war between Isam and the West. Our Democracy/Republic is in trouble because of the failure to communicate properly and what we learned as children, to tell the truth. Cowards tell lies to promote their selfish and bullshit egos. (this is allowed in certain bars) Keep learning and keep loving, love always ron thompson