My friends Jo is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, and she sent me a link to a video where she gets to describe the less-than-ideal conditions of her school. Link to video — Jo appears about halfway through, and again at the end. Boy, and I thought some of the churches I’ve served have had building problems. As the video tells us, children should not have to put up with such conditions. And you may notice that lots of the schools they show just happen to be in cities, not in the wealthy white suburbs….

Jo passed along this word from the American Federation of Teachers:

According to recent data, the cost to repair existing public schools or build new buildings exceeds $400 billion. To address this problem, the AFT is working to enact legislation that will provide $25 billion in interest-free bonding authority to school districts, with all decision-making about how to use that money remaining at the local level.

Jo is one of those classic idealistic Unitarian Universalists who lives out her faith in her daily life by teaching kids in the public schools. Historically, Unitarian Universalists have always had a high percentage of schoolteachers, and we have been committed to providing fair and equitable education for all children through public schooling. I’m proud of the fact that I’m related to Unitarian Universalists who lived their faith by teaching in the public schools:– my mother, her mother, and my aunt, all Unitarians, all schoolteachers. (I’m also proud of my older sister, who teaches non-traditional college students in the Indiana State University system, but I’m not sure she’d call herself a Unitarian Universalist any more.)

So here’s a shout-out to Jo, yet another Unitarian Universalist who’s living out her faith by working with and standing up for children.