LEAWOOD, Kan. — Educators across the Kansas City community are reacting to Friday's Olathe East High School shooting that shook the district.
Teachers say the fear of a situation unfolding at their own school is contributing to an ongoing crisis in public education staffing.
Matthew Shulman teaches at Blue Valley Northwest. He was on a Friday Zoom call with Olathe East High School.
"You started to see the chat start to blow up a bit, students and teachers said, 'We gotta go, we gotta go. School shooter, school shooter,'" Shulman said.
It's any educator's worst worry, and for Shulman, it unfolded on a screen.
"It almost was firsthand seeing all these scared looks and reactions and just the fear come out," he said.
Susan Fitzgerald taught in Olathe schools for 37 years. Now retired, she watched her worst fears play out from afar.
"It brought me extreme sadness that my colleagues, the students and the families had to deal with such an incident," Fitzgerald said.
Teachers like Micah Horton, the choir director at Olathe North High School, say they show up for work everyday with unnerving thoughts.
"Having to think of okay, well, if somebody were to come in this entrance, what are my options?" Horton said. "You know, who are they going to target first? Who do we need to protect? Who do we need to get out of the way? And just having to think, it feels like we have to think like a soldier."
Teachers say it's another layer to a crisis in public school staffing.
"On your hardest of days you start to look at Indeed or you know, LinkedIn and start to think what else could I do?" Shulman said.
"The increasing number of folks who are leaving the profession or retiring early, it's going to be a struggle," Horton said.
For those still leading their classrooms, their work to educate and protect continues.
"I don’t know a teacher that wouldn’t literally lay down their lives for their students in order to keep them safe and to make sure that child goes home to their family," Fitzgerald said.
This chorus of teachers speaking out on their working conditions in public schools has produced a new effort from the Freedom to Learn PAC — a letter signed by hundreds of educators, hoping to attract the attention of Kansas lawmakers to support educators.
