My Missouri senator doesn’t return calls. How can he know what we want for our schools? | Opinion

My area was recently a part of the redistricting of Missouri Senate and House boundaries. I have a new senator in the General Assembly. I serve on my local board of education and I also serve on our library system’s board of trustees. I am a retired teacher, school administrator and university professor. I am an advocate for kids, as are so many others, and I am diligent in my efforts to have polite conversation to express my concerns.

I thought that perhaps with the state’s redistricting plan, I might have a more responsive state senator this time. I have emailed my new senator on two occasions, making an open-ended request for a meeting in the capital or in his district office to discuss school issues and library accessibility. I have received no response or even an acknowledgment of my requests. A week ago, I called his office and left a voicemail, and got no reply. I made another call this week, again with the same result.

My question to those who have been elected to serve us is this: What means do you have of determining the concerns, wants and needs of your respective constituencies if you are unavailable to us?

For example, how do those who represent us know that Missourians or the American people supposedly want expansion of charter schools, or that we want school vouchers that make public tax money available to private and religious schools at the expense of our local public school funding?

And on what basis of approval from constituents can our state senator be a co-sponsor of a bill that supports open enrollment? That is a plan that would be destructive to our public school districts by allowing state funding to be transferred out of our home districts when students want to move to a school in another district while remaining residents in the districts where their homes are. Has he read the many resolutions (more than 175 to date) from our school boards that indicate their lack of support for the destructive measures in these open enrollment bills?

For years, Missouri has ranked near the bottom of all states in per-pupil funding for education and teacher salaries. I can’t think this is what our taxpayers want.

I remember the lessons I learned in public school about our forefathers as they began the early fight for independence and democracy. They objected to paying taxes to Great Britain without the benefit of representation in its government: taxation without representation. Taxation without representation describes a populace that is required to pay taxes to a government authority without having any say in that government’s policies.

American colonials invoked a slogan against their British rulers: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

According to the latest U.S. Census report, there are 518 public school districts in Missouri, representing 884,587 children and 66,645 teachers, as well as countless parents and supporters of public education. How are our leaders in Jefferson City learning their needs and how to best represent them? What evidence can we see to reassure us that these Missourians have a voice in government?

If we cannot reach our elected officials by phone — if not by email, if not by postal mail and if not by request to meet personally — how can they claim the honor of representing the people?

As I visit with colleagues across our state, I hear similar stories about their own efforts to reach out to both our state and federal representatives and senators. It is a very common problem: Our government officials seem to be quite simply unreachable.

The question that remains for our elected officials is this: If you aren’t available to us to hear how to best represent us, then whom do you represent?

That seems like taxation without representation to me.

Georgia Jarman is a retired early childhood educator, administrator and university professor. She serves on the Holden, Missouri, school board.