Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan used "whether he voted to support Teachers' Day holiday" as a criterion to judge the Democratic Progressive Party's Taipei mayoral candidate Shen Boyang's concern for teachers' rights. Wu Xindai, a Taipei City Council candidate for Neihu and Nangang District in Taipei City, criticized the move as political rhetoric. She said that one day off is important, but what grassroots teachers really have to face is another 300 days of high-pressure work. She also seriously questioned the Chiang Kai-shek City Government as to why, as of the week before the start of this year’s school year, Taipei City still had 86 schools and 210 teacher vacancies that could not be filled, forcing current teachers to work overtime to support themselves. This cannot be solved by just taking a day off.
Wu Xindai pointed out the heavy burden on campus and pointed out that when many young teachers come to Taipei, they have to face high rents, heavy administrative work, parent complaints, pressure from school council meetings, and an unstable agency system. Currently, when students encounter bullying, drug-related problems, or even serious behavioral conflicts and mental health problems, they should rely on inter-professional cooperation mechanisms to deal with them, but now almost all of them are left to front-line tutors.
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To this end, she highly agrees with Shen Boyang's request to establish a credible third-party professional mechanism, and emphasizes that although the school council meeting cannot be abolished, the system of anonymous reports, abuses, and investigations must be completely reformed so that truly unqualified teachers can be dealt with, and teachers who teach seriously can be freed from the shadow of fear of being accused all day long.
In addition, regarding the free nutritious lunch policy that the Jiang Municipal Government hastily launched, Wu Xindai bluntly stated that the policy lacked complete supporting facilities, resulting in problems such as meal time allocation and food waste disposal in lower grades, which ultimately fell on the shoulders of grassroots teachers. She revealed that during the summer vacation, some teachers even launched a wave of protests called "One Person, One Pass 1999" to report problems to the city government. It is impossible for the city government's top officials to be unaware. She reiterated that the bottom line of the lunch policy is food safety and health, and it should not be reduced to a policy propaganda with only the word "free", nor should the bitter consequences of insufficient facilities be passed on to frontline educators.
In order to fundamentally improve the educational environment, Wu Xindai proposed a multi-faceted education policy blueprint. She advocated that the city government should promote the "professional increase of teachers in the capital", fill the gap in special teacher qualifications, and substantially improve the living and retention conditions for young and non-local teachers; at the same time, full-time manpower must be significantly increased to implement professional division of labor. In terms of nutritious lunches, we strictly require transparency in the location, certification and source of ingredients, and improve food safety inspections and professional nutrition manpower. We hope that through solid system improvements, teachers will have a sense of accomplishment in teaching and students will be able to grow with peace of mind.
Finally, Wu Xindai strongly appealed to Jiang Wanan that instead of using the Teachers' Day holiday for political manipulation, it is better to actually go into the campus after the holiday and listen to whether the profession of grassroots teachers is respected and whether the lunches eaten by the children are safe. She emphasized that the emphasis on front-line educators should not just be paid lip service to on Teachers' Day, but must be implemented in every budget, every system, and the city government's choices when facing problems. Only by giving teachers a dignified, professional and fulfilling teaching environment can we truly care about the rights of teachers.
