Big money is attacking public schools. We’ll show Kansas City how important they are | Opinion

All children in every one of the communities across our region deserve to learn and to pursue their dreams. We can all agree on this, whether we live in the city, the suburbs or the surrounding areas.

Our public schools are full of teachers and staff who dedicate their lives to educating our children every day. They find themselves awake at night, worrying about our kids and how to best meet their needs.

But these educators and the public schools where they work are under attack. Well-funded political forces come after them, both personally and collectively, looking to divide the communities that love their schools and their teachers.

As a result, teachers and support staff are questioning whether they can continue to commit their lives to making sure our children are learning.

Scary narratives about schools and teachers help political agendas — but when you talk to an educator or get a peek inside your neighborhood school, you realize that these tales just aren’t true.

We know if our friends and neighbors could just hear the real stories of what is happening in our schools every day, they would support their communities’ schools and refuse to let anyone create division.

They would lift up our educators and celebrate their dedication to each and every child in our communities.

This is why the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City decided to take steps to address this issue. This cooperative of 34 local school districts took on this issue as part of its most recent strategic plan.

That strategic planning process was the spark that lit the flame of what became Our Kids, Our Communities, Our Future. This morning, we will kick off this campaign in front of state legislators, city councils, school board members, superintendents, administrators, teachers, community leaders and business partners. We will have people from both sides of the state line, people from both sides of the aisle, and people from all parts of our region.

We will tell these dignitaries that the Our Kids, Our Communities, Our Futures campaign will tell the real stories of the amazing things happening in public schools across our region, from Grain Valley to Center to North Kansas City.

Part of our event will be sharing a few of these stories.

We will share the story of Edgar Negrete, a student from the Hickman Mills School District who was looking for a way to help his struggling family when he discovered a program through his high school that taught him to weld and placed him in a great job after graduation.

We will share the story of Patrick Lee, a student from the Park Hill School District who wanted to become a teacher and inspire other kids the way his teachers inspired him, and how his district gave him the support and mentorship he needed to figure out exactly how to get the job of his dreams, right back where he started.

And we will tell the story of a classroom full of excited students at Belton Middle School, where kids are learning science and engineering skills while they create the robots of their wildest imaginations. While they work, they are also learning problem-solving and project-management skills that will help them succeed well into their futures, no matter what those futures hold.

You will be able to see all these stories and many more on the new website for this effort: OurKidsGKC.org

We will tell more and more of those stories through videos, photos and writing, and we will share them with our communities through the site, social media, online ads, email and outreach to the local media.

People have asked us how they can help, and we are grateful for this support.

We’re asking for people to share our stories with their friends and family, both online and offline, and we want them to share their own public school stories with us, so we can be sure to represent all the different experiences in our communities.

Together, we will give the people in the greater Kansas City region the truth about public education, by showing them the real stories of what happens in our schools each day and the real ways our teachers are making a difference for our children.

Kenny Southwick is executive director of the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City.