 Hello, I'm Jessica Rivera with your latest news break in Virginia. The Loudoun County School Board stopped the public from commenting during a recent meeting after residents got into physical fights over the new transgender policy proposals. In Ohio, a Papa John's employee shot and killed a robber over the weekend. Authorities say the employee was well within his right to use deadly force in the robbery. Police continue to look for the second suspect. In Flint, Michigan, new police video shows an officer having a tearful breakdown after he shot and killed a 19 year old woman. The shooting happened after the woman allegedly opened fire on the officer during a Juneteenth parade. And that's your latest news break. Now back to America's Voice Live. Thank you, Jessica, for that update. Now this past school year was anything but ordinary for both students and teachers. But now it looks like many of those teachers are choosing not to return here in Michigan. Teacher retirement increased 44% this past year. California saw a 26% jump and some are wondering if the country could be facing a major teacher shortage by the time we head back to school in August and September. Yeah, this comes at the same time. Public schools are getting more money from federal and state governments than ever before. In Michigan, $3.3 billion from the American Rescue Plan will go to schools. Joining our panel now to discuss is to discuss is the host and follow the profit pod of follow the part profit podcast and host on bold TV David Grasso, president of the Italian youth movement Giovanni Carrato and CEO and founder of stock swish Melissa Armo. Melissa, I'll go to you. We see all of this money going into our schools. Now several schools are saying they're using it in different ways. A lot of this money coming from that American Rescue Plan going to states that have had problems in their school districts. Now originally we heard that this money was going to go to keeping the school safe, maybe new air systems, cleaning supplies and what not. But we're hearing that a lot of this may go to permanently increasing teacher salaries. What's your response to that? I think it's a great idea. Teachers have been underpaid for a very long time. This is across the board all across the country. Teachers are underpaid. I know it's nice summers off when you look at it that way. But some teachers make $40,000 a year. That is not enough money to take care of children and teach them right and go through all of the stress that they have to handle on top of that dealing with the aftermath of COVID. So I'm all for raising teachers salaries. David, let me ask you this. One of the other fallouts from this bizarre year, and that's a good way to put it, I guess, is that we had at least three and a half million kids across this country drop out of school. They're never coming back. You've got school districts, some of which are getting close to 200% in annual funding, even though their classrooms weren't open for the whole year. You've got teachers in many districts getting frontline pay, even though they weren't in the classroom and they were teaching remotely. To me, it just seems like our priorities are not where they should be, which is making sure the children are looked after, making sure the children are kept in good contact and that we make sure that they're learning as they should be. Am I wrong here? Well, school's been a war zone for a while. Let's be honest here. What my fellow panelists said is completely correct. Teachers are underpaid, and that's definitely part of the problem. But between common core, standardized testing, all the rules, there's a reason why the charter school movement is so popular. People are just opting out of school. And that includes both teachers and students. We seem to argue about critical race theory instead of, you know, whether the kids learn how to read and write and speak and do math. And I think we've lost the essential essence of what school is supposed to be about, which is fundamentally about learning. And yes, that involves paying teachers more because right now we have labor shortages. So it's not really a view. It's a necessity right now. Giovanni, I want to go to you. That is true. We are looking at having teachers retire after this. Many teachers and there are some schools in Michigan that are looking to replace 50% or seven 7% of their staff, not just teachers, bus drivers, all different staff for these schools. Now, a lot of people would argue that the schools actually have money. It's not spent in the right places. What's your response to that? My response to that is that it's actually correct. I feel like this is a classic situation where throwing money at the problem. The Democrats favorite pastime is not exactly the right solution. Schools have money right now. School districts have the resources in terms of cash, but they don't have the people. And the reason for this, in my opinion, is twofold. First of all, teachers are not valued in this country. They are often undervalued and underpaid. However, they still need to get very specific higher education in order to perform this low paying job. As a result of these two factors, you end up with a shortage. If you add on top of that, the politics that we've been adding that mainstream media has been adding into the classroom with critical race theory or many other issues such as the transgender issue. Teachers are just the incentivized from pursuing this profession from continuing to pursue it. And new young individuals such as myself are disincentivized from pursuing it as a college career. All of these factors bundle together, ultimately give us this big mess that we see in states such as California, Michigan. We move on to something else that's going to be coming up here in a little while this afternoon. And that is the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland are set to speak at 3 30 Eastern time on the administration's gun crime prevention strategy. We don't know what that means yet. But clearly, there's been an uptick, a dramatic spike in violent crime around this country. David, it's happened in New York City. It's not just murder, but it's it's rape. It's robbery. A lot of people being let out with a no bail at all. If they're said to have committed a crime that was not violent. But what's happening is a lot of repeat offenders end up on the street. We also emptied jails and prisons during COVID to help people avoid the disease, putting a lot of criminals that had not served their time back on the streets. All of these things have created a an unstable place for a lot of folks in their neighborhoods that are concerned about it. What about gun crime? What about crime in general? What do you think is going on? Well, the administration is trying to tie together gun control with crime, which of course there is a statistical relationship. But of course, the experts disagree as to how strong that relationship will actually be. Of course, the federal government should go after illegal gun ownership, but the rise in crime is due to a lot more than just the rise in gun ownership. So this is a very complicated issue that has to do with policing has to do with the pandemic has to do with the economic collapse and migration out of big cities. So we can't really all pin this to gun crime. But yes, of course, guns are involved with the rise in crime. Melissa, you hearing what David's saying guns being involved. What do you think the answer is our gun control measure measures the answer. We suspect that may be what Joe Biden comes out and talks about today. Some of our highest crime cities have some of these strictest gun laws. So what's your response to that? I don't think stricter gun laws are going to solve the problem. I think people are the ones that shoot guns don't don't shoot themselves. So it's why are people shooting guns because they're committing crime. So why are people committing crimes out of desperation? Because they know there's no consequences for community crimes. For example, here in New York City, there's no bail for certain crimes, unless it's a high crime, like murder or rape, if you're charged with a low end crime, then you're out with a no bail. So there's no deterrent that continues to commit crimes or use guns to commit those crimes and stamp people. Also, you're seeing people just get shot on the street. For what? Why? Some people are getting shot. They're not even getting robbed. They're just shooting them. I mean, I don't really know if stricter gun control is going to solve the problem. And to be honest with you, I don't know what the problem is. Giovanni, in the nation of Mexico, there is one exactly one gun store for civilians to shop. It's in Mexico City. Guns basically are illegal for civilians in Mexico to own. And yet 60,000 people were killed near the border last year on the Mexico side six times the murder rate of the United States. And yet Joe Biden wants to blame guns for a surge in crime when we're talking about defunding police, disrespecting police. What say you? You know, Steve, I feel like if our current politicians and mainstream media really had a conscious, they would really stop focusing on us. And they would start focusing on what we all know is a real issue, which is culture, which is people. As you said, Mexico, highest crime, highest crime rates in the world. And we see basically guns being illegal for civilians. But if politicians and the mainstream media in the United States really had a conscience, instead of skewing the conversation towards guns, this start addressing the real issue. What's happening in the inner cities? What is happening with our criminals that are led back into society without having served their time? What is happening to the millions of lives that we've lost throughout the years, and the millions of others that have been impacted by this cultural disease that we have that is prone to violence. The issue doesn't only in the guns. Guns will always be around and bad people will have their hands on them as they would anyways, even a child will understand that. But what's happening with the culture? That's what we need to address today. Yes, we were just talking about Jalen Twyman who went home to DC to visit his aunt and was was hit four times in a drive by shooting. He is not going to be permanently injured. He will recover from that. But he did come out and say, Hey, I want to get my family out of this neighborhood because there's just no opportunity. You have to look at the root cause in these high crime neighborhoods. Why isn't there opportunity and how do we give these people the ability to live a prosperous life filled with opportunity? Thank you panel so much. David Grasso, Giovanni Carrato and Melissa Armo. We appreciate having you on here today. All the rest of you don't go anywhere. We have Amanda head joining us after the break. You won't want to miss it.