“Teachers should focus on education and mentorship, as assigning them non-academic duties (like animal tracking or municipal work) is a misuse of their professional skills and indicates a failure in the system.”
A recent directive issued in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district has placed schoolteachers in an unexpected and controversial role: monitoring stray dog activity around educational institutions. According to the order, every school must designate a teacher as a “nodal officer” responsible for identifying stray dog sightings, coordinating with municipal authorities, and ensuring timely intervention. To streamline the process, the teachers’ names and mobile numbers are to be publicly displayed on school boundary walls. While the intention behind the directive—enhancing student safety—may be legitimate, its execution raises serious questions about governance, priorities, and respect for the teaching profession. Unsurprisingly, the order has triggered widespread criticism from educators who view the assignment as both inappropriate and demeaning. Their concerns deserve serious attention. Teachers are trained to educate, mentor, and shape young minds—not to track animals or function as field staff for municipal bodies. Burdening them with responsibilities far outside their domain not only dilutes their professional focus but also signals a deeper systemic failure. When civic authorities delegate core municipal responsibilities to educators, it reflects a worrying abdication of duty. Public schools already struggle with staff shortages, administrative overload, and infrastructural gaps. In such a scenario, compelling teachers to monitor stray dogs seems not only impractical but also disrespectful to their expertise. The directive becomes even more problematic when viewed through the lens of privacy and safety. Publishing teachers’ personal contact numbers on school walls exposes them to unsolicited calls, misuse of information, and potential harassment. It is unreasonable to compromise the personal boundaries of educators for a task that should rightly be handled by trained municipal staff or animal control units.
“The Supreme Court of India ordered the permanent removal of stray dogs from public institutions, including schools and hospitals, placing the responsibility solely on municipal and local authorities. A local directive (like the Poonch directive) that assigns this duty to teachers and academic staff is misaligned with the court’s order and undermines the professional roles and dignity of educators. Student safety is important, but the administration should focus on strengthening municipal capabilities and implementing the Supreme Court’s humane, long-term stray animal management guidelines, rather than burdening teachers.”
The silence of senior education officials is equally troubling. Their absence from the conversation risks normalising a precedent where teachers are turned into all-purpose administrative machinery—responsible for everything from enrollment campaigns to disaster reporting, and now stray dog surveillance. Such practices erode not just professional dignity but also the quality of education delivered in classrooms. This is not the first time such a directive has stirred public debate. Just last month, the Chhattisgarh government assigned principals the responsibility of monitoring stray dogs on school campuses—a move criticised by the opposition for imposing excessive, non-academic duties on educators. The repetition of such decisions across states suggests a growing trend of offloading civic responsibilities onto the education sector instead of strengthening municipal systems. It is worth recalling that the Supreme Court of India, in November, ordered the permanent removal of stray dogs from school campuses, hospitals, transportation hubs, and other public institutions. The ruling clearly lays the responsibility on municipal and local authorities—not on teachers, principals, or academic staff. If anything, the Poonch directive appears misaligned with the spirit of the Court’s order. Ensuring student safety is unquestionably essential. But safety cannot come by compromising the roles, dignity, and boundaries of teachers. The administration would do well to revisit this directive and channel its efforts toward strengthening municipal capacities, implementing the Supreme Court’s guidelines, and creating humane, long-term mechanisms for stray animal management. Teachers are pillars of learning, not auxiliary municipal workers. It is time policy reflects that.
