Days/ half days off for teacher development/ meetings
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Anonymous
I would stop having early dismissal and do it as two full days off: a Friday or a Monday. Not two half days so the parents can’t spend the day they’re not in conference desk with their kid. The other time in the day can be for the teachers to do the admin work as they said they need and seems entirely reasonable. |
Anonymous
| My cousin teaches in Nebraska and his district has late start Fridays. One of his fellow teachers has to call her middle school age children to tell them to get moving. |
Anonymous
Are you proposing raising teacher salaries to cover two more days, or changing the law about 180 days of instruction? It seems like we started at "Oh, it's so hard to be a working parent because there's too much time off, and we don't have leave" and now we're at "we just want less school because we like using up leave". |
Anonymous
So teachers aren’t parents? I’m confused by this response. Of course I make arrangements for my own children, just like everybody else. The point was these half days inconvenience teachers, as well. Since we ARE parents, we need to figure our child care needs so we can stay for these meetings, etc. We have the same scheduling problems as you. And if these arrangements can stress other parents, why wouldn’t they stress teacher / parents? |
Anonymous
Yes absolutely. Because the half days count as a full day of instruction but aren’t nearly as valuable. My understanding is that teachers are paid a full day on half days, but if they’re not, definitely add two days of pay to the annual salary. |
Anonymous
PP was saying that making childcare arrangements is so stressful, and that therefore teachers are probably stressed by it too. My point was that most teachers do not find making childcare arrangements particularly stressful, because it's so much easier than the actual job. I can't imagine what these people who find arranging childcare stressful do for a living. |
Anonymous
Teacher here. I don’t think of my job as hourly. I work full days on half days. I work most nights and every weekend. I’d almost prefer if we were hourly, because we would all make a ton in overtime. |
Anonymous
Teachers are paid for 190 days. 180 days when they have responsibility for students, either for a full or part day, or 10 days when they do not. If you take those 2 half days, and turn them into full days without students, then you'd need to add two days to the calendar, making it 180 days with students, and 12 without. So, they would need to pay for 2 extra days. |
Anonymous
It isn’t. But they don’t schedule the days on Mondays or Fridays because the teachers then don’t come in. |
Anonymous
I think paying for two extra days in order to show more respect for the needs of the parent body is worth it, and also more respectful to teachers if the administrative workload is as significant as the teachers on this thread are saying. I think it’s disrespectful to all taxpayers to say a day where teachers have “part day” responsibility for students should cost the same to the taxpayer as when they have full day, because given the cost of childcare in this region the parents are essentially paying twice. I don’t object to paying for more days when the teachers don’t have students, just the fiction that a half day is the same thing instructionally. |
Anonymous
So I am more valuable when I am in front of students, and therefore providing you with babysitting? What about when I work 5:30-7am, or 4pm-6pm, or 7pm-10pm, or all day Sunday? I’m doing that to provide the best instruction for your child. My pay isn’t about your convenience. It’s about the job I do, and half of it is done without your child in front of me. |
Anonymous
When the child spends the full day in school and goes to all of their subjects, that is more valuable to me as a parent and a taxpayer than when the child is dismissed at 11:30 having had their mandatory lunch break. I think teachers should be paid fairly and I think parents should be treated fairly, and those goals are not mutually exclusive. |
Anonymous
If you want your child to be treated fairly (which is something that wasn’t mentioned in your post), then you need to respect the time it takes to create engaging lessons and to thoroughly assess your child’s progress. These things don’t happen when your child is at school. Easily half my job is done behind the scenes. How well I plan and assess determines how well I teach when your child is in my classroom. Teachers need time to do the substantial “off stage” work. A parent’s convenience can’t trump a student’s access to strong lessons and a teacher’s ability to get the job done. |
Anonymous
You seem to think I’m suggesting taking time away from your prep. I’m not. I’m suggesting adding more prep time to respect teachers administrative needs, paying them for it, and scheduling days off in a way that respects families professional and household needs. Students need more than just well-prepared teachers. They need strong and healthy families and time to meaningfully relax outside school. A three day weekend does more in service to that than a half-day Wednesday. It sounds like counties in the area have picked up on this need. |