NPR Article on Public Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are NO SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS.

This is not about complaining teachers or philosophies or whatever. It’s about the job market. If you look around your office and imagine that for every single person who takes a day or two off for Thanksgiving you need to hire a temporary worker to fill their job, then you understand the situation the school systems are in.

The office manager would probably have to deny leave for some of them.

ES Teacher

Right? Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

So they call in sick. Teachers know schools can’t afford to fire them right now. Not sure why this is so hard to understand.

Teacher-hating parents are dumb AF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are NO SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS.

This is not about complaining teachers or philosophies or whatever. It’s about the job market. If you look around your office and imagine that for every single person who takes a day or two off for Thanksgiving you need to hire a temporary worker to fill their job, then you understand the situation the school systems are in.

How do you think hospitals, doctors offices, and basically any business that deals directly with the public deal with this? Not everyone can take leave on the same day. Sometimes they come up with rotations or other systems to spread out the highly desired days to take off.

Didn't they reduce hours and services? Our doctor's office started doing telehealth as well.

[Anonymous]

Asking for volunteers first works well in my experience. Some people love working on the holidays. Either they are not emotionally attached to that day or their family are far away and they would rather have company at work then be lonely at home.

[Anonymous]

The reason many school districts had to close doors before Thanksgiving was the sub shortage. There are limited subs to begin with right now, and those who have been coming don't want to work the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This is true for teacher substitutes as well as for backup school bus drivers.

Teachers usually aren't allowed to put in for personal leave before a holiday, but even without allowing personal leave there will be a certain number of teachers genuinely ill, or taking COVID leave, or caring for COVID family members or kids who are quarantined due to COVID. Or needing to take family medical leave to care for their spouse. Etc. These are reasons to be absent from work. In a different year, even if there were no subs, the absences would be handled "in house" by instructional assistants or by other teachers covering for the class during their planning periods, or by doubling classes up into another classroom for the day.

But we have a teacher shortage. In my elementary school, we have two teachers who resigned and have yet to be replaced. There just aren't a lot of people applying for jobs right now. In fact, I was told by my principal that they are hiring teachers now without any training as long as they have a bachelor's degree!! It's that desperate.

So these two teachers have been out over a month and not replaced. They are being covered by other teachers and instructional assistants for the moment. That leaves no one free to cover for anyone else. So if we have no subs show up -- it's a bad situation immediately. We really aren't supposed to double kids up into classrooms for COVID related reasons, but it is happening all the time now.

There are ways around this problem.

1) double the pay for subs, especially at high need times.
2) get central office workers (former teachers, or at least those with college degrees) out to the classrooms to help sub.
3) raise the pay for new teachers by giving a one time bonus to encourage them to take the job
4) allow teachers to take leave in one hour increments if they can't, and if they need to leave early or late tell them they don't need to take leave if it is less than 1 hour. That would encourage people who have been taking half day leave to only take 1 hour leave if possible, and every little bit helps.
5) hire more instructional assistants
6) hire one full time sub per small school at teacher pay to be used as a back up sub.

I don't recommend telling teachers that they cannot take sick leave. That will only push out more of the parents of young children or older teachers who are caring for ill relatives sooner, which really isn't what you want right now.

[Anonymous]

The comparison to retail stores staying open despite staff shortage isn't a good one.

My local fast food restaurant is short on staff; maybe they usually have 16 workers on a shift but lately they just have 10 showing up. So... they are working with 5/8th the staff. What happens? They work more slowly. They serve fewer customers per hour. Long lines build up. People who aren't willing to wait go elsewhere.

My local elementary school usually has 24 teachers but 2 resigned and haven't been replaced. 2 are out on long term sick leave. 1 is quarantined. 1 is home with a child with COVID. 1 is taking FMLA leave to be with his wife after surgery. And then 2 call in sick. So they are working with only 15/24 of the staff or 5/8th full staffing. So what happens? They still have to safely care for 100% of the students. They can't just open their doors to 5/8th of the school and close them when they are at capacity. To some extent they can double the kids up in classrooms. In high school apparently they just sent the kids with no teachers to sit in the auditorium for their class where they play on their phones. In my school teachers have started refusing to take double classes any longer. It's not in our contract that we have to accept it. We used to do it; every once in a while it's fine; but it is happening twice a week now. Something has to change.

[Anonymous]

and hospitals DO close because of staffing shortages.

https://www.newsweek.com/staff-shortages-force-new-york-hospital-close-emergency-room-winter-covid-surge-looms-1652671

In addition, pay for "substitute" nurses has skyrocketed due to demand.

That's how you respond to staffing shortages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are NO SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS.

This is not about complaining teachers or philosophies or whatever. It’s about the job market. If you look around your office and imagine that for every single person who takes a day or two off for Thanksgiving you need to hire a temporary worker to fill their job, then you understand the situation the school systems are in.

How do you think hospitals, doctors offices, and basically any business that deals directly with the public deal with this? Not everyone can take leave on the same day. Sometimes they come up with rotations or other systems to spread out the highly desired days to take off.

Didn't they reduce hours and services? Our doctor's office started doing telehealth as well.

Some do, some don’t. Even when they close on the Friday after Thanksgiving, or Wednesday before, that mostly just moves when people ask for time off (e.g., the whole week off, rather than just the Friday). Regardless, they can’t let everyone take leave whenever they want- there’s always a system in place for determining who gets the day off, and who needs to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:and hospitals DO close because of staffing shortages.

https://www.newsweek.com/staff-shortages-force-new-york-hospital-close-emergency-room-winter-covid-surge-looms-1652671

In addition, pay for "substitute" nurses has skyrocketed due to demand.

That's how you respond to staffing shortages.

Yes, it is. Schools absolutely should have been greatly increasing substitute teacher pay, which was outrageously low even before the pandemic.

In some places, like MCPS, part of the problem is that MCEA’s contract with full-time teachers dictates what MCPS is allowed to pay substitute teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For professions outside of teaching, what happens to unused leave? Is it “use it or lose it” and if so, do you try to use up your leave before it is lost?

Bump.
Anyone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are NO SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS.

This is not about complaining teachers or philosophies or whatever. It’s about the job market. If you look around your office and imagine that for every single person who takes a day or two off for Thanksgiving you need to hire a temporary worker to fill their job, then you understand the situation the school systems are in.

How do you think hospitals, doctors offices, and basically any business that deals directly with the public deal with this? Not everyone can take leave on the same day. Sometimes they come up with rotations or other systems to spread out the highly desired days to take off.

Didn't they reduce hours and services? Our doctor's office started doing telehealth as well.

Some do, some don’t. Even when they close on the Friday after Thanksgiving, or Wednesday before, that mostly just moves when people ask for time off (e.g., the whole week off, rather than just the Friday). Regardless, they can’t let everyone take leave whenever they want- there’s always a system in place for determining who gets the day off, and who needs to work.

Sure, but there is a system at schools, too, for determining who can get time off. No one in my school district can ask for personal or vacation days just before a holiday for example, without approval from very higher ups, and that approval is NOT being given.

The question is how are places handling people out sick + staff shortages + no one to cover. In those cases -- they have to reduce services. Either they work more slowly and have longer wait times, or they fail to provide services. In some cases, they just need to close because they cannot safely operate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The comparison to retail stores staying open despite staff shortage isn't a good one.

My local fast food restaurant is short on staff; maybe they usually have 16 workers on a shift but lately they just have 10 showing up. So... they are working with 5/8th the staff. What happens? They work more slowly. They serve fewer customers per hour. Long lines build up. People who aren't willing to wait go elsewhere.

My local elementary school usually has 24 teachers but 2 resigned and haven't been replaced. 2 are out on long term sick leave. 1 is quarantined. 1 is home with a child with COVID. 1 is taking FMLA leave to be with his wife after surgery. And then 2 call in sick. So they are working with only 15/24 of the staff or 5/8th full staffing. So what happens? They still have to safely care for 100% of the students. They can't just open their doors to 5/8th of the school and close them when they are at capacity. To some extent they can double the kids up in classrooms. In high school apparently they just sent the kids with no teachers to sit in the auditorium for their class where they play on their phones. In my school teachers have started refusing to take double classes any longer. It's not in our contract that we have to accept it. We used to do it; every once in a while it's fine; but it is happening twice a week now. Something has to change.

Agree with this. People don't fundamentally understand how tenuous the system already was. Now, with staffing issues, things are falling apart. There's a huge push for teachers to "make up" for the past year and a half. My district was open all of last year, but parents are still angry because classes/schools closed intermittently when there were COVID outbreaks (not due to positivity or hospitalization rates in the community, but in the schools and classrooms themselves). There is a belief that teachers should do more-conduct more assessments, provide more instruction (after school and on weekends), and provide social and emotional support. There have been multiple COVID cases among students and staff, even though all adults are required to be vaccinated. Two classes had to be quarantined because they combined them and-surprise(!) there was a COVID case. Kids from both classes wound up sick. There are always people out, and so teachers consistently lose our already minimal prep time. We work with students with serious behavioral issues and we are short the support staff who we need to run the school safely. Essentially, this means we are being asked to do more with less time and under worse conditions than before.
Morale is very low and most people are considering leaving. We have all stopped taking work home. If they want us to do our jobs, we need to be given the tools and time to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:and hospitals DO close because of staffing shortages.

https://www.newsweek.com/staff-shortages-force-new-york-hospital-close-emergency-room-winter-covid-surge-looms-1652671

In addition, pay for "substitute" nurses has skyrocketed due to demand.

That's how you respond to staffing shortages.

Yes, it is. Schools absolutely should have been greatly increasing substitute teacher pay, which was outrageously low even before the pandemic.

In some places, like MCPS, part of the problem is that MCEA’s contract with full-time teachers dictates what MCPS is allowed to pay substitute teachers.

This recent news article says that MCEA is asking for premium pandemic pay to attract and retain more substitutes.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/montgomery-county-teachers-say-theyre-overworked-amid-understaffing-crisis/2877424/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Listen - you need to understand that we live in a society where there is a balance between supply and demand. Teachers are in serious demand and in low supply. The counties need to keep them as happy as possible and they don’t have any money to give them decent pay increases. So they give them time off. We had huge turnover at my kids school over the last 1 1/2 years. I will gladly take a couple days off rather than go back to online or have 50 kids in a class. If you want to keep your kids in school, take care of your teachers. Seriously.

Then we really, really need to adapt the European model of year round school. 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off.

Let’s go already.

I recently had a long conversation with my SIL about this. She's a former 2nd grade teacher (15 years), then elementary principal, now high level administrator in her school district. She says that while parents push back against the idea of year round school because change is hard, they aren't the real obstacle. Most families are two-income, and summers are hard in terms of childcare. Most families only take a couple weeks of actual vacation in the summer because they have to work, so the rest of the summer is just trying to keep the kids occupied and safe until school starts again. So while there would definitely be push back, a lot more families would get on board with this than you think.

The obstacles is teachers. This schedule is often one of the key selling points for many people who enter the profession, and long-timers have structured their entire lives around it. There are teachers who would support a year round model for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it would make the actual act of teaching easier because you wouldn't have to deal with annual learning loss and re-acclimating kids to the classroom. And there are teachers who already essentially teach year round because they teach summer school most years. But as a group, there is a lot of resistance to a year-round model among teachers and that's the primary reason most districts haven't attempted it, even though it's an issue that comes up regularly.

I'm a teacher and I'm not sure which group would push back against year round school with frequent breaks. That said, I'd LOVE year round school with a break every quarter or every 8 weeks or whatever. I do have many colleagues who would not like that. As for child care, it could be made possible if schools which have the year round model offered childcare in the interim weeks. Like day camp. But that'd require staffing and right now there isn't hardly anyone willing to staff such programs. Plus then there's the issue of which classrooms they'd have to use. That is something I could not tolerate. Having some camp staff worker in my classroom would mean all my stuff would get used, stolen or destroyed in the week or two of break. Maybe if they'd limit the day camp program to just the gym that could work though.

[Anonymous]

What staffing problem would year-round schooling solve?

I don't understand why it is being mentioned here. It wouldn't help anything in the current situation. If we don't have enough teachers now, how would year-round schooling help the situation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For professions outside of teaching, what happens to unused leave? Is it “use it or lose it” and if so, do you try to use up your leave before it is lost?

Bump.
Anyone?

Personally, I have to list my leave time as leave but I still have to work. So…yeah.

The pandemic means that my office still works 60 hours a weeks, and no one really gets weekends. Leave days are merely a hope.