NPR Article on Public Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In most professions everyone who wants leave can't automatically get it at the same time. Is this what the teachers are arguing for? That seems really out of touch.

No.

What we need are more teachers to replace those who have quit, and more substitute teachers.

But they want more subs so everyone can take off at Thanksgiving for a week, I think. That part seems pretty out of touch.

Who is asking for that? The only people I saw pondering taking the week off was a thread from parents asking if they were going to send their kids for the short week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It makes sense that in the career obsessed DMV people all think their job function is critical to keeping society moving and that they in particular could never miss a day or the world would crumble.
Guess what. That’s not true. Take a breath, enjoy your lives. teachers at my DCPS school take days around the holidays and we survive. The kids survive. If DCPS chose to close for a day, we’d still all survive.

Your work doesn’t have to be your everything. When you die, earth will go on.

It makes sense that in DCUM’s bubble people don’t understand how many people are paid hourly and don’t get vacation days. Either families lose income or they’re leaving the kids home alone without supervision because they can’t afford not to work.

This comment was made by me in response to the feds who could never take off a day or schedule a dr appt bc their work was too important

They said that they couldn't do these things whenever they wanted to, and had to balance leave and doctors' appointments with work demands. There is a difference.

[Anonymous]

New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It makes sense that in the career obsessed DMV people all think their job function is critical to keeping society moving and that they in particular could never miss a day or the world would crumble.
Guess what. That’s not true. Take a breath, enjoy your lives. teachers at my DCPS school take days around the holidays and we survive. The kids survive. If DCPS chose to close for a day, we’d still all survive.

Your work doesn’t have to be your everything. When you die, earth will go on.

It makes sense that in DCUM’s bubble people don’t understand how many people are paid hourly and don’t get vacation days. Either families lose income or they’re leaving the kids home alone without supervision because they can’t afford not to work.

This comment was made by me in response to the feds who could never take off a day or schedule a dr appt bc their work was too important

They said that they couldn't do these things whenever they wanted to, and had to balance leave and doctors' appointments with work demands. There is a difference.

Right. And my point stands that work demands will always be there. Personally I don’t need to live my life to serve my master. If I have time available I’ll take it and the sun will rise tomorrow. I’m also a teacher with over 500 hrs accrued so it’s not like I’m taking advantage of you and your kids here; just don’t need a lecture about how mission critical any one day is

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand the point of all this leave comparision?

The teachers I know who are absent from work aren't (haven't been) taking discretionary leave. They are (were): in the hospital, or going to the doctor for an appointment before hernia surgery, or taking their disabled spouse or child to an appointment. Or they are home with a fever. Or home with a sick child -- no telework possible in that case. Or they are under quarantine. Or they just resigned because they couldn't meet their professional responsibilities -- and haven't, unfortunately, yet been replaced.

No one is taking discretionary or vacation leave right now; it isn't being approved and we aren't asking for it. We know it is all hands on deck, because when someone doesn't show up for work our colleagues need to cover for us and students get worse education.

The article was quite literally about teachers asking for discretionary leave around a holiday, in fact so many of them have that schools are bullied into closing instead of just telling teachers no.

So? Let them. How is it any of your business? If a teacher wants to take a day off then they should be able to. It is crazy that people like you are advocating that they should be told "no" when they want or need time off. What they are doing is a 'nice to have' but not 'need to have.' Nothing about teaching is mission critical unless you're one of those parents who insist that you need the childcare. IMO parents in public schools need to face up to the reality that if you need the childcare then hire childcare. Frankly, people like you are why we send our kids to private schools. Not only do our kids receive a better education but the teachers are treated more humanely, and that is something we value in our family.

Like any other workplace, not everyone can all take off at the same time. This is not new. Some kids are so far behind due to covid, not sure how closing extra random days benefits those kids that are behind. We were in private school last year and I miss it so much. I’m so disappointed by public school.

You get what you pay for.

+1

You complain about taxes and then sh1t on your teachers for two years. What did you expect would happen?

First, teachers in the DMV are not underpaid. And second, what evidence do you have that paying teachers more would change the situation. If it's fine to take off whenever, why would that change if pay was more?
Teachers will still have families which you believe are more important than doing what is best for students. Teachers and their families are more important than anything.

Teachers in our area *are* underpaid.
https://www.wric.com/news/education/virginia-d-c-ranked-as-worst-two-places-for-teacher-pay/amp/

They should also have days off (combination of holidays and PTO) to spend with their families.

And the teaching profession and individual teachers should be respected.

You get what you pay for.

I just have to comment on this...do you think other professions get 3 days off at Thanksgiving? Or two weeks at Christmas? They don't. Especially in this area - sure there are probably some corporations who give more then one day off at holidays, but think of the countless Fed workers in the DMV who only get 1 day off - Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day - and try to see if they can add 2 or 3 on to that (and often can't because the government has to keep running even on holidays) and your honestly complaining that teachers don't get enough time off at holidays? Its like some teachers seriously live in another reality.

The topic is teachers. How to get good ones. How to keep them.

Teachers get off very few/limited days. That is a problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In most professions everyone who wants leave can't automatically get it at the same time. Is this what the teachers are arguing for? That seems really out of touch.

No.

What we need are more teachers to replace those who have quit, and more substitute teachers.

But they want more subs so everyone can take off at Thanksgiving for a week, I think. That part seems pretty out of touch.

Really, no. At least in DC area schools people aren't being given personal leave for Thanksgiving week. But SUBS didn't want to work Mon-Wed so it was even harder to find subs for those teachers who were ill or had resigned or were quarantined etc. At least that's what happened in my school. We managed -- we just put several classes together in the cafeteria and let them hang out there with one teacher. But it wasn't great.

Okay, thank you for explaining. That is helpful to understand.

It's entirely possible though that HR approved the normal amount of Monday/Tuesday Thanksgiving week leave back in September, when they didn't realize we'd have such a shortage of staff and subs. They seem to have been taken by surprise by the situation. Going forward, I know in our school principals are really scrutinizing leave requests now and we are being urged not to take any leave if we can possibly help it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The topic is teachers. How to get good ones. How to keep them.

Teachers get off very few/limited days. That is a problem.

Stop. No. Teacher here. That's not the issue at hand at all right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

Yeah, that's about right -- maybe more if they are a long term sub. They were able to get enough subs at that rate so why raise the rate? Also, unions didn't want subs making more than first year teachers, I think, or else school districts would staff with subs instead of teachers to save money!

[Anonymous]

PP l keep reading there aren’t enough subs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

Yeah, that's about right -- maybe more if they are a long term sub. They were able to get enough subs at that rate so why raise the rate? Also, unions didn't want subs making more than first year teachers, I think, or else school districts would staff with subs instead of teachers to save money!

Also, a teacher does a lot that a short-term sub dues not do— lesson planning, student assessments, classroom management, school administrative duties, etc. A long term sub might do some of that but will almost certainly still be working off the regular teacher’s lesson plan.

If you have an office job, a sub is like someone who is hired to sit at your desk and respond to calls an emails to the degree they are able. They may have some experience in your field (or not! Some subs have no background in teaching or education at all) so they might be able to handle a few things, but mostly they are just keeping your seat warm. What percentage of your salary would you pay someone to do that?

Of course the analogy isn’t perfect because the real reason subs exist is that school has a child care component. But we don’t like to talk about that aspect of the role of schools, to our detriment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP l keep reading there aren’t enough subs.

This year, there aren't enough subs. In past years the pay was enough to attract subs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

Yeah, that's about right -- maybe more if they are a long term sub. They were able to get enough subs at that rate so why raise the rate? Also, unions didn't want subs making more than first year teachers, I think, or else school districts would staff with subs instead of teachers to save money!

In FCPS it was only $14 per hour until recently. I'm not sure if they've increased it now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

Yeah, that's about right -- maybe more if they are a long term sub. They were able to get enough subs at that rate so why raise the rate? Also, unions didn't want subs making more than first year teachers, I think, or else school districts would staff with subs instead of teachers to save money!

No they weren't. Districts were struggling with this since before the pandemic. I used to sub and there were always a lot of vacancies especially on Mondays, Fridays, and the days around breaks or holidays. Sometimes I'd be split between classes or shuffled around to cover an hour here and another hour there. It's definitely worse now though. $18 per hour is bullshit. Nannies won't work for that, and they're responsible for fewer kids. You might get a college babysitter who needs flexible, occasional work, but that person isn't paying taxes on what they make. Subs aren't eligible for health care, vision, dental, disability insurance, group life insurance, or the state retirement plan like regular teachers. This alone should boost their pay, especially for the long term subs who are paid slightly more but still way too little if they're covering a classroom that started out without an assigned teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New to this thread and haven’t read many of the pages. I will post a separate topic if this is too OT. So, substitute teachers only make $18/hour? Anybody know the rational for not paying them close to what a full time teacher per hour?

Yeah, that's about right -- maybe more if they are a long term sub. They were able to get enough subs at that rate so why raise the rate? Also, unions didn't want subs making more than first year teachers, I think, or else school districts would staff with subs instead of teachers to save money!

In FCPS it was only $14 per hour until recently. I'm not sure if they've increased it now.

It was $14.79. Now it os $17.79 as of Nov. 6.

https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/FY22-substitute-and-homebound-rates.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It makes sense that in the career obsessed DMV people all think their job function is critical to keeping society moving and that they in particular could never miss a day or the world would crumble.
Guess what. That’s not true. Take a breath, enjoy your lives. teachers at my DCPS school take days around the holidays and we survive. The kids survive. If DCPS chose to close for a day, we’d still all survive.

Your work doesn’t have to be your everything. When you die, earth will go on.

It makes sense that in DCUM’s bubble people don’t understand how many people are paid hourly and don’t get vacation days. Either families lose income or they’re leaving the kids home alone without supervision because they can’t afford not to work.

This comment was made by me in response to the feds who could never take off a day or schedule a dr appt bc their work was too important

They said that they couldn't do these things whenever they wanted to, and had to balance leave and doctors' appointments with work demands. There is a difference.

Right. And my point stands that work demands will always be there. Personally I don’t need to live my life to serve my master. If I have time available I’ll take it and the sun will rise tomorrow. I’m also a teacher with over 500 hrs accrued so it’s not like I’m taking advantage of you and your kids here; just don’t need a lecture about how mission critical any one day is

I have almost 1,300 hours of unused leave. Hindsight being 20/20 I do wish I would have used more of it earlier in my career.