Reply to Leaving the suburbs for DCPS pay??

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I always hear people say that Central Office is disrespectful. Who specifically in Central Office are you referring to and why do you feel they are disrespectful? It can't be the entire staff at Central Office. Honestly, many of them came out of the classroom as well and they also work long hours (past 5 most nights). Are some of the upper echelon in Central Office out of touch, a resounding YES! Is the typical working bee in Central disrespectful? Not in my experience. They are taking orders just as the teachers are. [quote=Anonymous]I have never worked in the suburbs. I’ve been in DCPS or charters nearly 10 years, since my first year teaching. I love my principal, colleagues, individual school culture (Title 1 School in SE, for what it’s worth) but I can tell you that daily I consider whether I have sold my soul to reforms and constant upheaval.

I’m in ECE and while it’s easier than being in an upper grade it’s no cake walk. Depending on where you teach you’ll have your own fair share of kids with various social/emotional and behavior concerns. My friend in FCPS constantly remarks over what I deal with solo that her admin. would step in for (behavior, parent concerns, families that need social work type services) —- just be prepared to be a lot more independent on that end for better or for worse. I like the autonomy, but some don’t.

The money isn’t that much better unless you’re in a high poverty school. With bonuses, step level increases etc. related to performance pay, I would be taking a massive pay cut to work anywhere else at this point and now that I have a kid and husband I just can’t work the same extra hours I did before. From what I can tell work/life balance is much harder in DCPS even if you’re typically good at drawing boundaries because 1) you’re constantly filling in gaps and working harder not smarter because of what the district doesn’t provide (I make my own curriculum materials, I’ve personally funded or used DonorsChoose grants for at least 80% of my classroom materials) and 2) your evaluation scores depend on lots of subjective variables (parent involvement, attendance at extracurricular events, etc.). I debate all the time about whether moving schools or districts would be less stressful, and while thus far I haven’t really wanted to, it feels icky to realize they basically have me financially trapped.

Things are VERY much about metrics, assessment scores, etc. here (more so than I can tell in suburbs). Even at ECE level. It feels like *everything* is quantified and compared in an apples to oranges way and that’s exhausting. It can be an extremely competitive and hypercritical environment instead of the collaborative environment you may be used to and I largely blame IMPACT and top down obsession with data.

The upper level leadership is disorganized at best and unethical at worst, and this was the case long before the current news stories. Like PPs have said, it will largely depend on your school. I stay because of my schools leadership, the families, etc. and not because of the pay. But central office completely disrespects teachers and has very out of touch expectations. It can sometimes feel like they pay well because they know otherwise you’d get fed up with being treated like a cog in a broken machine and just leave.

Choose schools very carefully if you make the switch. There are wonderful people and places to work in DCPS in spite of the overall culture.

[/quote][/quote]

ALL staff at IMPACT office, Kamras (yes I know he's gone now but you asked for names)! Human Resource and OCTO - respectful[/quote]

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