Updates
One, don't forget that LEV is having a live on-line chat today at noon about charter schools.
Two, the BEX Oversight Committee meeting tomorrow morning has been moved to Chief Sealth High School (likely because they will be doing a Denny walk-thru) at 8:30 am.
Three, I'll be doing a thread on the Executive Committee meeting yesterday but there was mention of the furlough day for SPS staff coming up on August 31st. Here's the letter that was sent out:
Two, the BEX Oversight Committee meeting tomorrow morning has been moved to Chief Sealth High School (likely because they will be doing a Denny walk-thru) at 8:30 am.
Three, I'll be doing a thread on the Executive Committee meeting yesterday but there was mention of the furlough day for SPS staff coming up on August 31st. Here's the letter that was sent out:
"On that day [August 31], all SEA and PASS represented staff as well as all non-represented staff will be furloughed and prohibited from working. I need to stress this IS NOT OPTIONAL.
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act states that if you are a non-exempt employee (which is how all employees are defined during a furlough week regardless of position), you must be compensated for ALL hours worked during that week. Having to compensate someone for working on a furlough day runs counter to the reason that the District is implementing furlough.
As a result, ANY employee who works on a furlough day may be subject to disciplinary action. This includes working from home, going in on your own time, emailing,making phone calls, etc. We appreciate that everyone is gearing up for the start of the school year, and we know that many of you are asking to voluntarily work that day.
Again, because we would be federally mandated to pay you, working on a furlough day is considered insubordination."
This was explained at the meeting but I thought it was only about not showing up at your job site. I'm not sure how the feds would know if you were working at home but apparently, it's quite serious.
The furlough only applies to employees represented by SEA and PASS as well as all non-represented staff. This is kind of interesting because it leaves out some of the other represented employee groups. Will they be locked out of the buildings? I'm not sure how that will work.
The district's press release explains that the furloughs will occur in both this school year and next year as well. From the press release:
Non-represented staff will be taking either two or four days of furlough – depending on their employment level – including the August 31 date.
Comments
I've heard the arguments that it's better for future negotiations to have furloughs instead of paycuts. But that presumes that we'll actually start having budgets that make sense some day.
Oompah
It's not an issue of "the feds" (or Arne Duncan, personally) knowing, it's an issue of federal law requiring the District (the employer) to pay for hours worked. The District is most likely trying to forestall any later claims about having worked on that day when they directed their emplolyees (as employers have the right to do) not to work because they will not be paid.
In the private sector the discipline for insubordination is up to and including termination. And that should happen here if anyone outright defies the requirement. It's obvious that people are going to work from home if they want to on that day - they just won't tell anyone (unless of course you use their email network - then they will know). Just don't go claiming any pay for that day and nothing will happen.
But it is sure not going to help the teacher feel good about the upcoming school year, knowing that right off the bat they are going to be working without getting paid.
Also, the 8/31 furlough day was to be a full day of district directed professional development on the new PG&E rubric (i.e. the teacher evaluation framework), so it would not have been available for teacher prep time, alas. We still need good information about the new evaluation though and I don't know how we will get it. Creating an online training was mentioned - Unpaid of course.
Teacher/Parent
CommentsInPassing
1 Would you support allowing 3,000 students who are currently attending the lowest performing schools in Washington to transition into potentially high-performing public schools?
Yes
No
2 Would you support allowing 10 principals in 10 public schools to really be the boss, to allow the principals and the teachers to decide the learning and work rules for the building?
Yes
No
3 Would you support charter schools?
Yes
No
I need more information to decide
You'd have to be an witch to say no to the first two. "And I want to take candy away from babies, too! Bwaa haa haa!"
Where is his sacrifice?
No Way!!!! SEA must agree that central admin. is honest and doing a good job and not spending to much on itself.
What else could it be?
Please let me know.
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
Just sayin.'
Pacific Gas & Electric? I'm guessing not, since even my wildest imagination can't make a connection between a CA utility & teaching in Seattle.
(zb)
--Lurker
In SPS, PG&E = Professional Growth and Evaluation
-CT
- no pay, no play
Then we may (I think we have permission) work WITHOUT PAY on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday (yes, Labor Day) to get our classrooms ready. Tuesday will be our one and only paid day to get our classrooms ready for kids on Wednesday. Frankly, none of us can leave all the work for one day so we will work many unpaid hours/days for a smooth start to our school year.
Don't get me wrong, I love my job. But I am sick of our state budget being "balanced" on the backs of teachers.
SPS teacher and parent
-reader
-another reader and voter
This means, if you work on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, the district must pay you for those hours. You CANNOT work them unpaid!
I'm not sure if the district has realized it yet, but the law has turned Friday, Saturday, and Sunday into de-facto furlough days as well. Ditto for "working early" on the Monday or Tuesday....
By placing the furlough day on Aug. 31, the Seattle Public Schools has just made it impossible for their teachers to get their classrooms ready.
I wonder if someone should bring that to their attention?
First, my kids have had good and bad teachers so I get that not all teachers are excellent. I understand that colleges of ed need to do a better job training teachers. I also know that state workers took a cut, Americans are out of work etc.
But teachers, in this country, have been underpaid for decades. Citizens in this state understood this and passed cost of living increases for teachers about 10 years ago. Unfortunately there was no funding source for these increases and it has all been put on hold.
All of this ultimately effects the quality of education our children receive. I realize there is a lot more to improving the quality of education in this country than teacher pay. Teachers are not looking for a handout. We would just like to get paid for the work we will need to do to get our classrooms ready for our students. And of course, teachers will do the work whether we get paid or not. The state and district knows this.
SPS teacher and Parent
another reader/voter
Oompah
RE: the one about the principal making up the "rules", that makes me recall last September, the Board paid 1-2 million $$ to a former vice-principal at Ballard who was sexually harassed by the (short time) principal there.
Just think, if he had the power, he could just decide that such sexual phone calls and other conduct was OK.
AND, if she did'nt like it, she could work in a real public school where those pesky laws and "rules" make it so hard to teach kids.
Hello Michelle Bachman, welcome to LEV.
because there is always someone stringing up there hanging post -
because there is always someone itching to use they're hanging tree -
like whatever
But LEV apparently likes the idea.
Why have a society at all?
Hey folks, remember the firstr rule of engagement with the community of wealth (LEV) is that they consistantly believe the rest of us are stupid.
Phoney "polls" notwithstanding, its the same old wealthy people don't want their kids to mix with the rest of us (remember Ellen Roe and her grandchild having to sit next to the child of a poor person?).
Oh yeah, but they want our taxes to pay for little "public" Lakesides where there are no unions and management makes up the rules.
SOS!
-Envious PS mom
-CT
So why are people interested in bringing charters to Washington when it simply does not seem lucrative for them? How are they going to be funded? Would the state give them compensatory funding, like levy equalization? Or what? Enough private foundations want to bestow money on charter schools? The feds?
Dorothy,
My suspicion as to why people want to bring charters to Washington is that this move would allow Reformers to further whittle away at the structure of the public schools. "Reform" exists merely to privatize public schools, break the unions, and create a systematized, standardized, digitized form of "education" for the masses, an "education lite" for the ghettoes. This is why we see so much investment by Reformers (businesses, business roundtables, etc) in charters around the country.
Business (and their foundations) can't, of course, or won't, pay for the billions and billions it would cost to support Harlem Zone-type schools EVERYWHERE. In my cynical view, charters (or at least the Reform charters) exist mainly to pave the way for breaking up public education into saleable pieces, to purportedly "show" the public who crappy public schools (supposedly) are, and to open the doors to the privatizers.
There might not be money to be made in "the Soviet of Washington" State, but heck, Gates and Broad and Walton and Boeing will fund some anyway, as a losing proposition, merely to present a media show to convince the public over time that public school teachers are not "quality" and those free market teachers (TFA, for instance) are "all about the kids."
Of course, thanks to the test prep, my child learned about mountain effects on rainfall (which we read about at home after questions arose from the in-class science test-prep).
Can charter school students opt-out of standardized tests?
I see basic fundamentals that this district should be working on and yet the district gets sidetracked again and again. With every new Super, directors, principals, there's a new set of trendy ideas, initiatives and lots of talk, but little follow through to see if things being done work or harm in the classroom (in part because good or bad leaders don't stick around long enough to find out). I see a TFA analogy in the way the district putting in new administrators with very little experience/training to oversee school(s). This causes rippling effect down to the students. I see it now with newly hired principals who are short on teaching/administrative/personnel management experience embracing MAP/MSP tests as an easy mean to eval staff. I see it in the standardized curriculum being taught and the pacing teachers are required to adhere to in the classroom. If only we all think, learn, act, and behave the same way. (There is a place for it, and the super is call a warden.) Sigh! As I muddle through school's announcements and educational forum/blogs, I am beginning to feel a loss of academic freedom to teach kids, to engage kids' natural curiosity, to encourage independent thinking and action (and the responsibility that goes with it) . That is a shame.
That's why I am a bit envious of some private schools where they still have a place for it and learning still counts.
Envious PS mom
Did someone say staff at private schools are well paid?
I didn't.
The point I make is what kind of system we foster when we teach kids that the "Headmaster" (Principal in LEV-speak) makes all the rules and underlings are NOT free to particpate.
Nothing to do with pay.
"Envious PS mom" did, upthread a ways. I think private school pay varies a lot -- even within the same school, under different administrations and in different financial climates the compensation and benefits may vary hugely.
At one point Lakeside salaries were, I am told, way down due to not keeping up with inflation, to the point where there were stories of junior faculty qualifying for food stamps. Presumably things aren't nearly as bad as that now. On the other hand, many long-time faculty members in my day got to send their sons to Lakeside for free (not their daughters -- the contracts dated from before the time when Lakeside went coed).
Helen Schinske
-envious PS mom
Now before the stories of 16 hour days and weekends spent preparing for and teaching my kids start to roll in, let me say, I know teaching is demanding. I know teachers are generally hard- working, but, seriously, they should be held to the same standard as any other professional, be it a Boeing engineer, architect, doctor, pilot, etc. Perform to a certain measurable level or move on. That measure should be decided by the employer and should be subject to appeal, but there should be way to keep teachers on the job who are good and get those who aren't out the door.
You think teachers should be treated like any other engineer, etc.? Just think - then they might have a salary that matches their education and experience. Myself? I'm topped out at 60K a year in my district and I have a PhD and 14 years in teaching. The most I can hope for is possibly a reinstatement of our COLA sometime in the distant future for a slight boost to my paycheck. Otherwise I'm here at the same salary for the remainder of my teaching career unless I opt to return to the private sector and make about 20K more. But go ahead and float your little dream that public sector employees are overpaid and shouldn't have a pension or be part of a union.
Also, if you think collective bargaining is another thing teachers shouldn't have, think of this: our working conditions are your child's learning conditions. When we bargain in sections on class size, support for SPED students, and even sick leave language, those items
directly affect the classroom environment. If you think administrators or politicians are going to protect those things out of the goodness of their hearts, think again.
Right wing talking points are not based on fact or reality - only ideology.
Done