Time Travel and Foolproof Logic

The District has reached a new low in logic. For the last few years, we’ve had these things called “Buy-Back Days.” They are professional development days but because of the contract or because the district is cheap or something, they’ve been optional, and only the people who go to them get paid. Then the people who want more money can go, some of us can sleep in, and the district doesn’t have to pay for everyone. Then, to make things a little more confusing, our school is in the “intensive Support Network" and we have three more optional professional development days. For most of these days less than half of our staff showed up, not because we don’t want the extra money, but because we’re generally exhausted. I went to two of them, but I don’t know if they were district-wide or particular to our school.

Now things get interesting. We just got a new contract, as I mentioned, and it’s retroactive to the beginning of the school year. Under this contract, the Buy-Back Days are mandatory and we are compensated for them. Unfortunately, the Buy-Back Days have all passed. They might put one at the end of the year for people to make up, but that’s unclear, and it’s also one day, not three. So the District is telling me that I need to have gone to a training in October of 2005 in order to fulfill my contract. As much as I would like to do that, there’s really nothing at all that I can do about it, as my time machine happens to be broken at the moment.

I really shouldn’t be surprised though; this is the district that put June 31st on the official calendar. And I’ve seen the signs displaying our “Suspension Reduction Targets” (admirable) and “Attendance Reduction Targets” (slightly less admirable. They might possibly mean to reduce absences and not attendance. Although one never knows.)
While we’re at it, we might want to question the business model of firing all the first-year teachers, alienating them with the ridiculous re-application process, spending a ton of money to try and recruit new teachers, and then wonder why we can’t get all the vacancies filled. Hmmm…..

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A Loss

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A New Prison, Part 1

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Bronwyn Harris, Author

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