EDITOR: The editorial in the June 1 edition illuminates all to
well the depth to which discussion and debate over public education
have fallen in this community over the course of the current school
year.
EDITOR:
The editorial in the June 1 edition illuminates all to well the depth to which discussion and debate over public education have fallen in this community over the course of the current school year. It seems that in every case, what is best for students is pushed to the side in order to make room at center stage for yet another showdown between hostile parties vying for power.
At nearly every school board meeting this year the tenor has been one of moral outrage that this teacher or that administrator or some other school board member had the audacity to make a decision which the offended party did not agree. Any pleas to listen to rationale for decisions or recommendations have met with boos and hisses from the audience, followed by debasing opinion pieces and letters in the newspaper.
As a teacher with 19 years in this district, I must say that I have never felt so without a sense of community purpose as I have felt this year. I know that I am not the only teacher so affected. It is demoralizing to teach in a community where the prevailing mood is that teachers are trying to blink the district.
Unfortunately, as the hostilities have been allowed to thrive, students have been affected in a way that few adults realize. Many older students have come to believe that they are receiving a substandard education in Morgan Hill. Some of them are convinced that our schools are among the worst in the state. How do you suppose that affects their dedication to their studies?
I have three specific objections to the editorial. First is the notion that middle school students are losing out because of the reduction in minutes. The required minutes are set by the state, and vary according to the ages of students because it is nether humane nor beneficial to keep younger kids in school for the length of a high school day. People who are concerned for what is best for seventh and eighth graders should have been complaining for over 25 years about their long school day, which increases student exhaustion, burn-out and misbehavior.
My second objection is to the notion that middle school teachers should be required to participate in staff development or collaboration after school, just because they will have a shorter day than high school teachers. Teachers spend countless hours after school, in the evenings, on weekends, and even during holidays grading student work, preparing lessons, returning parent phone calls, broadening our knowledge base, and yes, collaborating with colleagues. The implication that we cannot be trusted to make professional decisions in an insult.
My third objection is to the characterization of the union president as “complaining: Because she defended the contractual rights of the teachers who she was elected to represent. Instead of lamenting that the district is giving up 50 minutes per day and getting nothing in return, perhaps you should be thanking those middle school teachers for working for free for 50 minutes every day for over 25 years, simply because ninth graders were sharing their campuses. The teachers, by the way, will still teach the same number of students, and the same number of classes, and correct the same number of papers, and return the same number of phone calls. And if you doubt that the district is getting its money’s worth out of them, I invite you to contact me so that I can arrange for you to shadow a middle school teacher for a day.
Finally, I need a clarification. On your editorial you bemoan the wasted opportunity to “create a contract that includes compensation for the (after school) time at no additional cost.” You are proposing that the teachers should work this time at no cost to the district; what, exactly, is the compensation?
Jeanie Wallace,
Britton teacher and
MH FT Staff Representative
Editor’s note: Teachers were being paid for that classroom time. Next school year, they will receive the same pay for fewer classroom minutes.
