I won't be long, as I am completely exhausted.
Today the teaching staff was told that our district will be broke on November 1, unless, of courses, concessions can be made. The district is in the red by better than two million dollars. Should we actually go broke, the state would presumably send in an emergency finance director who would then slash away.
I have been far too involved in the inner workings of the district to not be absolutely livid at the sheer incompetence that has brought us to this point.
All of the buildings in our district are ancient and certainly would not get the energy star rating. So, how many grants have we pursued in order to reduce our long-term energy costs? I'm betting that the number is closer to zero than it should be.
Let me tell you about the educational foundation that the teachers' union tried to establish three years ago. We had a name, started writing by-laws, but we could not get a single administrator to agree to sit on the board. A foundation could have funneled much needed donations into the district.
Or howabout the $350/hour the lawyer was paid to handle negotiations? He racked up nearly $40,000 in two years. Yup, but we're broke.
When the vulture-like charter schools began to move in, did we do anything like offer language classes (i.e. Arabic) that might entice parents to keep their kids in our school? Nope. On the topic of charter schools - would someone in Michigan please look into them. It is my understanding that religious indoctrination is being taught. I know for a fact that one of the K-8 charters did not teach social studies because the federal standards didn't use social studies to measure and grade schools. My favorite is, of course, if a charter school doesn't have enough students, it will just shut down completely, two weeks into the school year. Us, we would just lay-off teachers, not shut down entirely.
My beer buzz in wearing off and I need to sleep. I need to do my job, as I always do, with gusto and enthusiasm.
