First-grade teacher Sauda Johnson docked $9,700 for missing two days of work at charter school

[proud2BlibKansan]

A Charter school teacher lost two months' pay for missing two days of work, a move state officials are reviewing.

First-grade teacher Sauda Johnson was absent for the final two days at East Harlem's Harbor Science and Arts Charter School, after students were already out for the summer, she said.

School officials imposed a steep penalty - withholding $9,700 in summer pay, the portion of salary teachers receive in July and August for work completed during the year, Johnson contends.

"I worked so hard," said Johnson, noting she'd already taken a small pay cut for the chance to work at the charter school. "I worked - not just 8 to 4, but evenings and Saturdays. ... I worked for that money. I earned that money."

The school scheduled the two days just a few weeks beforehand to make up for snow days, said Johnson, 35, of the Bronx. She'd taken a job teaching summer school at a city public school and needed to start that position, she said.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/07/2010-10-07_teach_out_for_2_days_docked_9g.html#ixzz11lXpR6PF

[xchrom]

1. sigh. nt

[hobbit709]

2. The result of union busting and no rights for the worker serfs.

[LWolf]

20. +1

[Hannah Bell]

43. +100. to the school deform supporters here: this is the logical end of your hobbyhorse.

[Dinger]

58. Exactly

You nailed it.

[Fire1]

55. Ooops!! There it is!! +1000. n/t

[coyote]

3. isn't privitzation great?

We don't need no stinkin unions.

[MattBaggins]

12. Privitization? But those are "public" charter schools.

They are "public" schools just because they throw the word public in front of them.

[vi5]

4. Won't deter the "Yay Charter Schools!!" crowd...

..even the many that are on this site. Who cares what happens to the teachers or what kind of standards they are held to as far as teaching. All that matters is that THEIR kids can't go to public schools and THEY can't be bothered to work to improve their public schools.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. +1

[stray cat]

5. Maybe she should find another job

[WinkyDink]

6. Unintentionally ironic.

[uncommon]

8. Did you read the OP?

[City Lights]

10. D'oh! nt

[msongs]

14. lol the Obama-Duncan teacher removal plan nt

[joe black]

16. Maybe you should find a heart.

[Lorien]

35. That's impossible with that one

it only posts when it wants to stir shit up.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. She did. She was teaching summer school.

[Hannah Bell]

44. they're firing teachers in nyc, not hiring them. maybe you should find another talking point.

[Tatiana]

7. The "free-market" non-union world at work.

Short of filing a lawsuit against the charter, this woman may never recover her lost wages.

Oh, but charters are the GREATEST!!!!!!

[Romulox]

11. Umm, the OP isn't a big union supporter, though.

:shrug:

[Tatiana]

13. Just making the point that if the teacher was covered by a union,

she likely would not have had her wages stolen.

[msanthrope]

53. "Union for me, but not for thee." n/t

[uncommon]

9. She should sue - she already earned the money, so it has to be paid or she is being

stolen from.

[nashville_brook]

19. +1

[Starry Messenger]

15. How "innovative" of them.

I'm sure this will stimulate improvements in education. :sarcasm:

[gratuitous]

21. I know if my kid went to that school

I'd make real sure he learned something from this episode. I don't know if it's the lesson the profit-takers who own the school wanted him to learn, though.

[The Straight Story]

22. She makes $9700 for two months work ?

:)

[proud2BlibKansan]

23. That's about $60K for the year

Not unusual for a teacher in NYC.

[struggle4progress]

28. Her salary might look less attractive if you considered cost of living in The City

[readmoreoften]

42. In NYC, a $40,000 salary is equivalent to a $15,000 a year salary in Dallas

Per Forbes

[dkf]

47. Yet the tax rate is progressive so getting paid $40k sucks more.

[treestar]

24. If the district was going for snow days, why didn't the summer school

postpone? The students would still be in regular school anyway.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. Her summer school was in a different school

Not this charter.

[treestar]

37. Too bad they are not on the same schedule

The whole thing seems silly - why not just dock her for those two days only?

And the pay is stretched out for convenience - she already earned it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

39. When I was in grad school I had to do intensive summer sessions

One summer we had so many snow days to make up that our school year overlapped summer school at the university. The dean had to call our superintendent to work out a schedule for the handful of teachers who were enrolled in summer school courses. It was a mess.

[struggle4progress]

26. Sounds like a neat scam: the charter school plopped in two days to overlap

the public school summer session, knowing some folk would sign up to teach summer school -- and then the charter school could save some bucks by "fining" them heavily for "missing" those days

[noamnety]

30. The article says it was to make up for snow days.

We had to extend our school year once for the same reason. I think we did it by extending the school days by a few minutes instead of adding days, but sometimes we get caught short on required hours/days if we have freakish weather.

[struggle4progress]

32. Right. But there was no school for the kids on those supposed "make-up" days

"We're making up for snow days" usually means "We lost some instructional days due to weather, so we're changing our original instructional calendar so the kids still get the expected number of days of instruction"

[noamnety]

33. We have requirements for staff development time as well

it's possible the snow days fell on those originally.

Also it's possible that they added the extra days and rearranged the staff days to move them to the end of the year so kids wouldn't need to stay longer. We've done that too - because there's a concern that if we lengthen the year further into June, kids will skip and we won't be able to count it as an instructional day anyway due to not meeting attendance requirements.

[struggle4progress]

34. Right. And now let's contemplate the logic of two staff development days

at the very very end of the school year, after the instructional year ends

What important andm timely staff development issues were they going to explore? New opportunities for integrating the library into your 2009-2010 class assignments? Policy changes for extracurricular activities in 2009-2010? Avoiding exposure to toxic chemicals in 2009-2010?

Gimme a frickin break: I can almost write the program from memory. Day one. The program starts a hour late; everyone listens to several pompous nitwits drone through several content-free welcoming speeches, thanking everybody for their dedication being there, and reading verbatim the two day program that everybody has in their hands. After two hours, everybody's off to the break-out sections. The break-out sections don't start on time. Room numbers provided are wrong. Several are cancelled (though this was not announced during the welcoming speeches). Then it's time for some paid consultants to read their vague and unhelpful powerpoint presentations word for word for an hour or two. And it's lunch time. The importance of starting the after-lunch break-out sessions is stressed long and loud. The after-lunch break-out sessions do not start on time. Once again, room numbers provided are wrong, and several are cancelled. Finally, more word for word reading of vague unhelpful powerpoint presentations. Day two: rinse and repeat

[noamnety]

36. If you're questioning the effectiveness of staff development days

I'm right there with you. No arguments. That doesn't change that they are mandated days that have to be worked into the calendar. Nor does it change the fact that many schools would make the same decision - if they have to lengthen the school year midway through, they'd lean toward not holding the students unexpectedly into the summer when the published calendar says they'll get out sooner.

[lolly]

62. Fine--mandate them

And dock the teacher for 2 days' of pay when she doesn't go.

I'm all for that.

But please explain why it's OK to dock her for 2MONTHS worth of salary because she missed 2 days.

Even if they were informative, insightful, brilliant presentations--they were not worth 2 MONTHS of salary.

[noamnety]

66. I hope you aren't expecting ME to explain why she's docked two months pay.

I have no freaking clue, we're in agreement that that shouldn't have happened.

Please don't confuse my encouraging people not to make up their own facts with a defense of what the school did to her pay. That was indefensible.

[readmoreoften]

45. Your point?

Or is this some right-wing bullshit that someone should lose out on two months of pay for taking two days off of work to fit in a second job. Anti-worker Republican bullshit. Well, these days it's anti-worker Democrat bullshit too.

[noamnety]

54. My point

1. Not a defense of the school's actions. It's reprehensible to dock someone that amount of pay for taking two personal days.

2. Sometimes we read additional "facts" into an article purely because we want them to be true to further our agenda. I don't believe that furthers the debate. It makes us lose credibility. There was no need for it here. The logic of extending the school year after too many snow days and doing it by adding staff days makes sense.

The logic of treating those two staff meeting days as so critical that they are worth months of actual instructional time in the classroom is what we should be attacking, instead of creating our own reality and attacking the school over that.

[salin]

27. outrageous.

Can't see how that would stand up in a court of law.

[Bozita]

29. Can't do this kind of shit to a teacher covered by a union contract. Any questions?

Questions like, "Why would a really good teacher want to be in a union?"

[opihimoimoi]

31. FUCK CHARTER SCHOOLS....its not fair....

[B Calm]

38. She wanted to work for a charter school. . . Maybe she should help bring in the union.

[readmoreoften]

46. You should put the period after the word "work."

Who are these people who get to choose where they work? Especially in this economy.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

40. Playing Devil's Advocate slightly, most teachers I know work during the summer.

"$9,700 in summer pay, the portion of salary teachers receive in July and August for work completed during the year, Johnson contends."

I'm not sure that's a reasonable contention. Most teachers I know work really quite hard during the summer getting ready for the next year's teaching, so I think that the claim that "summer pay" is for work completed during the year may well be somewhat self-serving, and not paying it to a teacher who isn't coming back next year is not necessarily unreasonable.

On the other hand, $9,700 looks to me like it's probably a hell of a lot more than 1/8 of a first grade teacher's pay, which raises the question of why schools are paying teachers more per hour when they aren't in the classroom than when they are (assuming a 6 week summer holiday like in the UK). And it also strikes me as very odd that those two days make so much difference.

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. A teacher's salary is spread out over 12 months

So you get paychecks in the summer when school is not in session. And during Christmas and spring break and Thanksgiving.

The contract year lasts a year. So if school starts September 1, you get paid from September 1 to August 31. Even if you quit at the end of a school year, you get paid through the end of the summer.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

59. But do teachers really get paid $1500 a week?

Assuming your summer holidays are the same length ours are, that's what this would add up to over the summer.

[proud2BlibKansan]

65. $9700 for two months would be around $60K for the year

That's a pretty close to average teacher salary in NYC. Nationally the average teacher salary is somewhere around $40K. But it's going to be higher in NY.

$1500 a week divided into $9700 is 6.5. I would imagine her summer is longer than 6.5 weeks. And the article I linked says it was two months' pay.

[readmoreoften]

48. Sigh, when are you people going to stop comparing NYC salaries with the rest of America?

When Forbes did a COL breakdown last year comparing 40K salaries across the US, 40K was ranked equivalent to a $15K salary in NYC. Try to find a two bedroom apartment under 2000K--even in outer East Brooklyn, Harlem, or Queens. This is like when the MTA went on strike and everyone was outraged that workers earned $56K. You have no conception of the cost of living in NYC. The food bill alone is astronomical because of the cost added to bringing it into the city. Frozen dinners are $5-6 a piece.

You can't look at salaries without context. I'd rather earn $35K in Dallas than $70K in NYC.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

60. I'm afraid that to me a dollar is just "roughly 65 pence", in any part of the USA... N.T.

[madfloridian]

49. Stunned at some of the responses. Docking a teacher 2 months pay for missing 2 days?

And it is considered acceptable to many.

In Florida teacher pay is divided by 12 instead of 10, and we receive payments over the summer.

It is NOT the teachers who want all that time off, it is an administrative, county, state decision.

The charter school kept 2 months of that teacher's pay for missing two snow days so she could work all summer in summer school.

And too many here are okay with that.

[Catshrink]

50. You really shouldn't be surprised.

Too many here think a school board should be able to fire a teacher for her religious beliefs or political affilation, sexual orientation, or even the kind of dog she has. Record the F the child of a school board member earns? Find another job. Insist on teaching evolution? Good-bye. A relative of a local politician needs a teaching job? C-ya - gotta keep it in the family, ya know.

Of course, you'll never see it acknowledged by the union busters but these are the effects of ending due process protections for teachers that shield us from politicians, school board whims, and vindictive administrators. But you know that.

[madfloridian]

51. It still astonishes me to see Bush's school agenda celebrated at a Dem forum

as it is being bought to completion by our party.

I try not to be surprised, but just can't help it.

[Ramulux]

52. Its probably her fault

It always the teachers fault, right? Thats what "Waiting for Superman" said so it has to be true, right? Seriously, fuck charter schools. They dont need to exist, they are just making the education problems we have in this country bigger and making them harder to solve.

[Uncle Joe]

56. That was grotesque treatment against this teacher.

Thanks for the thread, proud2BlibKansan.

[Nye Bevan]

57. So she resigned before the end of her school year to take another job

and then expected to be paid all summer for both her old job and her new job. Isn't it normal for teachers not to be paid during the summer if they quit before their summer break begins?

[Reader Rabbit]

61. She didn't quit; she signed up to teach summer school.

Taking summer jobs is something many teachers do, because their regular salaries are not enough to make ends meet. The only people claiming she resigned are those running the charter school. As they are the ones who docked her two months pay for two days missed, I'd say their claims are a bit suspect.

[madfloridian]

63. That is not true at all. Read the article.

That is how it should work. Her yearly salary is divided into 12 payments. She is free to teach summer school if she likes. Many of us did that.

[lolly]

64. No

No, no, and no.

The teaching contract is for 10 months of work, with the salary spread out over 12 months.

Let's say you took a job to put a roof on someone's house. The contract called for you to be paid 10K to put the roof on the house.

You get paid in equal installments during the process. When you finish, the client still owes 1K. You go off to do someone else's roof.

The client refuses to pay you the other 1K--why should he pay you when you're not there in his yard anymore, working on his roof?


On edit--yes, I know she didn't quit (i.e., go off to work on someone else's roof)--but even if she did, the district still owes her for the money she earned.

[proud2BlibKansan]

67. +1