Charter school docks teacher 2 months pay for missing 2 days of school.

[madfloridian]

And it is being deemed acceptable by many here. I was reading some comments in a thread that just made me sick inside with their lack of comprehension about what is going to happen to public education in America.

There has been so much anti-teacher propaganda the last two years. There is big money and PR on the side of the ones who are anti-teacher, and the public schools and teachers have no way to fight back.

They can't get their side of the story out because it takes power and money which they don't have.

A teacher at a charter school has her pay for the year divided up into 12 payments into of just 10. That is how it is done in Florida, it's a good idea.

Another thing. Many ambitious teachers sign up to teach summer school, often at schools other than their own. Not all schools offer summer school, just certain ones. It's a good thing to do, and a teacher can make extra money above and beyond her salary. It is hard work though.

At her school two extra days were added on to make up for two snow days. The students have finished their year, so this teacher will have to miss those two days to start summer school sessions.

I watched the way in another thread how the teacher was blamed for losing the two months salary. We had 10 sick leave days per year before I retired, don't know the number now. It's a good thing because teachers are around sick kids with communicable diseases like flu and colds all day long. More so than many other professions.

I have been reading Herding Donkeys and remembering back to 2003. Hubby and I had the feeling then that we really had a power to change things in the party. We thought if we stood up firmly enough with others on the Iraq invasion we might make a difference. We didn't make a difference.

We rallied in front of a bigoted Southern Baptist church with hundreds of others in solidarity with the gay community the church was trying to repress even more than they already had been.

We protested weekly about the Iraq invasion in our local community. I will never call it a war because it wasn't. It was an invasion of a sovereign country who had done us no harm.

We thought all that would matter, but it is now 2010. There has been no blame of those who lied us into the so-called war, no prosecution. There has been no repeal of DADT.

There are even more restrictions on a woman's right to her reproductive choices.

And there is almost a calm acceptance of the fact that our party is putting Bush's agenda for education into effect as we speak. In fact there is not only acceptance, there are efforts to discredit those who speak up for continuing public education and not turning it over to the billionaire boys' club.

I remember a speech back then that started with What I want to know. We never got the answers, the speaker of those words has been treated miserably by his own party...and the questions still hang in limbo.

To paraphrase a little from that speech in Sacramento in 2003:

What I want to know is why the Democratic party is enabling Bush's unilateral war in Iraq. (I wanted to know that also)

What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts, which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States? (Last I heard the vote was put off)

What I want to know is why the Democrats in Congress aren't standing up for us, joining every other industrialized country on the face of the Earth in providing health insurance for every man, woman and child in America. (There's a lot in the book I am reading about how the insurance bill played out..so I still want to know that as well.)

And there is my favorite question:

What I want to know is why so many folks in Congress are voting for the President's Education Bill-- "The No School Board Left Standing Bill"-- the largest unfunded mandate in the history of our educational system! (And I want to know why there are hundreds of millions now being spent on more testing and more databases.)

The last few weeks I have hardly been able to watch anything on TV as the Superman theme was pushed across NBC and its affiliates. It was an organized media blitz against teachers that was enabled by the policies of this administration.

I guess you might say that what I want to know is why these things don't matter more than they do. Things that Democrats have traditionally stood for and are no longer standing for....we are to accept it and move along.

And since the Republicans are so much worse they tell us we really have no choice.

And that is the problem.

[Dinger]

1. K & R. Please Let The Education Shitstorm Stop

This shit is sickening. Thanks for posting for the truth.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Schools should not be private businesses

[femmocrat]

3. You raise so many important questions.

I am also discouraged by this turn of events. I'll always be a democrat, but the hope is gone.

[Orsino]

4. She was docked for the time she was up in the air.

Drill, ye daycarers, drill.

[madfloridian]

5. I have no clue what that means.

I don't intend to bother to find out.

[Orsino]

7. .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill,_Ye_Tarriers,_Drill

[madfloridian]

8. Thanks I get it. Did not make the connection.

Appreciate the clarification.

[1776Forever]

6. Welcome to Privatization of our schools! Ask some of the wounded Xe members how it worked out for

them. I have heard they really didn't think they would ever need health care benefits, but Xe Services (Blackwater) never gave them any and when they were injured it hit them big time!

London Review of Books:
Hooyah!!
James Meek
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill
Serpent’s Tail, 452 pp, £12.99, August 2007, ISBN 978 1 84668 630 6

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n15/james-meek/hooyah

,,,,Even within the confines of Scahill’s theme, there are frustrating omissions. He writes about how much higher the daily pay of Blackwater guards in Iraq is than the pay of regular US troops, and the staggering sums Blackwater as a company is paid by the US government. But he fails to analyze the more difficult and more important issue about the money: is the government getting extra soldiers on the cheap, or not? The cost of a long-service professional soldier is reckoned not only in his daily pay but in how much it costs to train him, the cost of lifetime medical care (whether he is injured or not), and the cost of his pension if, as many do, he retires in his forties. Blackwater and other mercenary firms don’t pay to train their recruits: they hire ex-military men, and if there’s extra training, the recruits pay for it themselves; nor do they offer the same health and pension benefits as the military.

................

Any time you get into Privatization of jobs that were once overseen by the Government and/or Labor Union you will have these issues come up! Beware of the $$$$ signs - What you see isn't always what you get!

[Starry Messenger]

9. There's a popular management technique in business:

In order to give the proles the illusion of participation, the bosses sit around and gather your thoughts and tell you how important you are to the process. Then they go ahead and do what they had already decided to do, but thank you for your input without taking any of it into account. Studies have found that people are more likely to be loyal to managers who direct this kind of dog and pony show. There's a lesson in there.

[madfloridian]

12. Ah yes, I have seen some of that technique here.

Flattering us up but with no intention of allowing input.

[Starry Messenger]

16. I suspect use of that technique goes all the way to the top leadership of the party.

It's just a hunch.

[maryf]

22. AAAhhhh, the old "shared decision making" ploy...

still going on in my school district...

[Starry Messenger]

26. I first encountered it at a non-profit where I worked.

The guy was a master, long pages of note-taking from our group discussions. He was from Chicago too, now that I think about it. lol, things that make you go "hmmmm".

[thanks_imjustlurking]

25. >>Studies have found that people are more likely to be loyal to managers who direct this kind

How depressing. You'd think the proles would catch on eventually.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. I have an answer to all your questions...

my post may be deleted, but I am going to say it anyway. There is ZERO difference between republican and democratic politicians. Oh, they play the game and say the right words, but it is all a facade. American democracy- nothing but a cheap, chinese built Potemkin village. The oligarchy will get their way.

[madfloridian]

11. NYC Educator has a bit to say on the subject.

http://nyceducator.com/2010/10/and-you-can-design-your-own-bulletin.html#comment-85374141

"I read all over the net about the benefits of working for charter schools. You have the freedom to design your own curriculum, and the freedom to spend all the time you like doing so. You're free to talk on your school cell phone whenever parents call you. You're free to be fired on the spot for telling people what UFT teachers earn, or for reporting special education violations.

Here's something that you haven't heard before--you're also free to lose two months pay for missing two days of work. UFT teachers haven't got that option, what with that nasty restrictive contract holding them back. And it doesn't matter that those were two days students didn't attend. Without a contract, the charter can do any damn thing and they can rationalize it any damn way. For example, they can say there's nothing you can do about it because the teacher resigned.

It doesn't matter that you took a summer job and they only notified you about those extra days weeks earlier. The important thing is you have the right to be penalized almost $5,000 a day for missing work. You don't have the right to earn $5,000 a day when you actually show up, but you can't have everything."

[sabrina 1]

13. Thank you for continuing to shine a light on what is going on

with the education issues under this administration. I am so disappointed in what is happening.

Charter schools are nothing but the privatization of the education system and if this continues, if they succeed in destroying the Public Schools, eventually we will back to where the poorest children don't attend school at all, but end up working like third world children, for the businesses of the wealthy for hardly any pay. Because along with destroying all our public institutions, they are aiming at Unions also.

I don't know what it will take to get the American people to start fighting back. True they do not have the money the Billionaire Boys have, but they have they have the numbers.

It's going to be a tough fight to save the Public School system and SS and Medicare from the anti-people Billionaires. What they want is a cheap work force, and the Bush/Duncan education system will ensure they have it, unless we start fighting them.

Keep up the good work, Madfloridian. The media certainly isn't covering this story.

[madfloridian]

17. The choice of Duncan for DOE gave me a chill.

Just like the appt of Alan Simpson as co-chair of the fiscal commission, and Rahm as chief of staff.

How does one fight when their own party does that?

Acceptance is too easy now.

[chervilant]

14. Well...

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating...


We humans are manifesting a level of mental dis-ease that is both frightening and corrosive. Far too many of us are in react mode, driven by inchoate fears and resentments. Far too many of us are willing to pollute our spirits with negativity, eagerly engaging in name-calling and other forms of vilification. Far too many of us are willing to glorify violence or resort to violence, often just for entertainment or personal gratification!

We seldom acknowledge the import of overpopulation, but Calhoun's research with rats has proven that when a critical level of overpopulation occurs, the outcome isn't pretty. With rats, abnormal sexual behavior, hyperaggression, eating their young, and increased mortality are a few of the problems that occurred. With humans, well...perhaps, it's past time we acknowledge that our species has passed a critical tipping point.

Furthermore, our nation has routinely underfunded and disrespected public education, a reality that is manifestly apparent when one considers that fully 40% of our adult population is functionally illiterate. Over the past four decades, this nation's teachers have struggled to educate our children in the face of underfunding, bad administrators, overcrowded classrooms, and disintegrating school buildings (and this list could go on and on--bad food, no physical education, no art, no music, etc--ad nauseum). The current relentless assault on education is yet another effort by the Corporate Megalomaniacs to subjugate and control the hoi polloi. "Race to the Top," my ass!

WHEN are we going to get mad enough to say enough already?!

WHEN are we going to stand up to the hedonists who've usurped our nation and rendered it a Corporatocracy?!?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results...

We can no longer afford to procrastinate. We can no longer afford to sit around on our fat asses and 'blog' our outrage. We ARE at a critical tipping point, and if we continue to respond in the same manner as we've BEEN responding over the past decade, we richly deserve the inevitable outcome.

[rainy]

15. What do you recommend we do? I think real left thinkers

of the world who really get what is happening are too comfortable to get out and fight. We have our work, families and benefits. That makes it too easy to expect the others to do the work. The ones that are struggling don't have the luxury to stop and try to fix the problem so we are stuck.

[maryf]

23. Those comfortable left thinkers...

better realize they may not be comfortable for long..."and when they came for me"...

[maryf]

24. K&R ooops not reccing myself, this is for the OP!!! nt

[rainy]

27. we say all the right things but we are not doing. I'm guilty too.

I feel like we need a leader to rise out of the muck and stir the masses.

[chervilant]

28. Actually,

I am finding that those of us who "really get what is happening" tend to be macro-level thinkers, and we tend to perceive humans as ever evolving creatures whose behaviors (generally speaking) reflect our evolution of being. Consequently, we recognize that it's not about having to 'fight' as much as it's about having to learn to be a global species, with manifest respect for our planet and each other.

Right now, it seems obvious that our species is in its adolescence--obsessed with sex, drugs, and all other forms of self-gratification, especially as regards our economic behaviors. Our mental and spiritual 'dis-ease' is writ large by our increasingly sophisticated socio-cultural and technological constructs. (Actually, I think this contributes to our tendency to feel "stuck.")

Bearing this in mind, I occasionally feel overwhelmed with disappointment about the choices we (as a collective) have been making, because we are moving toward a radical shift back into 'balance' on a planetary scale, and the consequences of our hedonism and denial of personal responsibility will be extreme. It's my eternal optimism that compels me to argue that these consequences don't have to be extreme.

Can we--as a collective--slap our Fear Dragon on its scaly nose, and say "No More!"? I choose to believe that we can. And, that--my eternal optimism--is part and parcel of the kind of thinking that gave us the bright star of hope we call democracy. It is because, like so many others, I see what we CAN become that our species' persistent wallowing in the muck and mire of fear and hate frustrates me.

[Jefferson23]

18. You express many concerns and frustrations Dems and I do believe

not a small numbers of Independents feel similar too. I don't see how anything can change significantly ever
unless we fight for public funded elections.

I believe this administration's decisions on many levels of policy and the host of characters employed is evidence to support
my opinion. A never ending circle that leads us back far too often to who controls policy and why...big money.

Great thread mads...keep the discussion going on DU.

[Jakes Progress]

19. But, but

if the administration thinks it's good, that means it's good. Right?

Pretty soon we can get rid of all those pesky regulations and rights that the nasty old unions fought for. Bring on the 60 hour week. Who needs vacations. We've killed off day care and pensions and health care. Why shouldn't an 11 year old be able to work a six day week?

[madfloridian]

20. "pesky regulations"

key words today. And they blame unions for it. Heading fast toward no regulations in workplace. Not just teaching, either.

[Jakes Progress]

30. Easiest victory for the rich and the neocons

was convincing the weak minded that unions were to blame for everything. Wish there weren't so many of those minds on DU.

[sulphurdunn]

21. Just something I've noticed.

Originally, the pitch for improving school technology was to enhance and facilitate classroom instruction, and that was pretty much so, at least until the testing craze came to dominate everything. Now we use computers primarily to give standardized tests. As more and more of the previous educational uses are abandoned, they are replaced by data collection pertaining to NCLB requirements.

[axollot]

29. I want to know too. In NE Florida with 2 kids in school. My 3 children range

in age from 21 to 7. We moved here when my eldest was 9 so I know the difference and am blessed to be able to teach my kids where the school fails.
cheers
Sandy