One of my friends is leaving the school system in which I
have worked for the past 20 years. He’s not the first. He’s not even the 20th.
But he’s the one I never would have predicted. It’s been a long road to travel
these past few years, but it’s time this school system and I separated, too.
It started 10 years ago when we adopted Sera. There was no adoption leave language in place in the contract. But because of the way the international adoption rules for China worked, both Magi and I had to travel to China to receive our child. Only one of us could take any kind of leave to do so, even though we both had lots of sick leave time saved up. We only get three personal business days per year, and if we have any left at the end of the year, it’s converted into sick leave. We found out at the last minute that one of us (me) was going to have to take two weeks of unpaid leave to make this trip. As you might imagine, that’s a bit of a hardship when you’re already trying to pay for an expensive adoption. So we appealed to the superintendent.
Our superintendent back then was an amazing man. Some of my friends had worked with him for decades and told me so. I had no reason to doubt them, and they were quite correct. He found a way for me to bend the sick leave rules since it is often true that children show signs of illness immediately following an adoption. I would use my three personal days first, and then go to sick leave after that, to ostensibly attend to the sick child. He didn’t have to do this, but he did. And for that, we will be forever in his debt. We would have been loyal to the school system in perpetuity, had it not been for the actions of one of his underlings.
Magi was going to stay home with Sera for the rest of the school year using the Family Medical Leave Act, which allows a parent to use six weeks of accumulated leave to care for a new child. Since spring break was in the middle of this period, we didn’t count it, and she had just enough that she would not have to return to school for a week. But the personnel director at that time decided that spring break counted as one of the six weeks, and so she was only allowed to take five weeks of accumulated leave and would either have to return to school for one week or take a week off, unpaid. She took the week unpaid, putting a lot of the financial burden we thought we had escaped right back on us. We thought about going over her head, but the superintendent had already been kind to us. We didn’t want to push our luck. What did the school system gain by this? They didn’t have to pay out for five days of leave she had earned. And they lost our loyalty. We had personal loyalty to the superintendent, but professional loyalty to the school system was gone.
Someone I know and am very close to was up for a new job a few years ago. At first, she was the perfect applicant for the job. In fact, she was the only qualified applicant in the entire process. She had a teaching license and years of experience in the field to back her up. During her interview, she was asked questions that are illegal to ask in a job interview. Not just unethical, mind you, but illegal. She knew that because she used to interview people for jobs all the time and knew the law. She didn’t get the job, and it was re-posted without some of the requirements that she alone had had, like having a teaching license. The job description now also included the ability to lift and sustain 50-pound weights. Ironic, since she now has the job and has never had to lift anything that weighs close to 50 pounds. She fought this illegal and unethical practice with the union’s help and she got the job. The person who was preventing her from getting the job has now admitted he was wrong for doing so. She went on to become teacher of the year at her new school, too. So, you know, there’s that.
The writing was clearly on the wall when I won the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship in 2014. Only 100 teachers statewide win this award (there are almost 60,000 teachers just in the public schools alone), at that time a $10,000 fellowship. And I was one of two from our school system to win it. Neither of us was recognized by the school system for this achievement. It was only when one of my friends wrote to the local newspaper about it that any attention was paid at all. I was interviewed by the newspaper and then on television. Only after that was there a single blurb on the school’s website about it. There is no evidence of it at all now. You can’t even find it by searching.
When I was transferred to another school against my will, that was the last straw. I’ve written enough about that elsewhere, and I’ve come to terms with it. But it was still wrong on every possible level. Lie after lie was told.
The point is that for 18 years I sacrificed for my school and my students, serving on and chairing committee after committee, initiating programs, managing after school programs, working Sundays to organize testing schedules and the like. Magi has given up countless hours in her position, doing unpaid and thankless (literally) work for her school. And now here we are, corporate cogs in the machine. I’m still having trouble with it. Schools aren’t supposed to work that way. They’re supposed to be like how the former superintendent did things. You make things work for your people because you want people to work harder for you. Unfortunately, it’s to the point now where it’s more like his personnel director treated us: as a way to save the system $500 in sub pay to make her advancement path clearer. I’m glad she never advanced a single level more.
When I watch these people celebrate the national-level success of a school on camera, while knowing full well their plans are to tear that school apart in the next three years…when I witness lies told directly to the school board…when I see other friends chewed up and spit out by the system they bled for…
It’s time to separate myself from it. I’ll do my time, shut my door and teach my kids, and start cutting ties, one by one. This makes me so ridiculously sad.
It’s not supposed to work this way. And it doesn’t.
It started 10 years ago when we adopted Sera. There was no adoption leave language in place in the contract. But because of the way the international adoption rules for China worked, both Magi and I had to travel to China to receive our child. Only one of us could take any kind of leave to do so, even though we both had lots of sick leave time saved up. We only get three personal business days per year, and if we have any left at the end of the year, it’s converted into sick leave. We found out at the last minute that one of us (me) was going to have to take two weeks of unpaid leave to make this trip. As you might imagine, that’s a bit of a hardship when you’re already trying to pay for an expensive adoption. So we appealed to the superintendent.
Our superintendent back then was an amazing man. Some of my friends had worked with him for decades and told me so. I had no reason to doubt them, and they were quite correct. He found a way for me to bend the sick leave rules since it is often true that children show signs of illness immediately following an adoption. I would use my three personal days first, and then go to sick leave after that, to ostensibly attend to the sick child. He didn’t have to do this, but he did. And for that, we will be forever in his debt. We would have been loyal to the school system in perpetuity, had it not been for the actions of one of his underlings.
Magi was going to stay home with Sera for the rest of the school year using the Family Medical Leave Act, which allows a parent to use six weeks of accumulated leave to care for a new child. Since spring break was in the middle of this period, we didn’t count it, and she had just enough that she would not have to return to school for a week. But the personnel director at that time decided that spring break counted as one of the six weeks, and so she was only allowed to take five weeks of accumulated leave and would either have to return to school for one week or take a week off, unpaid. She took the week unpaid, putting a lot of the financial burden we thought we had escaped right back on us. We thought about going over her head, but the superintendent had already been kind to us. We didn’t want to push our luck. What did the school system gain by this? They didn’t have to pay out for five days of leave she had earned. And they lost our loyalty. We had personal loyalty to the superintendent, but professional loyalty to the school system was gone.
Someone I know and am very close to was up for a new job a few years ago. At first, she was the perfect applicant for the job. In fact, she was the only qualified applicant in the entire process. She had a teaching license and years of experience in the field to back her up. During her interview, she was asked questions that are illegal to ask in a job interview. Not just unethical, mind you, but illegal. She knew that because she used to interview people for jobs all the time and knew the law. She didn’t get the job, and it was re-posted without some of the requirements that she alone had had, like having a teaching license. The job description now also included the ability to lift and sustain 50-pound weights. Ironic, since she now has the job and has never had to lift anything that weighs close to 50 pounds. She fought this illegal and unethical practice with the union’s help and she got the job. The person who was preventing her from getting the job has now admitted he was wrong for doing so. She went on to become teacher of the year at her new school, too. So, you know, there’s that.
The writing was clearly on the wall when I won the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship in 2014. Only 100 teachers statewide win this award (there are almost 60,000 teachers just in the public schools alone), at that time a $10,000 fellowship. And I was one of two from our school system to win it. Neither of us was recognized by the school system for this achievement. It was only when one of my friends wrote to the local newspaper about it that any attention was paid at all. I was interviewed by the newspaper and then on television. Only after that was there a single blurb on the school’s website about it. There is no evidence of it at all now. You can’t even find it by searching.
When I was transferred to another school against my will, that was the last straw. I’ve written enough about that elsewhere, and I’ve come to terms with it. But it was still wrong on every possible level. Lie after lie was told.
The point is that for 18 years I sacrificed for my school and my students, serving on and chairing committee after committee, initiating programs, managing after school programs, working Sundays to organize testing schedules and the like. Magi has given up countless hours in her position, doing unpaid and thankless (literally) work for her school. And now here we are, corporate cogs in the machine. I’m still having trouble with it. Schools aren’t supposed to work that way. They’re supposed to be like how the former superintendent did things. You make things work for your people because you want people to work harder for you. Unfortunately, it’s to the point now where it’s more like his personnel director treated us: as a way to save the system $500 in sub pay to make her advancement path clearer. I’m glad she never advanced a single level more.
When I watch these people celebrate the national-level success of a school on camera, while knowing full well their plans are to tear that school apart in the next three years…when I witness lies told directly to the school board…when I see other friends chewed up and spit out by the system they bled for…
It’s time to separate myself from it. I’ll do my time, shut my door and teach my kids, and start cutting ties, one by one. This makes me so ridiculously sad.
It’s not supposed to work this way. And it doesn’t.
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