Saturday, January 21, 2006

Balanced suffering

Creative Liberty has some interesting feedback from teachers in the Metro Nashville school district about this issue.

What jumped out at me was this paragraph (and I assume when CL typed 'love' it was intended to be 'live'.)

After talking with a few teachers here are some other concerns they have with the balanced calendar. This change in the calendar forces teachers who love outside of Davidson Co. or who have their children in private schools to have to do something with their children for a longer period of time, as far as finding baby sitters and the such.
My big question is why are we hiring teachers from outside Davidson County? Seems to me if you're on the Metro payroll, you ought to live in Metro and enjoy the benefits and suffer the downsides of your employment just like the rest of us.

Those of you with an interest may want to read the overview of the Hillsboro hearing at MNPS.net.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

another question is why do teachers have their children in private schools? they are willing to take a paycheck from mnps but not willing to improve the product enough for their own children to attend? this has never made sense to me --

John said...

As I just posted over at NiT, I think it's probably a matter of supply and demand. If you put a residency requirement on teachers, you may find it harder to hire teachers. Not every teacher will want to, or be able to, uproot their spouse and family just to meet a residency requirement. So, if you find it harder to hire teachers, you'll eventually have to offer a higher starting salary.

Just Larry said...

A. Nony, unless the teacher's name is Garcia, he/she can do little to effect change.

Asking a teacher to enroll her child in an inferior program when they have the means to do better is like asking a cop to buy a house in a high crime neighborhood.

One person can only do so much.

Kay Brooks said...

If only full supply and demand could be implimented. If we could pay them more they would be more likely to uproot those families and be a full part of the community.

If the program is 'inferior' Short & Fat, the teacher is more able to impact the system than a mere parent. And many of those parents have no recourse, unlike those teachers hired from out of the county.

If it's not good enough for professional educators, why is it good enough for the rest of us?

Anonymous said...

Kay -- thank you!! My point exactly when I asked the question. If our public schools are good enough for teachers to take our taxpayer dollars for their salaries why are they not good enough for their children.

Stakeholders -- parents, teachers and the community working together have the power to improve things. Until all teachers become true stakeholders rather than just employees, I doubt our district will experience its true potential.

Our district has a huge problem with the flight of the middle class. When people ask teachers or principals or administrators what schools their children attend or where they live and get an answer of either private school or another county, as I parent I have to weigh my decision on where I send my child.

Again, if MNPS is good enough to work in, it should be good enough for teachers' children to attend, too.

Just my two cents worth --