Unveiling the Light

I have a question for the administration, teachers and parents of Paradise schools. If you care so much for the children, why have they been victimized by your actions? Parents are threatening to pull kids out of school and teachers have quit lunch time and after school assistance to students. The administration certainly took its time to come to an agreement. Meanwhile, teachers refused to do anything not specified in the contract. This is simply a work slow down and it protects the teachers from any economic harm. Parents threatened to force the parties to the bargaining table by pulling their children out of school, but the only people threatened by that would have been the school district which would lose money; not the teachers who would get paid anyway, and of course, the students would lose most of all.

Teachers say that their slow down is the only way they have to get the attention of the school board and parents say they want to force both parties to bargain. Unfortunately, both use the students as pawns in their confrontation and I am sure that the students resent it. If there is to be a teacher strike or a parent boycott, then at least do it in a way that is least disruptive to the students. The only victims now are the children who have seen their extracurricular activities and learning assistance disappear and are threatened with further isolation. How will parents explain to students that they are falling behind and loosing contact with friends by staying home, so that the school and teachers will come to an agreement? Why is that their responsibility?

The Teachers Union and the district need an agreement that is honest and fair to everyone. They need to act as adults and handle the issue between adults. Neither the union nor the district has much credibility but they can start earning it now. Whatever the parties do, leave the kids out of it. If the teachers want to strike, then do it. At least students will know that the days lost will have to be made up later. They will also see the adults in confrontation without either party taking advantage of the powerlessness of students. They are the innocent ones. They should not be used to make a point or to gain leverage over the other party. Deny it all you want but they are the ones who have suffered in this slow down and in the administration’s slowness to act.

I also encourage the district to not fund the salaries of teachers at the expense of non-teacher employees at the school level. Teachers should also protect these workers who keep the school working and not look for cuts there to fund their own raises. These workers have taken many cuts in the past and are at bare minimum now. Perhaps the district can start with a large cut in administration, cutting back the positions not directly related to school functions. Perhaps teachers can understand the need to cut positions as there is a decrease in students and that 20 is not a magical number of students that makes them effective.

Every bureaucracy in the United States has taken severe cutbacks due to efficiencies gained through computerization and the downward push of both responsibility and authority. Their employees have taken on more responsibility and learned how to do more with less. It is time for our school districts and teachers to do the same. Teachers are highly paid with very good benefits and a great deal of time off. They receive more pay for earned credentials but this is not accompanied by increased responsibility. The bureaucracy has even better pay and benefits and we can hardly brag about the quality of our schools. The generous pay for these parties is especially true here in the poorest county of the state. It is time that they demonstrated they deserve such pay by making real improvements in the education of students and the atmosphere found in the schools. It is time that students felt the mattered and felt someone was looking out for their needs.

The real answer may be in a return to local controls. The worst thing ever to happen to our schools is the unification process. Instead of local schools receiving direct feedback from parents in the local neighborhood, we now have impersonal bureaucracy with its own agenda. Parents feel alienated, students become a number, and the most important thing to teachers and administrators becomes statistics. Our drop out rates gets larger; our students become anonymous and learn less. Nobody is happy.

Charter schools are full and popular because they are small enough to be personal and allow parental involvement. Students know they are cared for and teachers can form personal relationships. They sidestep the pitfalls of large districts. Even though forced to take on “at risk� students, they manage to do a stellar job educating children and making them feel important and cared for. Also, when such personal relationships are formed in these smaller schools, the students are less likely to find themselves pawns in a battle between economic titans, the powerful teachers union and elusive administration. Besides, think of all the money we could save if we got rid of the bureaucracy and concentrated on teaching!

If this last agreement is accepted by both parties, you do not need to concentrate on "fixing relations" between the administration and teachers. The administration and teachers should apologize to the students and concentrate on making them the center of their concern that they should be. The children are the ones owed a great apology. The warring parties got what they wanted. The kids simply got abused.