What do teachers need?
New SDMA Board members get specific
Did you notice during the recent SDMA School Board campaign how conservative candidates were emphasizing the needs of parents, and progressive candidates were talking about the needs of teachers? What are the needs of teachers? Curious, during the campaign I asked Henderson, Smith and Stewart, who have all now been elected to the Menomonie school board, to clarify this for me. Below are the pre-election responses I received, edited primarily for length.
Rachel Henderson responds -
“When I talk about the needs of teachers, I'm thinking about their experiences during this school year:
There have been high levels of absences due to COVID, many teachers have used up all of their sick time for themselves or their families,
and a lack of substitute teachers in the district (and all over the state!) means that teachers are having to cover for one another, give up their prep time to teach, and be in school even when they or their families are sick. The result is an incredibly high level of stress for people in what we know is already a high-burnout profession. Additionally, our schools are chronically short on support staff like paraprofessionals, who provide an immense amount of help to teachers with full classrooms. I believe the school board needs to address this in order to retain the best teachers -- which is how we have the best education for our students!
This all comes at a time when some groups in Menomonie are questioning the motivation and values of teachers.
Teachers are under intense scrutiny for how they handle topics that have made their way into the "culture wars."
I believe that teachers are professionals, and I have experienced first hand how well they handle sensitive subjects in the classroom. I don't believe that the current wave of backlash is warranted, or fair, and I worry that it will lead to more teachers throwing up their hands and changing professions. As a parent, I WANT my kids to be in a classroom with someone who is willing to facilitate conversation around things like race, gender, history, etc. I want them to have teachers throughout their school years who see those things as an integral part of learning to be citizens of the world. I worry that if teachers are targeted for those lessons, we'll end up with schools that shy away from them. I don't want that for our students.
Your question contrasts talking about teachers with talking about parents, and I want to say something about that.
As a parent, I feel incredibly well listened-to in Menomonie.
I know what my kids are doing in school because I get great communication from their teachers. When I have concerns, I get quick responses and have experienced nothing but open dialogue from the schools. So when I think about what needs to change in SDMA, I don't see an overarching problem with how parents are treated.”
Abe Smith responds -
“Teacher burnout is the number one problem facing schools across the country.
I don't think people outside the profession realize how bad it is. I could write a long description on the forces of economics and politics that have destroyed the profession over the past decade, but here are some snapshots of peoples' real experiences I have heard first-hand.”
“- Of course, most teachers have families of their own. They are also parents of young kids, and caregivers for elderly relatives, and spouses, etc. Every burden felt by every family over the past two years was felt directly and personally by every teacher.
But, on top of that,
teachers are often the key caregiver for many of the students in their classes.
In our district, something like 45% of the kids are on food assistance, and at River Heights I believe it is around 60%. Lots of kids in this district are homeless or face unsafe conditions at home. These kids turn to a teacher or a coach or a school counselor for the basic necessities. I know teachers who spend their weekends searching thrift sales for used coats and boots to give to their students. I know teachers who get 2am suicide-hotline calls or deliver food on weekends.
On top of facing the needs of their own families like all of us, teachers and staff step into the role of social-worker for every kid in their classroom.
That's 15 or 20 or maybe 30 families of problems that the teacher has to balance and juggle
- Obviously, teachers were subject to quarantine/isolation rules after every disease exposure in their class over the past two years.What people do not realize, is that teachers and staff were required to take PTO for these quarantine periods.
Of course, this means that everyone was forced to burn up their entire year of PTO in just a few weeks, and then further quarantines came directly out of their paycheck as unpaid time-off. During these times, teachers were often caring for their own sick family members, while losing income, due to inflexible administrative policies.
This is why so many people were furious about the sudden day off for the basketball tournament in early March.
Of course everyone supports the accomplishments of the basketball team, but the teachers received a memo that gave them exactly 3 options:
(1) go to the game at their own expense and have it count as a work day
(2) stay home and take time-off which is probably not paid, because no one has PTO left after January or
(3) report to work -- even though school is closed and they could work just as well from home on prep time.
But, the real kicker is that of course teachers have kids of their own, and school was out! So they were "allowed" to get "permission" to bring their kids to work. So, the administration was compelling teachers to bring their kids to wander an empty workplace to do who-knows-what or go without pay, even though they are perfectly capable of working from home. . . This an example of the lack of professional respect given to teachers by over-strict policies.
- Some of the key positions we think of as "teachers" are actually paraprofessional and special-education staff. These staff are often paid hourly, at rates similar to entry-level retail, and their schedules are always changing on short notice. Some of them are eligible for benefits, but the premiums are barely covered by the take-home pay. So, the key personnel that help our most at-need kids are facing a choice between cash and health-insurance. It is frankly depressing how little we are paying these amazing people.
- Inequitable pay scales. There are cases where people who have worked at the district for decades in many roles are making less than those who are newly hired in more-junior positions. This "compression" payscale problem is common at institutions that don't have reliable or honest promotion practices, and it leads to the most knowledgeable and effective people leaving out of frustration.
- There is currently no way for teachers or staff to raise concerns without risking personal blowback.
I have heard stories from many people in SDMA of teachers, staff, administrators, and even parents, being harassed and experiencing personal blowback even for discussing or raising concerns. This is a structural problem that is common when communication is only layer-by-layer via supervisors. It can be solved by setting up safe methods for teachers and staff to discuss, raise, and solve problems outside the supervisor chain.
- Many major job roles have absolutely no backup, so if anyone gets sick or leaves, there is no one to cover that work. A school might have a principal and a counselor, but no one else who has a school-wide perspective on student activities. A single specials teacher might cover several schools, without any help or support. Certain subjects at the middle-school and high-school level have only one available teacher in that area. It is fragile to maintain educational quality long-term when so many roles are contingent on the perfect health and focus of individual people.
- On top of all of this, the public discourse keeps coming back to talking-points where some people keep saying teachers are trying to "indoctrinate" the kids or make fools of the parents somehow.
So, teachers overall feel underpaid by a broken budgeting system, overworked by taking on many roles outside their contract without support, then disrespected by supervisors, and finally vilified by community members. It is not a pleasant way to work, and it's no surprise people are leaving the career.
So, in terms of concrete things, it's actually pretty clear from an institutional perspective:
1) establish more reliable pay and promotion scales, and make sure that general pay increases are built into the budget long-term.
2) ensure that staff and teachers have predictability in their schedules and workload, with fair notice and discussion of changes of responsibility/timing particularly for hourly staff
3) set up mechanisms for groups of teachers to solve problems without requiring every problem to be raised to the district-level.
4) set up a way for workplace complaints or concerns to be raised anonymously or through a representative ombudsman, without putting the complainant at personal risk of retribution
I want to emphasize -- these problems are not unique to SDMA. They are common in many schools, and they are common to many large institutions, but they absolutely must be solved. Otherwise, demoralization and frustration will only increase. We have all had the experience of working at a place where we feel overworked, undervalued, and disrespected by management. As citizens of the Menomonie Area, we need to strive to be good employers to our crucial public employees.”
My added thoughts.
Many school board members have said these sorts of things before and there has been little or no change. Not sure why.
Would encouraging parents to volunteer in the classrooms help parents to feel like they knew what was going on and provide some free in-class assistance to teachers?
Abe Smith clarified for me in a later email that Act 10, which made teachers’ union membership voluntary, really took the voice from teachers and left them in an unsafe work environment for making any kinds of complaints. I like his ombudsman idea. Maybe that person could also help parents with their concerns.