Morning Duty

So, if you haven't already realized this, I am the union rep for our building. The reason I got so heavily involved with the union is that when I came to this district six years ago, I was amazed at what I had stepped in to. I came from a district that paid well. That was my biggest (and still remains so) problem with this distict. When I got my first paycheck, and it was my first full-time paycheck in ten years, I was excited to see a large sum. What I saw was about equivalent to what I had been making half-time in my previous district. I began to delve into our pay, and found pay schedules from other districts, not just my previous one. All were better. And at my New Hire orientation we were told that we had "one of the best contracts in the state!" I began to send emails to our then-union president, asking how we had one of the best contracts in the state if I just took a huge pay cut. He soon stopped replying to my emails. At the end of the year, a new two year contract was passed by teachers without a blink of an eye. The crappy pay remained, and no one seemed to realize or care. However, a new union president was elected. I moved schools and became the union rep. The union's goal, under the new president, was to inform our members. Slowly, teachers began to see that things were not good. And movement happened, including a strike a few years ago. I felt hopeful that teachers were beginning to pay attention and demand better.

Things are still not great. One of the things that teachers have to do in this district that I never had to do since I started to teach in 1987 is morning duty. Our student day begins at 9:30, and kids can arrive to school at 9:10. That's when buses drop them off in the morning. There are six morning duty posts that teachers must fill: three playground posts, one post to help with breakfast, one post at bus drop off, and one post at parent drop off. Now, I haven't had morning duty since being a rep-this is in the contract that a rep might not have extra duty if the building supported it. Mr. Principal ran a survey, and 18 teachers said I shouldn't have duty, and 4 said I should. But because the number of duty weeks for a given teacher had increased by a week this year (I think an extra post was added on the playgound), I was getting angry emails from teachers about morning duty.

Because not everyone had morning duty. I looked at the Morning Duty Roster, and compared it with my union members list. Including me, there were 12 names on my union list that didn't have to do morning duty. That is a lot, and if eveyone (including me) did morning duty, it would bring it down for all. I sent an email to Mr. Principal about this. He was surprised that there were so many, and asked who they were. I replied that first I wanted to bring it up with the union members to see if it was an issue they wanted me to pursue. But before I could bring it up tactfully, it came out at a union meeting we had last week with our union president. And unfortunately all of the special ed teachers felt attacked, as basically they were the ones not on the rotation. By the end of the day, I had been visited by at least two of the special ed teachers who had felt attacked in some way.

Well. Sorry. But if you don't have kids before school, as our Self Contained preschool class does, then you need to help out. Including me. After school I had a chat with Mr. Principal. I told him that teachers are upset in that their morning duty supervision had increased by a week. All teachers now had 12 weeks of morning duty, and some lucky ones had 13. I said how much of a hardship it is to have morning duty for a full week the 20 minutes right up until the start of the school day. We looked at the list of teachers who weren't on the morning duty roster (including me). Some of those teachers were not responsible for morning duty, in that they are at several schools. So those were out. Others, like our preschool class, had kids coming in as early as 8:15, so that teacher already did morning supervision of her kids. That made sense not to have her in the morning duty rotation. But our two Education Assisstants? Well, Mr. Principal said, they need to be available in the morning to meet with teachers if necessary. Well, I said, the teachers would really appreciate if they saw that the Education Assisstants were helping out. And why can't the two of them count as one teacher? Then it frees them up an awful lot, but also helps with reducing the number of weeks for the rest of us. And while we're at it, why can't the two Integrated Program teachers, who don't have kids before school but do have a lot of meetings (of which they receive a stipend of $3000.00 for) also count as one teacher?

Mr. Principal actually liked that idea. Things are in the works. But our staff is like a simmering pot that is getting ready to boil over. I wonder when that will happen? It's not a happy place.