Please forgive me as I take a moment to VENT....

I think the title explains it all, but seriously, sometimes you just need to explode and since my mom is in Detroit tonight and Maryann is in meetings all night, here it goes.

As a side note, we had open house tonight and after 2 hours of waiting I had one parent show up. Our principal released us one hour early (in pretense to go the funeral home for one of our colleagues who's father passed away - in reality because he wanted to leave) and then I spent 1/2 hour in the driveway of my colleague whom I ride with talking about our stupid school system among other things.

I digress...

It all started last night apparently when all the district principals were in a meeting where they were reamed out by the superintendent and his posse due to the fact that we lost 500+ kids from the district which puts us $3 million or so in debt. The principals were instructed to ream out the staff and then come up with ways of how we can get students back. Several problems with this.

The main three reasons our kids leave the district 1 - No jobs, so their parents move out of the area. 2- No busing, and they don't have another way to get to school. 3- No after school programs in the district (cause that would of course cost money).

Anyone know of a way we can solve those problems. Of course we know that teachers must control the job market within the city and therefore can magically come up with jobs for people. The district won't pay for busing, sure teachers can pick up kids for school. No after school program - why don't we just all volunteer our free time after school and start one free of charge.

To top it all off, they have spent lots of time the past two years letting all of our parents know that our school was going "off-line" (AKA closing) but ZERO time telling them that they changed their minds. What parent wants to bring a kid to a school that they think will be closing the next year?

To top it off, our morning time that we have to report before school now has to be known as "common planning time" which means we should be in discussions and grade level meetings and not getting our rooms ready for the day. And to make sure we are in compliance, we have to keep track of what we do during our "common planning time" and turn in information sheets on it every week which the district in turn collects ( and then probably drops in a black hole somewhere - cause who has time to check up on 300+ teachers sheets). I digress again....

Anyone seeing the problem here?

Our district makes a mess of something then throws it back at us screaming for us to fix it, threatens us with loss of teacher jobs if we don't. Then they go back sitting on their duffs in their lovely air conditioned offices down town where they never see the children we teach and find something us to blame us for. Meanwhile, our students are roasting in 90+ degree heat in our classrooms and are expected to be learning and be ready to take the MEAP tests in 3 weeks.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Okay, feeling better now that I got that off my chest. This is the kind of stuff that makes my hair go white. Not the kids, the stupid people in charge of our school system. My next blog will be entitled "Why teachers should rule the educational world instead of the rambling idiots in administration."



I am putting this in purple font so maybe I feel better about it when I look at it later.