February 2007
In its recent email to
the GCTA membership, the District sought to clarify its position concerning
the current contractual impasse. While it may have been intended to generate
greater appreciation for their objectives, ultimately, the letter only served
to underscore the utter lack of understanding among those who direct our
professional lives for the true nature of what we do.
At first blush,
the letter appears reasonable enough. Indeed, in emphasizing their shared
frustration at our inability “to bring negotiations to successful closure”,
the District seems to be striking a note of commiseration. After all, we all
want the same thing, i.e. “a
reasonable
settlement of all of the outstanding issues” (emphasis
added).
But that, of course, is
the rub. For what might strike the Board and the lawyer who authored their
correspondence as “reasonable”, is anything but to those of us who are the
lifeblood of the Garden City School District. Their letter, in fact, makes
this point abundantly clear.
By the District’s own
admission, the Board’s insistence on adding a “professional period” to our
schedule remains the primary bone of contention. In reading the letter’s
description of the issue, and the seemingly genuine conviction with which they
describe it, one point becomes glaringly clear—they truly have no
comprehension of what such a period would mean for us.
To the Board such a
professional period is an eminently reasonable request, another tool in the
hands of the administration as it seeks to create a sound educational
environment. In fact, they’re even willing to surrender five hours of staff
development time as a sign of their willingness to compromise. Who could
possibly object?
No one, of course,
except those who actually work in our schools. To those of us who can barely
find the time in our days to attend to even the most fundamental of our
obligations, e.g. making copies, grading, entering grades into a grading
program, maintaining parent contacts, and, oh, teaching, the 40 hours no
longer available for such tasks is anything but minimal. This leaves aside
the many other tasks most of us also must attend to, things like updating web
sites, researching and developing innovative lessons, serving on committees,
supervising clubs, meeting with students, conferring with colleagues, etc. In
this light, the District’s demand is not reasonable, it is simply one more
burden in an already overburdened day. Those who routinely find themselves
working well into the night rightly ask, when do those who run our schools
expect us to get everything done?
The unreasonableness of the
District’s demand would also occur to anyone familiar with what only the
most charitable would call “staff development”. While the District might
regard its readiness to “sacrifice” several hours of this sacrosanct time as a
sign of their flexibility, this view could only be held by an outsider. To
those of us who have actually endured these session, however, the District’s
jealous guarding of this time is quite puzzling. How is it, many of our
colleagues ask, that the District holds
this time in such
minimal regard that it rarely comes up with worthwhile uses for it, and yet
now acts as if this time is so indispensable? It seems fair to ask why the
District is so insistent upon keeping these hours in place, given the
minimally beneficial way in which they have been used to date.
This issue is
relevant here for two reasons. One, because it highlights the gap between
their perceptions and our reality, and two, because of the skepticism it
engenders regarding any
new
obligations the District may ring from us.
Which leads to the final
concern about the District’s goals as detailed in their letter. One might
think, given their willingness to allow contract negotiations to break down
over the issue, that the District had some well-developed plan in mind for the
additional time they wish to secure from us. One would, however, be
mistaken. In fact, other than meeting a small handful of needs that are
currently being attended to by teachers as part of their regular teaching
loads, there is little conception of what these hours might actually be used
for. In fact, because of this lack of a clear agenda, the District is seeking
to leave the contractual language sufficiently vague so as to justify
virtually any assignment the administration might conjure up. If our
experience with staff development is any indication, we have little cause for
optimism regarding the uses they might find for this time.
So, while the District’s
letter may have been aimed at presenting what they hold to be completely
justifiable demands, and at voicing their “distress” at the adamancy of our
opposition, in the end, it only served to reiterate what many of us have come
to realize over these last several years, namely that the men and women who
make the ultimate decisions for our schools, do not truly appreciate the true
implications of what they are demanding of us. While we share their goal of
making Garden City Schools a model of educational achievement, we also believe
that the best way to do this is not to laden us with ever more barely
beneficial burdens, but to provide us with the most precious resources of
all—time and trust. Time in which to accomplish our many tasks, and trust in
both our willingness and our ability to accomplish them successfully.