Arranging deckchairs on the Titanic

I started writing something else – actually started a few times over the last few days, but never finished what I was writing. The struggle is still there to not only get back into the habit, but for me, I want to write something that I find meaningful. Not momentous, not insightful, not perfect poetry or prose – just something that means something to me.

Right now what is meaningful is processing all the stupid shit that has been said to me because I am a teacher.

This evening’s brain dump: School board and Superintendant

I attended my district’s monthly school board meeting this week, and whatever is the POLAR OPPOSITE of inspired is how I feel. Watching these people makes me wonder if we should have basic requirements for who sits on a school board.  The majority were voted into their positions, and one was appointed to fill out a term due to sketchy “shenanigans; the asshole was voted OUT, but his buddy who was voted into a different seat “decided to resign so someone more qualified could fill the seat” and this guy pushed to get APPOINTED back onto the board. My EA is quietly looking for people to run against him since he can only fill the seat for 1 year.

The clarity I now have is that not only do they not have any understanding of what it even takes to be a teacher, but they also have no fucking CLUE what educators have actually gone through in the last few years. As I was explaining WHY we are losing so many staff members and cannot recruit to fill open positions, we were emailed another teacher’s resignation. I am in a small school, this 1 teacher resigning means we no longer have a teacher for Social Studies 6-12 grade because we only have 1 teacher per certain subject except for English and Math, broken into HS and MS only.

And they don’t see or understand the problem at all. They don’t want to see it.

My staff is leaving because of the superintendent/principal. The man is not only an idiot who continues to make poor decisions left and right, he bullies staff and students, and he is a religious bigot. He was mostly quiet about some shit, but no surprise over the last few years he’s coming out from behind the mask.

I’ve had so many staff members tell me “But he’s so nice to me, and he is a Christian…” THEN they have to go into some sort of disciplinary meeting for some made-up infraction, and I go with them as the Union Rep. And they FINALLY get to see him as he truly is. The yelling, the bullying, the passive-aggressive belittling, the gaslighting – all of it. And we come out of those meetings with me having to council my staff member because they have “never seen him like that before.” – Every damn week I have to do this with someone new. And every time they are shocked and wonder why I am not and how I manage to stay so calm. It’s because I have seen his real face, and he is a fucking asshole who hides behind his idea of “righteousness.”

In the time this man has been in my district, we have had the HIGHEST staff turnover rate percentage-wise of any school in my county. My staff would stay if he was gone – they aren’t leaving because of anything else, they are leaving because of him. My board seems to think it is because of the pay, which for a small rural school is LOW even for teachers in my state, and they don’t get it when I as the union president have told them repeatedly that our staff members are not leaving over pay, they are leaving over ineffective and hostile leadership. I can’t simplify it any more than that. I even told the chair of my school board, a man I have known for 13 years and I consider a friend, that when I describe to my counselor how I am treated by the superintendent, she has told me that I describe those interactions the same way someone who has gone through domestic abuse describes their partner.

And now, we are down so many teachers and cannot fill the MINIMUM positions we need to be able to teach REQUIRED courses. Across the country, there is a teacher shortage, but what we are running into is that not only are my current staff members leaving but we cannot recruit.

I am helping my staff members leave – I cannot in good conscious ask them to stay when I know how we are treated. I am providing letters of recommendation and serving as a reference because unlike my superintendent/principal I actually know my staff as professionals, I have seen them teach and know how they are as educators, and I can actually provide a real honest evaluation of their work.

Why can’t we recruit? First off, our pay scale is such shit why would someone choose to work at a school with low pay and high job demands, when they can go to a school 20 miles closer to actually cities, have LESS of a workload, and make $10k-$15k more STARTING than my district. Also, the school climate for staff is no secret. It is well known among people in my area how my superintendent treats my staff members. His reputation and ineptitude proceed him, along with an article written about him allowing the sexual harassment of female students to go on in the school – it’s the first thing that comes up Googling my school district thanks to him. No one is going to apply. And the ones that do are usually staff that has left other districts under the option of “resign, or be fired and lose your teaching license.” – It’s the Dance of the Sketchy Lemons.

My superintendent is now hiring people and trying to get them emergency licensures to teach subjects. People who have no training as teachers, in one instance one of these people barely has a high school diploma, have been hired by my school board to teach. There are alternate routes to earn some teaching licenses in my state, and while I personally like some of these people, they have NOT met my state’s requirements for the alternate route. And my superintendent is going to have the district sign off on paperwork sponsoring these people that all requirements are met…

We don’t have enough staff to open in the fall. We can’t offer state-required classes.

And the man who has CAUSED all of this, was actually lobbying for a RAISE because “he deserved it.” He is one of the highest-paid superintendents in my area, covering one of the smallest districts.

And this rant doesn’t even address how he treats the kids and families.

The high school portion of my school is going to lose accreditation because we can’t meet the MINIMUM requirements right now. We don’t have enough staff to run the school. My board is arguing against paying the teachers we already have while piling more work and requirements on top of us, and we have a mad captain at the helm.

Hell, the fucker isn’t even mad. I can’t even figure out a literary captain to use as a comparison for the allegory I have in my head on this.

But the Titanic is sinking, and I used to think he and my board were running around rearranging deck chairs. Now I realize they aren’t even on the ship – they are ashore hearing the reports of the ship being in trouble and stating with all confidence that it will never sink, as it is already laying on the ocean floor.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get everyone I can into a lifeboat.