An open letter to the PVUSD Board of Trustees
Posted: Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
I am a teacher at H.A. Hyde Elementary and am writing to protest the PVUSD administration’s response to Pajaro Valley Federated Teacher’s proposals for the current round of negotiations.
I have worked in PVUSD for almost 24 years. I, like most other teachers, am hard working and a little crazy in my level of dedication. Most days I’m in my classroom at least two hours past my contract time. I’m in my classroom again for several hours over the weekend. For many years while teaching at a district school that did not have an active home and school club, I organized all the school carnivals, flea markets, family literacy nights, Million Words Celebrations, etc. All of which took hundreds of hours of unpaid time.
Now that I am at H.A. Hyde, which has an active parent group, I am no longer so busy, but I continue to be the quintessential team player. This last week I went up to Camp Koinonia to relieve a fifth-grade teacher so that she could go home to her baby, (by the way fifth-grade teachers are not compensated beyond contract hours for their required round-the-clock attendance at science camp) and I organized Bike-to-School Day, which involved driving to Santa Cruz for materials, arriving at school early and staying late.
I am not asking for your praise or your thanks for these above-and-beyond activities and, of course, I know that I won’t be compensated for them monetarily. I am asking for your respect and for the acknowledgement that I am a professional who does what’s necessary because it is what it takes to make my classroom a rich learning environment and to make my school community healthy and cohesive. I am a professional and I am not uncommon in my level of dedication.
Please try to imagine my outrage then, when I read the district’s response to my union’s proposals for smaller class sizes, more prep time, and compensation equal to that of similar districts in California. After six weeks of no response at all to the union’s proposals, the administration responded with nothing but “take-backs.” They propose that teachers must call Superintendent Dorma Baker to have personal days approved (she must have a lot of time on her hands). They propose that sick days may have to be verified by a doctor’s note — as though writing five pages of sub plans and essentially losing a day of instruction with our students is not enough of a deterrent to false sick days. They propose that the definition of staff meetings be changed to mean only those that include the whole staff, including janitors, secretaries, etc., so that, through this semantic trick, teachers’ required meeting time will be unlimited, thus cutting into our already insufficient prep time. Other meeting times, they propose, would be unlimited, thus allowing all prep time to be eaten up by meetings.
All I can think is, “How dare they?” How dare they question my professionalism to this extent? If you, Trustees, are really convinced by the administration’s arguments that the majority of teachers are abusing our leave benefits and shirking our professional obligations, why not task Superintendent Baker with going out to the local golf courses during school hours and tallying the number of teachers she sees there. Then ask her to drive by local schools an hour after contract hours and tally the number of cars still in the staff parking lots. I can promise you that there will be more teachers giving away their time then there are those stealing time from the district. How dare they assume the opposite?
•••
Eileen Clark-Nagaoka is a teacher H.A. Hyde Elementary School.
I have worked in PVUSD for almost 24 years. I, like most other teachers, am hard working and a little crazy in my level of dedication. Most days I’m in my classroom at least two hours past my contract time. I’m in my classroom again for several hours over the weekend. For many years while teaching at a district school that did not have an active home and school club, I organized all the school carnivals, flea markets, family literacy nights, Million Words Celebrations, etc. All of which took hundreds of hours of unpaid time.
Now that I am at H.A. Hyde, which has an active parent group, I am no longer so busy, but I continue to be the quintessential team player. This last week I went up to Camp Koinonia to relieve a fifth-grade teacher so that she could go home to her baby, (by the way fifth-grade teachers are not compensated beyond contract hours for their required round-the-clock attendance at science camp) and I organized Bike-to-School Day, which involved driving to Santa Cruz for materials, arriving at school early and staying late.
I am not asking for your praise or your thanks for these above-and-beyond activities and, of course, I know that I won’t be compensated for them monetarily. I am asking for your respect and for the acknowledgement that I am a professional who does what’s necessary because it is what it takes to make my classroom a rich learning environment and to make my school community healthy and cohesive. I am a professional and I am not uncommon in my level of dedication.
Please try to imagine my outrage then, when I read the district’s response to my union’s proposals for smaller class sizes, more prep time, and compensation equal to that of similar districts in California. After six weeks of no response at all to the union’s proposals, the administration responded with nothing but “take-backs.” They propose that teachers must call Superintendent Dorma Baker to have personal days approved (she must have a lot of time on her hands). They propose that sick days may have to be verified by a doctor’s note — as though writing five pages of sub plans and essentially losing a day of instruction with our students is not enough of a deterrent to false sick days. They propose that the definition of staff meetings be changed to mean only those that include the whole staff, including janitors, secretaries, etc., so that, through this semantic trick, teachers’ required meeting time will be unlimited, thus cutting into our already insufficient prep time. Other meeting times, they propose, would be unlimited, thus allowing all prep time to be eaten up by meetings.
All I can think is, “How dare they?” How dare they question my professionalism to this extent? If you, Trustees, are really convinced by the administration’s arguments that the majority of teachers are abusing our leave benefits and shirking our professional obligations, why not task Superintendent Baker with going out to the local golf courses during school hours and tallying the number of teachers she sees there. Then ask her to drive by local schools an hour after contract hours and tally the number of cars still in the staff parking lots. I can promise you that there will be more teachers giving away their time then there are those stealing time from the district. How dare they assume the opposite?
•••
Eileen Clark-Nagaoka is a teacher H.A. Hyde Elementary School.
