All in all we are about to have an interesting 6 to 48 months ahead. I don’t envy the financial planners of the schools or the unions. There will be a contract. It’s in the interests of both sides to have one. The external economic pressures that may force actions in spite of a contract are the real problem.

Of course, if you are a math teacher who has an established curriculum and doesn’t offer after-school tutoring, you might be able to do your work in the contract day. But for any teacher in their first five years, and any teacher who gives writing assignments, it is simply impossible.

Really, the message we get from proposals like this one is: You are being paid to babysit, not to teach.

The reality is, we spend too much time with the kids already — we need more time to colloborate and provide meaningful feedback on work, and the kids need to learn to work independently and at home, not just get Cs for showing up and hiding out in a class of 35.

Here’s a radical proposal, as long as the district is throwing them out:

– Cut summer in half. Six weeks is long enough.
– Drastically shorten the school day at the middle and high-school level so students are spending less time in structured academic classes, while doing the same amount of work. For every hour of instruction, teachers should have at least a half-hour of prep, professinal/curriculum development or have them work in ….
– … significant after-school enrichment programs. These would cost parents’ money on a steep sliding-scale. Karate, art, music, sports, wood-working, autoshop, electrical, theater, photography — help the kids find something (anything!) they are good at besides video games and smoking dope. It would be easy to find teachers for these, as it is much more fun to teach such subjects. Study hall and tutoring would also be part of after-school.

This started when Ward first took over. He made his 4% pay cut happen by cutting teacher prep days.

Prep days and prep period is needed for teachers to get their teaching organized (Lesson planning, grading, classroom/equipment/tool setup & maintenance, contacting parents, etc.)

Without the prep time the only choice a teacher has is to either do this work when students are in the classroom, or to do it for free on their own time. (I suspect the district expects the teachers to do the latter.)

And as Cranky Teacher stated this will result in greater teacher burnout (If an increase is possible in the OUSD.)

To me the talk of cutting preps was much more disturbing than even pay cuts.

I doubt there’s ever been a moment in U.S. history where teachers were expected to do more in a one-hour prep than they are today.

If you cut prep and colloboration time, teachers are faced with either burnout or cutting back significantly on lesson planning, meaningful feedback to students and quanity of work assigned, both of which have significant costs to education. The end result? Multiple choice scantron exams and movies every Friday…

It may occur to the Unions to start thinking where the workers will be in the event the Government adopts Wage and Price Controls in the (near) future if and when the US completely loses control of the dollar. Will the negotiated COLA and other pay hikes be implemented when Wage and Price Controls kick in? Doubt it.

What can the Unions do to protect the workers from such an event? Negotiate backup working condition changes (more vacation?) or provide for a reopening of all negotiations (Which is what Whitney Huston’s lawyers inserted in her first record contract with Arista should she sell well – which was triggered and netted her a fortune).

All workers need to watch this nightmare unfolding with the US economy and make careful plans. It’s about to get real interesting.