A meeting of our association was being planned for next week but in light of the rising cost of fuel I have decided to send out an E-newsletter instead. I couldn't justify asking some of our guest teachers to travel outside of their work day and, quite frankly, the thought of me driving to that side of town, consuming the fuel to hold a meeting didn't feel good. There really isn't much to report to our guest teachers, at least nothing so pressing it warrants the trip.
We did meet with the district in February and no pressing issues were presented or cleared up so a blurb or two in a newsletter will suffice.
In that meeting I asked the district's representative if some kind of tweaking of the substitute dispatch system is possible. My goal is to shut the thing down between 11 PM and 5 AM so that subs don't feel a need to rouse themselves from sleep to look for jobs when they should be getting quality sustained sleep. It's not only that I resent the idea that I may have to make myself do that in my pursuit of work but I worry that the situation is potentially dangerous. Dangerous because interrupting sleep can mean a loss of restful sleep and thus fatigue and mistakes made in the classroom. Mistakes come in sizes or degrees so they can be minor or major. I shudder to think . . . Anyway, I was told that shutting the system down or at least keeping jobs from posting between 11 PM and 5 AM is not possible.
Another subject touched upon in our meeting with the district was the guarantee of a half day pay if dispatched in error. That is when a sub accepts a job, reports and is told their services are no longer needed. In that situation the sub is put to work doing something -- shelving books, making copies, helping in classrooms, answering phones & etc. -- and paid for a half day. With the old system there were a lot of errors and the 'half day pay' was almost never questioned but in this age of cutbacks and shrinking budgets . . . well, you get the picture. I don't know that the issue was clearly addressed but I did get something. I asked what the "cutoff" time would be for cancellation shortly before the start of a job. By that I meant how close to the job start could the cancellation be made and the substitute teacher be guaranteed the half day pay? The answer was fewer than 30 minutes.
The guaranteed pay for a half day had became an issue for schools and the district over the last few years but in September of 2010 things got tougher. In the past the district would eat that cost in many cases. Later those costs were shifted to the individual schools' budgets so administrators have been 'cracking down' on their teachers. On a couple occasions since the beginning of the 2010-11 school year subs were told they were not needed and that they would NOT be paid for showing up on a late cancellation, the argument being (in at least one case) that the job had been canceled and the sub called by the secretary -- it didn't matter that the sub had not (could not) answered. In both cases the guest teacher could not answer the call because they were in transit.
This is good a place as any to suspend this. Keep watching this space for information.
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