Sub Vision: Those cafeterias...

Many schools give little or no importance to their cafeterias, especially to the part that serves teachers and staff members.

Students – sure! They receive breakfast in class, free; precious learning time lost, and expensive food wasted. On average, half of the food distributed in the morning ends up in hands of questionable storage keepers, or worse – in the trash can…

Students get free lunch too, on which consumption I know less, but judging from the look of the luncheon area after the break, a lot of food is thrown away too…

When it comes to feeding staff members, however, schools are less concerned, a lot less! There are very few schools that keep a vibrant, fully stocked, cafeteria, catered for the adults who serve the juveniles. Teachers, whose lunch break time is limited to 30 minutes, carefully divided between closing one class and prepping for the next, visiting the bathroom, and eating, often reach the promised cafeteria just to watch the food packed away, longed-for coffee poured (literally) down the drain, and closed cashiers. I can’t count the times when I badly needed my cup of coffee to sustain me, and it was gone, consumed or, worse, drained to the sink…

Those blessed cafeterias that prepare salads and sandwiches, keep supplies available and always have a fresh pot of coffee are friends of the teaching profession. They understand the need of a working adult not only to be fed, but also to rest for few minutes. They are ready to answer to the needs, even if it means running between the students’ window, the kitchen, and the teachers’ lounge.

I don’t know what separates a good cafeteria and a mean cafeteria. They must have budget and resources limitation, but I can tell for sure – every time I encountered a nice cafeteria, there was a nice, generous, person running it. A mean manager translates to bad cafeteria, even if some of its employees are nice and helpful.

I always head to the cafeteria during my breaks, and have seen many lunchrooms. The good ones provide a choice of selections, with a smile and helpful attitude.  Over the years I have seen good cafeterias turning bad, bad ones getting better, good cafeterias staying good even after management change, and mean managers ruining one school, then moving to a different school and ruining it too…

One thing seems obvious to me. The blame is on schools’ administrators. Good and happy schools have good and happy cafeterias. Those who let cafeterias shut services to their staff indicate poor leadership and negligence, preventing this bit of luxury, few minutes of relaxation and adult conversation with peers. This small indulgence sustained me during times I worked at difficulty schools. The knowledge that once or twice a day I would spend few minutes with adults who face the exact same experience was invaluable. Administrators that do not understand that, don’t deserve to be managers of any type, let alone of school staff.

I had one of many experiences at a middle school that used to be a pleasant place, and became unbearable… Students’ bad behavior and administrators’ lack of support are only part of the problems. The school’s cafeteria has not served teachers and staff for years, and knowing that I try to avoid it, not always successfully. Cafeteria with cold coffee, no lunch service, air-conditioned to a freezing point, with outside broken chairs… At the end of one working day there, the office manager made the mistake of asking me how my day was. I told her that it would have been OK had the cafeteria served teachers at lunch. To my surprise an argument had erupted. She claimed I was wrong, and although she, herself, never goes to the cafeteria, lunch is being served! She suggested two possibilities, one, that I may not know where the cafeteria is, the other - that I am lying. No kidding!

Well, not all substitute teachers are very smart… or trust worthy…   

Ch 18 of 20: Budget Cuts

A problem that plugs most public schools is resources limitation. No matter how rich a school district is, shortage in resources always present. Private schools, of course, can raise tuition. Public schools are limited to state and district budgets. There is much inequality in the private education system; some schools provide their students with every opportunity - academic, creative and technology, but it comes with outrages price tag afforded only by the rich and well connected…

However, there is much inequality in the public schools as well. In affluent areas parents are supplementing budget limitations with private funds, and thus afford schools to provide top facilities, rich arts programs, and excellent academics.

Public schools in privileged areas offer an excellent education, that, in turn, provides their students opportunities at prestigious universities. These are schools where professional fathers put demands on administrators and teachers, with the ever presence of law suit threat, and leisure mothers volunteer unlimited number of hour at school, and raise unbelievable amount of funds for its programs.

I watch the school facilities at my area, where my kids went to school, and I see new buildings, new modern theater, state of the art gym, a whole turf football field that any professional team would have loved to have, and hear about the ever-growing academic, sports and arts programs.

Reality bites, then, when I go to work at the city school district; the differences are striking! Mostly old buildings, smelly bathrooms, many classrooms located in bungalows, built in haste to accommodate growing students’ population, far away from the center of the campus, without adequate bathrooms and drinking water fountains. Schools that severely cut their extra curriculum programs -  arts, theater, car shop, wood shop, agriculture, music, foreign languages; programs that are being discontinued one by one, year after year, leaving students with very few options, and displacing wonderful teachers, or forcing them to an early retirement.

The ugly face of budget cuts is not only old building with dirty classroom, shabby, smelly bathrooms, and unclean, littered, yard. It is not only discontinued excellent programs and dispersing wonderful staff members, it is also unsecured schools!

But, of course, the worst face of budget cuts is overcrowded classrooms, shortage of teachers, aids, and counselors. Not enough administrators, and discipline deans!

As a substitute teacher I see the budget cuts consequences every time I step into school premises; results are obvious everywhere I go.

One example is a middle school in the west side, that used to be well managed, and I watch it now getting worse every time I am there. The first thing that caught my eye, recently, was lack of security at the entrance, not even a parent volunteer. The path from the entrance leads to the main office, but also to classrooms on each side of the campus; a stranger can wander in without any disruption. When, at last, I met the sole security person in the school he told me that they are very limited in resources, and sitting at the gate is not a priority…

There are many other consequences for not having enough security on campus, on top of compromised safety; a phenomenon of students wandering around, freely, during class sessions, without supervision. I was surprised and alarmed to read a note from the classroom’s permanent teacher about students ditching during the last two periods of the day. Ditching? At 6^th grade? And the school cannot do anything about it? But of course, with only one security guy for the whole school, and with deans of discipline being considered an unnecessary expense at many middle schools, students are taking advantage of the lax discipline …

I have seen good schools turning into terrible schools, and vice versa, for just one reason, relaxing or tightening security and discipline, nothing else! All it takes is one good administrator, dedicated specifically for discipline, and a school can turn completely around, but due to budget cuts, some schools get rid of this function.

A major consequence of budget cuts is class size. Seating forty students in one classroom, especially in a middle school, has terrible consequences on students teacher’s communication. Class size may not matter in high school honor classes, although I doubt it too, but in lower classes, and especially in middle school, ten extra students per classroom can make all the difference.

One of the effects of budget cuts was cutting janitorial services, causing good, hard working men and women, to lose their jobs because the district had to tighten its expenses, and cleaning was declared unnecessary. As a result, teachers and students step into filthy classrooms, with dirt and papers all over the floor, left there the previous afternoon, and still there early in the morning. Is it an academic issue? Not necessarily! Is it educational issue? Absolutely!

Fortunately, unionized teachers’ contract forbids schools to make teachers supervise during their breaks. This is not the case, however, at charter schools, whose teachers are usually not organized, and “at will”. Teachers not protected by unions must carry extra duties, to fill holes in the budget, like supervision, before, during and after school, and, normally, get no conference period...

There is another side to the budget shortage that never fails to surprise and anger me; the contrast between shortages in necessities compared, on the other hand, with ample of waste. Some school supplies are distributed without any reservation or control, while others are always scarce. A teacher may have to purchase her own white board markers, or pay for her lesson materials’ duplications, while students are provided with endless stock of papers, writing supplies, disposable workbooks, calculators, top of the line computers, and… free meals.

It would have been all good and generous if it served only the needy population, but in most cases, it is unnecessary and wasteful. Students are careless with supplies and are not accountable for their loss or damage. They are making paper planes out of the papers, leaving markers to dry, breaking pencils, throwing erasers and crayons at each other, leaving calculators and computers unattended and unprotected, and disposing their free meals to the trash!

Since the new, free “breakfast in class” program had started, I have seen hundreds of unopened milk cartons left to spoil, meals untouched, returned, in the best case to the cafeteria or donated to some food service, but usually just left to rot, and end up at the trash can. What a waste of food, money, and precious teaching time!

Every aspect of budget cuts, and wastefulness on the other hand, directly effects teachers and their job; large classes, lack of assistance, lack of discipline, lack of support from counselors and administrators, dirty classrooms, breakfast in class, lack of supplies on one hand and excessive supplies on the other, distributing and watching it being wasted.

Teachers are constantly blamed for the system’s shortcoming, but have no voice in preventing senseless decisions; they have no listener or supporter to their real needs or concerns!