Sub Vision: Private Schools

It was exactly three years ago when it all happened. At the time, I was so hurt that I could hardly talk about it; I would get teary eyed... For weeks and months I was hoping to get a phone call, email, or any sign from anyone saying sorry and that I am missed… Not even my good friend, whom I helped through tough times, physical and emotional…

The only communication I ever got was from a girl, unaware of the situation, asking me for help with the school’s newspaper. I answered but never heard back from her. And then one time I emailed, by error, one of the mothers, mistaking her for someone else, and received a cold reply saying she has no idea what am I talking about …

With time the pain subsided; I returned to the public schools system, and this small, private, religious school was forgotten.

Then, few weeks ago, exactly three years later, at a special screening of an ethnic movie, I saw one of my darling students. She was one of six girls that were the pride of the school, and my favorite group. And this student was the brightest and the best…

For a while I hesitated, not sure, but then, all of a sudden, without thinking twice, I stepped forward and said something to the fact that this is my favorite ex-student.

Both she, and her mother, did recognized me, told me where she were since (8^th to 11^th), and then told me about the rest, and what high school they go to now.

It was only when I departed and asked them to send my love to the other girls, that my emotions came full strength, and tearing, I could hardly finish my sentence… It took me another hour, well into the movie, to get back to myself and the pain to faint to the past.

It was a small religious school that invited me for an interview about a month after the school year had started. They told me that the previous teacher of several years had unexpectedly left, and the newly hired is not liked by the students, and being replaced.

I should have been alarmed by this information, but teaching a sample lesson to these darling group of girls I thought I found what I always wanted, students who like to learn, supportive parents, helpful administration, and an opportunity to teach the way I want.

For the first few months I was the hero teacher. My students’ parents were all happy. Parents of younger kids expressed hope I will be there when their kids get to my class. Students told me they understood things now that they had never before, administrators were all approving, and other teachers invited me to their homes for family celebration.

Before the holidays I received many gifts, both from parents and from administrators and teachers, and at a school holiday celebration I was highly praised by my students, with wishes and even with a cute poem. Everyone cheered for my celebrity…

Then, only few days later, just before the end of the semester, a parent wanted to talk to me. She met first with the head master of the school, and their meeting lasted for a very long time. At the end of it, she ignored me and the head master wanted to talk to me…

To my surprise, I learned that the principal was not happy with my performance, claimed that students don’t understand me, said I don’t use enough technology, and so on…

I was astounded, and asked her only half seriously if it means that she plans on firing me. Her answer was not re-assuring at all. Later I tried to get more information of what was it all about, and eventually realized it will be better if I just quit.

I, somehow, managed to teach to the end of the school day, and following an email exchange later in the day it was clear that I should not come back. I still had to fight for my last paycheck, but when it was over I was just left to wonder what had happened.

It took me months to put together events and time line, to realize that the great celebration before the holidays was also before the report cards. This mother with whom I had to meet had two kids as my students, cute and smart but spoiled and undisciplined, and although I did not fail any of my students, and even ‘D’ was rare, I didn’t hesitate to award ‘C’s to many students, and her kids too…

This woman, however, was rich and well-connected, and the school needed her money and influence. They couldn’t effort losing her over a math grade, so they got rid of me.

This was not the only case of unhappy parents with their student’s grade, I assume. Many of my students were sons and daughters of influential people in the school and community, a fact that gave them and their children entitlement to special treatment. The school depended on their money and influence and could not effort to lose them …

It is a sad story, but not a rare one. Sad for me as I was attached to the students and was doing a good job. But even more consequential was its reflection on the education system. It is not rare that private schools depend on parents’ satisfactions, translates to money… So to keep students and parents happy they get (buy) good grades. And with no a standard, mandatory measure of objective achievement, no one will ever know…

This personal story happened to be timely… With a new education ministry, potentially headed by a person who is a product of the private teaching system, with no public education experience, it is just the beginning of unqualified, money driven, schooling… 

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! 

Ch 17 of 20: Charter Schools

In our desperate search for a solution to the education crisis, we agreed to believe in the phenomena of the charter schools, popping up left and right, as the answer.

Charter schools strive on what they are NOT, comparing to district run schools. They are NOT the huge monsters that serve thousands of students. Their teachers are NOT on a contract for the rest of their life. Budget distribution is NOT under a strict scrutiny, thus can be applied to current needs. There are NO layers of administrators between teachers and principal, making parents’ access far easier.

Sounds great, doesn't it? It is like sending your student to a private school but without having to pay the huge tuition fee… right?...not quite…

I have seen tens of charter schools in my area, maybe more. I think I remember only one or two that at least left me with some tolerable impression.

My first experience with a charter school was working at one for an entire year. Wonderful teachers, dedicated administrators, OK students, caring parents… but one thread connected all the problems we faced - lack of professionalism. Staff members were good, smart and dedicated people, but not professionals…

We did not have a defined academic plan or clear goals, nor did we have a specific procedure for discipline. We had no textbooks for two months, and worse – no facility for four months, not until January. In the meantime, we were guests in a church hall, with only thin patricians separating one classroom from another, with flying objects filling the space between the classrooms. Everything was a ‘Work in Progress’, even though the school had been operating for several years.

To make things worse - by March all the school funds were exhausted and we were seriously considering shutting down the school and dispersing our students… 

After that experience, I swore never to work at a charter school again, and to spread the word about charter schools whenever and wherever I could… But reality bites, and after working at district schools for a while, or worse, not working at all, you start wondering if charter schools are that bad after all…

I was, since, interviewed by numerous charter schools. Many of them did not hire me not because I was not qualified, but because I was over qualified; credentialed, experienced, know my rights. It would be hard to make me work extra hours and get paid half of what the public district pays… For jobs that I did get an offer I just could not say yes. I just knew that I will be miserable for the whole time, and yet, knowing myself, would never quit midyear… (Not even if not paid, as before…)

I admit that I still apply to charter schools from time to time, but I can affirm that I never found one that I thought would be right for me…

However, as a substitute teacher, contracted with a respectable agency, I do work at charter schools quite often.

Charter schools, often, choose weird places as their site; I have seen charter schools in strange locations, abandoned buildings, with old ugly structures. I was in a charter school that was right beneath two major freeways intersection. I did not even think of the dreadful air pollution. What bothered me most was the possibility of falling cars off those freeways and smashing into a crowded classroom…

On one of my substitute assignments at a beginning of a school year I was sent to a charter schools in the east side. The area was not bad, the facility was oldish but quite OK, there was even something homey about the small yard in front of the main office and the classrooms surrounding it. I have changed my mind about the homeliness when I entered my classroom. It was not darling anymore. This was a classroom with only few, old, chairs, and even less, decorated with graffiti, desks; for sure not enough for all the students soon to enter the classroom. Something else bothered me as I looked around, but I thought it might be the unappealing look of the bare walls. Then I realized what was wrong – there was no whiteboard or even blackboard… Later on, I discover a spot on the wall that, apparently, was used as a whiteboard, but it was so small, and its quality so poor, that it was unrecognizable.

But this was not the worst part… The bigger problem was that it was the first week of the school year and the school did not have yet… teachers. I am serious! This was a small school that should have employed about 12-15 teachers. On the day I was called to substitute, there were 9(!) other substitute teachers signed up! And this was during a time when hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers were frantically looking for a job… I talked to few of the substitute teachers and they told me that they are trying to get hired at that school but the school would not give them an answer… My guess? The school was looking for a real cheap labor, and knowing how many teachers were out of job, they were waiting to find the people who will be willing to work for the minimum wage they had in mind…

Another charter school, to which I was sent recently, prides itself as a science and math academy… Well, this should be good, I thought. This is probably the model of school that, in our mind, the public education system should have …

I arrived about fifteen minutes before the start of the school day, and with the help of some students located the “Main Office”, the main institution in every public school. I was completely surprised to find it locked. A pleasant looking teacher arrived few seconds later and said “oh, it’s close”, without much surprise, and continued on his way, and I was trying to search my mind for possible instructions that might have directed me to a different destination rather than the main office …

Few minutes later the secretary had arrived and asked if she could help me. I told her I am a substitute teacher and the name of the agency that sent me. Apparently she was not aware of the need of my services, and disappeared for several more minutes to get the information. I was then sent to a science class to replace a science teacher. I am not a science teacher but with instructions and material to occupy the students I can manage to keep a class full of 8^th graders busy.

On the desk I found a big folder with instructions for each day of the week. I was slightly alarmed by a note that asked me to administer a final test and then grade it. I didn't think I was quite qualified for that, but I kept reading the instructions. Then, all of a sudden, I realize that these instructions were intended for the previous week, given by a responsible, previous, substitute teacher… At that point I realized that I was on my own, and tried to seek help from the… students.

The students told me that their teacher had been out for over a month. She was pregnant with twins and probably would not be back after she has the babies. They had, so far, 4-5 substitute teachers. When inquired on what chapter in the book they are, they could not remember, and of course suggested watching a movie…

I returned to the same school a week later, hoping things have changed for the better. From students’ reaction (another substitute???), I understood that not much had changed. A permanent teacher was not yet hired, but few changes had been made to accommodate the situation. A psychology elective class was replaced by a new elective - computers. When I asked where the computer lab is, I was told - at the same classroom. “So where are the computers?” I asked. No one could answer that. In the meantime the class was a “study hall”, fancy name for “doing nothing” class. Other science and math classes became general “tutoring” classes (more “study halls”), and the only substantial class left out of six-period day was algebra …  

The case of charter schools is about public funds, originated in our tax money, intended for public education. Charter schools divert resources from the well-established district, to their un-established institutions. They namely “steal” students from the district, depleting its finances. District schools have a very strict guideline, good or bad, and ample of well-educated and trained academic staff; administrators, teachers and aides. Charter schools offer a very poor replacement.

Charter schools, in many cases, are financial expenditure, generated by business people rather than educators. (Education, apparently, is a very profitable business, benefiting from holes in the system). Unlike district schools, they are not subjected to the same scrutiny, and are given years to prove themselves and become accredited. In the meantime, and even after, they have a very flex guideline…

As much as I disapprove the way the district runs, the type of events described above would never happen under district domain; classrooms without the bare minimum, unsafe locations, a school without teachers… As an educator, it is painful for me to watch credentialed and experienced teachers losing their jobs to unqualified personnel, who work for poorly managed charter school, for less money, and are at the disposal of anyone – administrators, parent, students…  

Do parents blindly believe that their students get more in charter schools than in the public school system? Did they know, for example, that their charter school of choice had started the school year without teachers? Or that their student’s science teacher in that “math and science academy” had been away for two month without a permanent replacement?

Until someone absolutely proves me that students are doing better in a charter school, not because it is located in an upper-class area, and not because it refuses to accept certain type of students, and not because it is quick to send certain students back to public district - I am very skeptical! I do hope that a responsible politician will soon look into it… In the meantime - parents - never assume anything! Do check your premises, at least from time to time…

For more - Read : "The Death and Life of the Great American School System", by Diane Ravitch