The district said it averages an expense of $26,000 per day on subs, and each day it spends approximately half of a teacher salary on subs. So far this year, it said the cost is approximately $3.5 million.
On Thursday, the district announced it can't afford to pay all the subs and has capped the number at about 350.
Other district employees such as administrators and counselors will fill in for teachers. If coverage for a particular period is not possible, students will be moved into other teachers' classrooms for supervision.
According to the district, absence rates usually peak on Fridays.What's not clear is how many subs they are using per day currently - how many over 350? Having administrators and counselors cover classes just means they want get to do their real jobs dealing with a never ending streams of kids and their almost unimaginable (to the non-educator adult population) issues and situations all day long. Stuffing kids into another classroom is another terrible idea. I've never seen that work any other way than a bunch of kids sitting in a corner of a room, disrupting the class they were sent into.
Kids are the losers on this.
The district was facing an $18 million plus budget deficit and they've already laid off teachers and paraprofessionals, rerouted buses, canceled activity buses after school (which I have a question about - how will my daughter get to football games to perform in the halftime show?) and probably a myriad of other unpleasant things I don't know about.
Anyway, you can thank Governor Rick Perry and his legislative cronies who set out to starve public education in Texas and are seeing their efforts come to fruition.
1 comments:
Another aspect that the district should look at is how many teachers are calling in sick and why. If the absentee rate is excessive, then it is due to workplace problems--friction between teachers or staff, friction between teachers and poorly behaved, undisciplined kids, or even conditions in certain classrooms (some teachers I know have terrible allergies and sometimes call in because there is so much dust and other items in their classroom that are making them sick, and despite complaints, those are rarely addressed in the district where I work. If workplace issues were addressed and improved, then the absenteeism would be minimal.
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