ancientag67 said:

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I sincerely hope they keep the schools closed until next August. Many families have elderly living with them. Especially here in South Texas. School starting before this virus is somewhat stabilized is just going to reignite the whole problem. Social distancing in the workplace is one thing... not going to happen in schools. We have all invested and will invest greatly before this is over. Hate to see this sacrifice be counterproductive.

Yeah I'm an old fart, but the wife and I live alone.

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I agree. Most people stay within a somewhat small social circle which keeps the virus from spreading. However, schools would be an easy way for the virus to jump from one social ciecle to another. Churches as well.

MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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culdeus said:

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Lunar_Pulse said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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nai06 said:

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Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

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Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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Because you are going to have to pay teachers 20 additional days of pay. That's about an extra $6K per teacher. That's going to bankrupt a lot of districts who haven't budgeted for that increase in payroll

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I would say that investment would be worth it for State and National govt to step in and cover that cost. (If it's safe to go back to school then)

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Teachers should have to suck it up with the kids. They are paid to teach a full school year and just because you can't work properly doesn't mean you can't make it up later. Maybe we should just furlough all of the teachers for the next 5 weeks and see if they want to make it up the following 5 weeks.

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Incorrect. Teachers are paid to teach 9 months out of the year. They elect to divide their pay up over 12 months so they have money coming in all 12 months. This is why teachers get paid to teach summer school. Teachers are curently expected to work now offering online content or the state won't fund the school. This crisis should have taught us how under paid teachers are.

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While I agree with all of this, the last statement is questionable. This crisis shows to me how important content creators on YouTube are. The online content teachers are putting out is something out of a public Access TV station in the 60s. Why do we need 200 people teaching the same common lesson on acute angles?

Texas ISD should be able to centralize some of this content while having teachers do remote tutoring in small groups. Or something.

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More central education is not the answer, at least in the broad spectrum. In this covid world... maybe it is, I don't know.

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Public education is as much a daycare as it is school. Parents get the jobs, that run the economy, that pay for schools.

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plenty of folks likely feel something equally as dismissive about your profession.

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Go on...

Sid Farkas said:

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barnyard1996 said:

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May the 4th be with you always.

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Speech therapy can help you with that lisp

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You misspelled lithp.

MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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culdeus said:

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Lunar_Pulse said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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nai06 said:

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Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

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Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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Because you are going to have to pay teachers 20 additional days of pay. That's about an extra $6K per teacher. That's going to bankrupt a lot of districts who haven't budgeted for that increase in payroll

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I would say that investment would be worth it for State and National govt to step in and cover that cost. (If it's safe to go back to school then)

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Teachers should have to suck it up with the kids. They are paid to teach a full school year and just because you can't work properly doesn't mean you can't make it up later. Maybe we should just furlough all of the teachers for the next 5 weeks and see if they want to make it up the following 5 weeks.

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Incorrect. Teachers are paid to teach 9 months out of the year. They elect to divide their pay up over 12 months so they have money coming in all 12 months. This is why teachers get paid to teach summer school. Teachers are curently expected to work now offering online content or the state won't fund the school. This crisis should have taught us how under paid teachers are.

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While I agree with all of this, the last statement is questionable. This crisis shows to me how important content creators on YouTube are. The online content teachers are putting out is something out of a public Access TV station in the 60s. Why do we need 200 people teaching the same common lesson on acute angles?

Texas ISD should be able to centralize some of this content while having teachers do remote tutoring in small groups. Or something.

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More central education is not the answer, at least in the broad spectrum. In this covid world... maybe it is, I don't know.

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Public education is as much a daycare as it is school. Parents get the jobs, that run the economy, that pay for schools.

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plenty of folks likely feel something equally as dismissive about your profession.

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Go on...

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Lots of folks have high impressions of themselves and their professions while concurrently dismissing the ENTIRE profession of teaching, based largely on propaganda. Sure, everyone has anecdotes re: the ****ty teacher, while failing to acknowledge they grew up with dozens of teachers, many of which were excellent and likely inspired them to learn and pursue passions. Yet, apparently public education is as much daycare, which allows the professor of such a trope to dismiss the hard work of teachers. This sentiment then feeds a cycle of disincentivizing highly qualified people from becoming and remaining teachers, bc, you know, people think there're just babysitters. Maybe if we didn't compare our schools to daycare a few thousand more highly qualified grads would become teachers and maybe stop US's slide in various education rankings, notably STEM.

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This isn't an indictment on teachers and never has been, I clearly said, "I'm talking about the general population who isn't able to work while kids are at home.". You see, it's not about the teacher, it's about the parents trying to work from home but instead having to babysit their kids. I'm not sure how anyone can take offense to this. It's clearly a very important part of the equation = kids are at school... parents are at work earning money... in turn, paying for the school. How can this be so controversial - it's true?

who?mikejones said:

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He halted all construction except for 6 specific categories.

Ended up where the majority could contiue where the home builders and light construction had to stop. Then, the city continued (and continues on) to bungle up who cam or cannot work, the amount of time to shut a job, a process to get special permission.

Terribly unfair and not in line with any other texas city.

*i should say im fine with shutting down for 3 weeks. It would suck for everyone but we in the construction industry are hardly special. But, if we were to quit now in exchange for future solid work expectations, I'd do it.
It also is probably the right thing to do if the stated goal is a 90% reduction in social interactions.

But, adler didn't have it in him to shut down affordable housing/homeless construction. He couldn't take that hit to his progressive rep.

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To simplify, Adler shut down all for-profit construction business except public, "govt affordable" and nonprofit facilities.

ALL construction is a GO now unless Austin is going to a stand their standard is more "strict" ~more safe (it's not)

LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

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Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

As a teacher, I agree with you.

You guys assume this will not be extended on May 4....

nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

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Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

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But they'll take their paycheck when they're not teaching, right?

id argue the majority of teaches especially high school and junior high are working harder now then before the corona virus

Well, for profit construction could continue if it had a single case of any of the 6 qualifications.

Ie. High rises could continue if they were providing a single rent controlled apartment.

culdeus said:

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Lunar_Pulse said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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nai06 said:

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Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

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Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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Because you are going to have to pay teachers 20 additional days of pay. That's about an extra $6K per teacher. That's going to bankrupt a lot of districts who haven't budgeted for that increase in payroll

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I would say that investment would be worth it for State and National govt to step in and cover that cost. (If it's safe to go back to school then)

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Teachers should have to suck it up with the kids. They are paid to teach a full school year and just because you can't work properly doesn't mean you can't make it up later. Maybe we should just furlough all of the teachers for the next 5 weeks and see if they want to make it up the following 5 weeks.

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Incorrect. Teachers are paid to teach 9 months out of the year. They elect to divide their pay up over 12 months so they have money coming in all 12 months. This is why teachers get paid to teach summer school. Teachers are curently expected to work now offering online content or the state won't fund the school. This crisis should have taught us how under paid teachers are.

---

While I agree with all of this, the last statement is questionable. This crisis shows to me how important content creators on YouTube are. The online content teachers are putting out is something out of a public Access TV station in the 60s. Why do we need 200 people teaching the same common lesson on acute angles?

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"Texas ISD should be able to centralize some of this content while having teachers do remote tutoring in small groups. Or something. "

Texas ISD's...that little s is important. There isn't a Texas ISD, there are hundreds and hundreds of Independent School District. Oversight to federal and state educational guidelines is attended to by TEA but the districts are each independent units.

This platform you seek to create, who curates it? Who pays for it? Who signs off on it? Remember we love our local control until we don't or the outcome is something "someone over there" implements.

In regards to what teachers are putting out, their strategies and training are designed to be done face to face. They are adjusting in real time to a temporary paradigm. If you think that a kindergartner or first grader can learn as efficiently online as in a class room then build the platform and show us how its done.

I'm not in education, but my wife was a teacher and a principal and now works in an oversight position at the state level. My mom taught for just shy of 50 years, my mother in law is still a teacher (at a school that is about 90% free lunch). The work that the state, districts, region service centers, teachers, etc. are putting into this at scale, on the fly using resources cobbled together in a time of do more with less via increasing unfunded mandates is pretty impressive.

IMO teaching, like nursing/medicine, firefighting, etc is a calling, and teachers like firemen are always teachers. They are also under contract for 180 days and are working every day to drive as much education as possible. If there is a funding mechanism for not only the teachers but the support staff and infrastructure (bldgs, HVAC in the summer, etc) then lets do it. But my guess is there probably isn't.

nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

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Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

---

Teachers are paid for X number of days of service and that's extrapolated over a 12-month year for payroll purposes. X is like 200 or something along those lines. My teacher wife will tell you that while they are tied to their jobs right now they aren't working at anything close to full capacity and I think everyone realizes that. If you told them they would get half credit for what will be six weeks out of the classroom during this period then the other half had to be earned by going three weeks past their original end date I think that's a fair trade. To me that's a better outcome than just cancelling the year after 4 6-week grading periods. Again, this is just me thinking out loud. I don't think anyone would have an appetite to pay them extra for that time so I agree with you there. This is all very much a work in progress and we're going to see things change and start to solidify by mid-April as to what they do. This morning in their weekly staff meeting they talked about how the 5th/6th grade campus will generate grades for the incomplete 5th grading period and the soon to start 6th grading period so now that the timeline is hopefully firming up some they're starting to plan accordingly.

Lunar_Pulse said:

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Incorrect. Teachers are paid to teach 9 months out of the year. They elect to divide their pay up over 12 months so they have money coming in all 12 months. This is why teachers get paid to teach summer school. Teachers are curently expected to work now offering online content or the state won't fund the school. This crisis should have taught us how under paid teachers are.

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Not to mention how problematic having insurance tied to employment is during a pandemic.

(Not meant as a political statement.)

LOYAL AG said:

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nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

---

Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

---

Teachers are paid for X number of days of service and that's extrapolated over a 12-month year for payroll purposes. X is like 200 or something along those lines. My teacher wife will tell you that while they are tied to their jobs right now they aren't working at anything close to full capacity and I think everyone realizes that. If you told them they would get half credit for what will be six weeks out of the classroom during this period then the other half had to be earned by going three weeks past their original end date I think that's a fair trade. To me that's a better outcome than just cancelling the year after 4 6-week grading periods. Again, this is just me thinking out loud. I don't think anyone would have an appetite to pay them extra for that time so I agree with you there. This is all very much a work in progress and we're going to see things change and start to solidify by mid-April as to what they do. This morning in their weekly staff meeting they talked about how the 5th/6th grade campus will generate grades for the incomplete 5th grading period and the soon to start 6th grading period so now that the timeline is hopefully firming up some they're starting to plan accordingly.

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For me the problem is the actual contract. The standard teacher contract is for 187 days. The state has made it very clear my pay is based on days worked. Schools must educate kids for at least 180 days. A few years back they changed the calculation to allow ISDs to calculate days based on minutes. My district extended the school day by 15 minutes. The end result is that kids are actually in school less calendar days. Teachers still have those days though. I have about a week's worth of work days where I am required to be at school when my students aren't. You can't have it both ways. You either count teachers' contract days by minutes or calendar days. A district can't extend my contract because they don't believe they got enough work out of me. If I were salaried, it's a different story.

HowdyTAMU said:

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nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

---

Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

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But they'll take their paycheck when they're not teaching, right?

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Is this microphone on? You realize the vast majority them are still teaching.

Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

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Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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I bet adding 4 weeks is being considered. But not publicly discussed.

nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

---

Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

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Texas had plenty of cash in the Rainy Day fund if they wanted to do this, but at this point might as well just wait until next semester to get back going.

MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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MyNameIsKyle said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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culdeus said:

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Lunar_Pulse said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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nai06 said:

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Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

---

Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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Because you are going to have to pay teachers 20 additional days of pay. That's about an extra $6K per teacher. That's going to bankrupt a lot of districts who haven't budgeted for that increase in payroll

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I would say that investment would be worth it for State and National govt to step in and cover that cost. (If it's safe to go back to school then)

---

Teachers should have to suck it up with the kids. They are paid to teach a full school year and just because you can't work properly doesn't mean you can't make it up later. Maybe we should just furlough all of the teachers for the next 5 weeks and see if they want to make it up the following 5 weeks.

---

Incorrect. Teachers are paid to teach 9 months out of the year. They elect to divide their pay up over 12 months so they have money coming in all 12 months. This is why teachers get paid to teach summer school. Teachers are curently expected to work now offering online content or the state won't fund the school. This crisis should have taught us how under paid teachers are.

---

While I agree with all of this, the last statement is questionable. This crisis shows to me how important content creators on YouTube are. The online content teachers are putting out is something out of a public Access TV station in the 60s. Why do we need 200 people teaching the same common lesson on acute angles?

Texas ISD should be able to centralize some of this content while having teachers do remote tutoring in small groups. Or something.

---

More central education is not the answer, at least in the broad spectrum. In this covid world... maybe it is, I don't know.

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Public education is as much a daycare as it is school. Parents get the jobs, that run the economy, that pay for schools.

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plenty of folks likely feel something equally as dismissive about your profession.

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Go on...

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Lots of folks have high impressions of themselves and their professions while concurrently dismissing the ENTIRE profession of teaching, based largely on propaganda. Sure, everyone has anecdotes re: the ****ty teacher, while failing to acknowledge they grew up with dozens of teachers, many of which were excellent and likely inspired them to learn and pursue passions. Yet, apparently public education is as much daycare, which allows the professor of such a trope to dismiss the hard work of teachers. This sentiment then feeds a cycle of disincentivizing highly qualified people from becoming and remaining teachers, bc, you know, people think there're just babysitters. Maybe if we didn't compare our schools to daycare a few thousand more highly qualified grads would become teachers and maybe stop US's slide in various education rankings, notably STEM.

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This isn't an indictment on teachers and never has been, I clearly said, "I'm talking about the general population who isn't able to work while kids are at home.". You see, it's not about the teacher, it's about the parents trying to work from home but instead having to babysit their kids. I'm not sure how anyone can take offense to this. It's clearly a very important part of the equation = kids are at school... parents are at work earning money... in turn, paying for the school. How can this be so controversial - it's true?

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So, socially, nationally, culturally, a school has as much import bc it "keeps" kids vs. develops kids? I'm not claiming the cheap (bc schools are not free) care schools provide lacks importance, but to equate it with the human development component suggests knowing very little about schools, teaching, and human development. Furthermore, (and yes, this is a soap box of mine) an alarming percentage of our society (frankly, dominated by conservative white men, anecdotally) love to pot shot at teachers, which has roots in misogyny and self aggrandizement - ie insecure people seeking easy targets to put down, in order to prop themselves up.

Now, the biggest issue I have with your perspective, it makes us dumber as a nation. Fewer A&M, Berkeley, UCLA, Florida, Michigan, Virginia, UNC etc. grads become teachers, bc they didn't go to a rigorous school to get slotted into the same social strata as a babysitter; oh, by the way, you'll get repeatedly disrespected AND paid **** (another soapbox, but I'll save it). Therefore, our schools get filled with teachers from Sam, CSU-San Marcos, FAU, Western Michigan, Radford, and Eastern Carolina. And you know what, TONS of great career teachers come from these schools, yet there's simply no way the "hit" rate is as high as the graduates of the flagships.

I'm not suggesting the care aspect of school doesn't hold an important societal purpose. However, when you equate it to the developmental aspects, you spread misinformed, societally detrimental talking points that do little more than create a self satisfying feedback loop for those who would rather rail at an issue than do anything to fix it.

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You implying that better teachers would come from "flagship" schools is very very ignorant. Just because you went to A&M don't think that makes you better than most. Is some cases yes, in this case no.

As a former school administrator I would bet the majority of my "bad" teachers went to the flagship schools. IMO they do a worse job preparing students to become educators because of the size and lack of personal instruction. Many of my best teacher graduated from SHSU and TX State. The absolute worst teachers I had were the ones who went through the teacher cert programs after graduating college.

My wife is a teacher, though she retired after last year to join our company. Pretty good chance she will be teaching in the fall.

Anyway she has 5 kids inlcuding mine off of our street every day in a 'classroom' which used to be our dining room. All elementary school kids. Their dad's are army and deployed, one to Europe and one to NY to fight Coronavirus(army nurse). Their wives do not work and are following the SIP as best as possible like us.

Anyway the kids have their 9:30 online sessions with their teachers, go down to one of the moms for lunch, then come back for lessons with my wife from 1-3pm. She is doing lesson plans for three different grades.

Teachers are gonna teach. It's in their blood.


Edit-And when they dont act right Im the principle/coach. HAHA

nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

---

Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

---

Teachers are paid for X number of days of service and that's extrapolated over a 12-month year for payroll purposes. X is like 200 or something along those lines. My teacher wife will tell you that while they are tied to their jobs right now they aren't working at anything close to full capacity and I think everyone realizes that. If you told them they would get half credit for what will be six weeks out of the classroom during this period then the other half had to be earned by going three weeks past their original end date I think that's a fair trade. To me that's a better outcome than just cancelling the year after 4 6-week grading periods. Again, this is just me thinking out loud. I don't think anyone would have an appetite to pay them extra for that time so I agree with you there. This is all very much a work in progress and we're going to see things change and start to solidify by mid-April as to what they do. This morning in their weekly staff meeting they talked about how the 5th/6th grade campus will generate grades for the incomplete 5th grading period and the soon to start 6th grading period so now that the timeline is hopefully firming up some they're starting to plan accordingly.

---

For me the problem is the actual contract. The standard teacher contract is for 187 days. The state has made it very clear my pay is based on days worked. Schools must educate kids for at least 180 days. A few years back they changed the calculation to allow ISDs to calculate days based on minutes. My district extended the school day by 15 minutes. The end result is that kids are actually in school less calendar days. Teachers still have those days though. I have about a week's worth of work days where I am required to be at school when my students aren't. You can't have it both ways. You either count teachers' contract days by minutes or calendar days. A district can't extend my contract because they don't believe they got enough work out of me. If I were salaried, it's a different story.

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I get all of that. Thanks for the correction on number of days and the change to minutes. That last part probably actually helps them extend the year if they wanted to. My thought would be that if they need/want to extend into June to get a complete grading period in that they could argue you didn't work a full day's worth of minutes during this event at which point they would argue that to fulfill your contract you have to work 15 days worth of minutes to complete your commitment. How would you respond to that argument about the number of minutes you're working right now as opposed to the number of minutes you work during normal school?

Aggiebrewer said:

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cityagboy said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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Premium said:

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cityagboy said:

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nai06 said:

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Premium said:

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zachsccr said:

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There are a lot of low income families and families with 2 working parents that would greatly benefit from even 2-3 work weeks with their kids back in school.
I wouldn't want to be a teacher in that situation but it would be a huge ease of burden for a LOT of people. Not to mention the ancillary services that just follow the local ISD decisions.

---

Also, just add 4 weeks on the end of the school year. So perplexing why this isn't being thought about.

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Because you are going to have to pay teachers 20 additional days of pay. That's about an extra $6K per teacher. That's going to bankrupt a lot of districts who haven't budgeted for that increase in payroll

---

I would say that investment would be worth it for State and National govt to step in and cover that cost. (If it's safe to go back to school then)

---

Teachers should have to suck it up with the kids. They are paid to teach a full school year and just because you can't work properly doesn't mean you can't make it up later. Maybe we should just furlough all of the teachers for the next 5 weeks and see if they want to make it up the following 5 weeks.

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I fundamentally disagree with you.

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Which part? Why should teachers be exempt from a furlough if they can't do their job?

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Most of them are currently working.

I also feel like they are underpaid based on the importance of their job. I'm not going to debate that sentence if you disagree.

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Wow

How cute

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How cute?

It looks to me like he closed down more businesses with the latest order. Barber shops, gyms, things like that. Before, people were urged to stay out of those places. Now they must close.

LOYAL AG said:

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nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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nai06 said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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The schools think they are going back so I'll go with that for now. I won't be at all surprised if we see them restart May 4 and extend the end of the year to June 19 to get the final grading period in. It's not like anyone is going to Disneyworld this summer.

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Take a sample district like Austin. They have about 5k teachers on the low end. To extend the school year one month would cost them about $3 million. That money they don't have. That's the problem that people seem to forget. Teachers aren't going to work for free (nor should they). To extend school is going to require renegotiating all teachers contracts.

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Teachers are paid for X number of days of service and that's extrapolated over a 12-month year for payroll purposes. X is like 200 or something along those lines. My teacher wife will tell you that while they are tied to their jobs right now they aren't working at anything close to full capacity and I think everyone realizes that. If you told them they would get half credit for what will be six weeks out of the classroom during this period then the other half had to be earned by going three weeks past their original end date I think that's a fair trade. To me that's a better outcome than just cancelling the year after 4 6-week grading periods. Again, this is just me thinking out loud. I don't think anyone would have an appetite to pay them extra for that time so I agree with you there. This is all very much a work in progress and we're going to see things change and start to solidify by mid-April as to what they do. This morning in their weekly staff meeting they talked about how the 5th/6th grade campus will generate grades for the incomplete 5th grading period and the soon to start 6th grading period so now that the timeline is hopefully firming up some they're starting to plan accordingly.

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For me the problem is the actual contract. The standard teacher contract is for 187 days. The state has made it very clear my pay is based on days worked. Schools must educate kids for at least 180 days. A few years back they changed the calculation to allow ISDs to calculate days based on minutes. My district extended the school day by 15 minutes. The end result is that kids are actually in school less calendar days. Teachers still have those days though. I have about a week's worth of work days where I am required to be at school when my students aren't. You can't have it both ways. You either count teachers' contract days by minutes or calendar days. A district can't extend my contract because they don't believe they got enough work out of me. If I were salaried, it's a different story.

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I get all of that. Thanks for the correction on number of days and the change to minutes. That last part probably actually helps them extend the year if they wanted to. My thought would be that if they need/want to extend into June to get a complete grading period in that they could argue you didn't work a full day's worth of minutes during this event at which point they would argue that to fulfill your contract you have to work 15 days worth of minutes to complete your commitment. How would you respond to that argument about the number of minutes you're working right now as opposed to the number of minutes you work during normal school?

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Well that's the rub isn't it. It doesn't matter how many minutes I work a day. The state doesn't calculate my contract min minutes. If that were the case, I think a lot of teachers would fulfill their contact by April (in a normal year). As far as right now, I work about the same. What I do is very different though. I spend far more time in meetings, trainings, and preparing lessons. But if it's decided to teach for and extra 4 to 6 weeks into summer, I'm fine with that. Just cut me a check for the last 3 weeks and I'll sit on my couch for the next month doing absolutely nothing.