Highschool Rolling, Bumping Downhill

The way things are going, it looks like my old highschool isn't going to be around much longer. Teachers are quiting, they are even more understaffed than they were my senior year, and senior year was a strain on all the teachers. One teacher who was going to retire last year had to stay another year because they are so understaffed.

I didn't know about any of this because I've been away, but when I arrived back home one of my best friends came over and we talked about many, many things that had happened while I was gone. One of the things was the crashing highschool. At that point all we knew was that the newest teacher, who had taught my class Personal Finance and Economy along with teaching at the junior high (or what remains of it, anyway) had had all of her highschool classes taken away. At least three teachers had quit and the teacher who had been on staff second longest had to stay an extra year. The nest day we went to visit my history teacher and newspaper advisor, mentor and friend. While I was talking to him, my friend went to see the Spanish teacher, whom she had grown very close to over the past three years. She found out what had gone down and told me on the ride home.

For the past three or four years the teachers at the highschool had been pressing for a pay raise. Finally, it came down to a vote. The pay raise was small - only about a thousand, two thousand dollars for the teachers at the highschool. Everyone at the highschool voted for it, of course. Many of the highschool teachers are raising families and need the extra money.

Everyone from the elementary and junior high voted it down.

I'm completely baffled by this, quite honestly. I don't understand why everyone below the highschool teaching level voted it down, because while they wouldn't be getting a pay raise along with the highschool teachers, it certaintly wasn't going to effect the pay they would be getting. It wouldn't be putting any kind of strain on their paychecks, but it was putting enough of a strain on the paychecks of several teachers and a coach that they quit to get better jobs. Now the highschool is just gimping along, holding on by a fingernail.

Don't get me wrong...I hate the highschool. Passionately. But it needs to be there, and in order to be there it needs to be well staffed, and currently it is not well staffed. Luckily, a scheduel change has made it a little easier on the remaining teachers as far as lesson plans go, but that doesn't change the fact that the school has taken a serious blow this year. Luckily, my history teacher doesn't seem to heavily effected by what is going on, despite he, too, is raising two young children and supporting a wife. Still, in his position, his job could very well be in peril. The only person in the highschool who is currently secure in her job is the Spanish teacher. The school has to offer a language and no one else in the school is qualified to teach another language. The French teacher retired two years ago.

As far as the PF/Econ teacher...It would appear that the reasons for her highschool classes being taken away from her aren't entirely crystal clear. The school board claims that the classes were taken because she "wasn't qualified" and yet, if this were the case, why was she hired in the first place? And while I really wasn't that fond of her teaching styles, by the end of the year she was finally starting to get into the rhythm of her classes and figure out what does and doesn't work. The Spanish teacher, who is one of her best friends, suspects that her classes were taken away for an entirely different reason. The PF/Econ teacher is a young, attractive woman and a couple of the boys in my class would hit on her from time to time. When this happened, however, she wouldn't give any sort of response that would suggest that she was encouraging it or even liked it. If this is the reason her highschool classes were taken from her, that's ridiculous. The problem wasn't her or that she was young and attractive, the problem is that in that school the boys aren't kept on a tight enough leash, especially if they're a sports star.

Besides all this, there are rumors that an English teacher is going to be gotten rid of soon. With the English teacher of lowest senority on leave to his home in New Zealand and one of the other two teachers having basically given up, from what I hear, the Spanish teacher is seriously concerned about what is going to happen. When the English teacher returns from new Zealand, chances are, he'll be the one to get the boot despite the way the other has been acting. He, after all, doesn't have any kind of seniority. But, after what happened with the literary magazine and after all this chaos, Enlgish teacher #2 has apparently decided that he doesn't really want to do his job, and it would seem that he is getting away with getting paid for letting the students do what they want. Now, while I learned more from this English teacher than I learned from any other and he was my favorite English teacher, I can't help but be angry at him for this. I have many friends still in highschool, and they all have his class this year. I don't like the idea of their education being endangered because he is throwing what would appear to be a hissy fit. The Spanish teacher is hoping that, while he is a good friend of hers, he will quit by the time English teacher #1 returns from New Zealand. Still, if this did happen, there would then only be one English teacher for the entire school until the other returns.

Now that I am no longer a student, now that I am a member of the community (officially) and I have friends whose education will be suffering because of all of this, I'm...well, I'm very upset by this whole thing. While my friends are very intelligent and I have full faith in them to be able to keep up with everything despite what has happened, I can't necissarily say that for the whole school. It angers me that the staff working under highschool level voted down a pay raise that would in no way effect them, because their actions have effected the staff of the highschool, and the students of the highschool. It seems to me that, as teachers, they would have considered this before taking such an action, especially since it is fairly well known that, compaired to other schools in the state, the staff of that school is underpaid.

I've said it a thousand times: Thank God I'm not in highschool anymore.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

 •    •    •    •    •    •    •