The Overworked Lakota Teacher: New levy talking points from the regime of public union monopolies

The HWK-290: Preparing for war, gamin... What Fast Food Workers and Teachers H...

The Overworked Lakota Teacher: New levy talking points from the regime of public union monopolies

If it was ever wondered what the cost of public education monopolies are, read the following comment from an apparent Lakota teacher who came unglued the other day on the Channel 9 website for a story they did about the upcoming levy attempt. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. The teacher’s comments are shown below. Before I dismantle this teacher’s claims to pain and suffering, read it for yourself. The short of the issue is that this teacher can make the claims of hardship because they are working for a monopoly—they have no competition to judge against. So they can claim any little thing as an unwarranted pain, because the unionized workforce of the teaching profession backed by the federal government is operating as an anti-trust. Their demands, and pay rates are dictated by price-fixing, and their expectations are ridiculously high because of it. Now read what a teacher from Lakota thinks is a hard day as they answer to a commenter named “Joe Jobs.”

Let me be succinct in case you can only hold one or two thoughts in your head at any one time. First, those “unions” are made up of teachers; teachers who spend their every day in the classroom with their students and then do the grueling “union” job after hours in many cases. Teachers choose their profession because they are dedicated to helping children be successful people and citizens of their communities. See, it benefits us all when our children succeed in life. Joe, take a “sick day” this week and visit any Lakota school. Sign in and tell the secretary you want to volunteer in a classroom for the day. Don’t forget to pack a small lunch; you won’t be going out and you won’t have much time to eat that lunch anyway. Better be sure to go to the bathroom before the students arrive, because once they do, your only “break” of the day will be after the students go home. Please dive right in; help that teacher manage classes filled with students who arrive with a myriad of abilities and challenges. Some don’t speak English yet. Others are living through family wars, losses of parents or jobs, some are latchkey and arrive at school before the sun is up and most people are not even dressed for work. Be sure you help the students understand how to edit their writing to make it clear. Then help the students understand the challenging new math curriculum that the state and the new “common core” dictates they must understand and succeed with. You’ll have to write for the student whose muscular disease no longer allows her to hold a pencil. You’ll need to always be aware of the time so that students get to the nurse for their insulin checks and their medications. The counselor will need to see some who desperately need his/her help. Several in your class will need to leave at their appointed time to go to the resource room where they’ll continue to work with their specialist who tailors their work to meet the individual needs of each of those students who struggle. Don’t forget to challenge those kids who fly through their work and crave more! Follow the students as they travel their day to each of their classes without their favorite subjects: art, music, and PE. They’ll get a lunch and small recess; you won’t. During your half hour lunch, I hope you can eat with one hand while you answer parent emails with the other, tutor that child that comes in needing help with their math facts, and of course, you’ll have a meeting 4 out of 5 days. When everyone is exhausted, and you finally send your students home, get your butt outside because you have carpool duty. See, Lakota lost most of their busing, so you’ll stand outside every afternoon while hundreds of cars line up to retrieve their children. Pay attention; make sure the right kid gets into their car quickly. The kids will be too busy talking with their friends to be paying attention, so you’ll have to. Finally, at 4:30, go to the bathroom, finally, and drag your butt into your car. Did you remember all those papers that must be assessed before the kids arrive tomorrow? Take them home. Forget watching TV or going out for a run or walk, you have work to do. This is your 60+ hour a week job, that you love, by the way, for 40+ weeks of the year. With an advanced degree and 20 years of experience, what is your salary? Seriously? Think again, JoeJobs. Support our children and their education. Teachers have been doing just that every day.less

I see no problem with arriving at work at 7:30 in the morning and not taking a break until 5 PM. The teacher however does get a bit of a breather between class periods all through the day, so no matter how grueling this teacher attempts to portray their day; it is an obvious neurotic exaggeration. A ten-hour work day is a piece of cake, and I have offered Lakota schools to take this teacher’s challenge and teach not just one of their classes, but four of them at the same time. I made such a challenge to Lakota East’s Spark Magazine where Dean Hume is the head of that endeavor. Of course they didn’t take me up on the offer, and our relationship is so deteriorated now that it is off the table. But the gist is they know at Lakota that their claims of hardship are overblown in a big way, and their collective bargaining agreement expecting over $60K a year on average is too high. Way too high—by about 10K per year.

Much of what the teacher complained about is driven by failures in progressive education, where teachers have attempted to take the place of traditional parents, infusing themselves to the lives of all children in intrusive ways. They have desired to push traditional parents out-of-the-way and raise children into a statist education making students always dependent on others. This has made the teacher’s job harder as parents have yielded to this intrusion seeking a taxpayer-funded babysitter while they build their careers for their own pursuits. The teacher at Lakota made themselves advocates of a progressive education, and they are dealing with the results of a classroom full of dependents. The failure is in the style of education. If the teacher’s job is harder, it is because the progressive education children are receiving has made it so. The task of putting a band-aid on the failure by throwing money at education through permanent tax increases is a stupid idea.

If there were competitive options, that teacher would be happy to have the problems they are complaining about now. The only reason they feel obliged to complain in this case is because there is no competition to their profession other than a few remote private schools, or the occasional home-schooled family. Therefore, the severity of the workday expressed by this teacher is measured against the unrealistic expectations of employment created by a government monopoly at Lakota. Only in such monopolies could employees behave as badly as some of those teachers at Lakota who have been involved in sex scandals, and gotten away with the crime, and still make the claims of hardship similar to what was made in the above statements. The reason is that they are anti-trust employees justifying their impositions on the communities that employ them with parades of complaints that are driven by their own incompetency.

For further proof of this mentality, here is a letter to me from a pro tax supporter I received just the other day.

Rich,

I disagree with your goal of $45K average salaries for teachers. But the public will ultimately decide that. If that goal is reached, it will be up to the teachers to work at a $45K pace and not the pace they are currently working.. Your comment that “teachers at Lakota are making too much money for doing too little” is the point of the levy results. Why would anyone devote so much time toward a job which the community deems as being not worth it? Why isn’t 8 hours of hard work each day enough time toward their jobs?

Mr. George says that the public wants to work with the teachers, but the union won’t let them. Who does he think the union is? It is that 2nd grade teacher that comes in to school 3 weeks early to set up her classroom and prepare for the year. The union is the 5th grade teacher who postpones her bathroom break so her students are under constant supervision.. The union is the AP teacher who teachers college level material using a high school schedule with high school materials and support. When parents go to open house and conferences, that is when they should voice their displeasure with the union because that is who they are directly talking to.

Once again I call on the labor force of the schools to determine the next round of cuts if the levy fails and those cuts should be in the time devoted to the job at hand. Make gone the 50-60 hours work weeks. The public, by voting no, is saying they can’t afford to type of service.

William Schmidt