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Saturday, November 26, 2016

DTU asks why the district ignores teachers. (rough draft)

Now to be honest it was about the weather days but it could have been about so many other things. Take a look at the 1:42 mark.

https://duvalschools.viebit.com/#HlPEomoy8xt2

The district asked the union what they thought about calendar and the make up days, the union asked its membership and they got back to the district and what did it result in? The teachers of the district and their opinions being ignored yet again.

But this is how the district operates.

Thoughts on the curriculum? Ignored.

Discipline? Ignored.

The need for recess? Ignored.

So many other issues? Ignored

Terrie Brady asked why do we (the district) even bother to ask the employees if we are going to ignore them? This by the way does not mean the district can just give us a lot of bad choices and go, hey we asked what you thought. There needs to be real collaboration.

This is not a new phenomenon either as one of the first pieces I ever wrote was about the district changing he email addresses. Rememebr when it was dreamsbginher? Ugh. Well there was a survey, the teachers decided what they wanted and yeah, the super announced over Christmas break  he was going to ignore the results and go with something else.

Then there is the TNTP survey, the climate survey the district is pushing. I didn't fill it out again because two years ago when the staff of First Coast begged through their survey for help and said their principal was terrible, Vitti responded with saying, he was one of our bet and wasn't going anywhere despite overwhelming evidence and the aforementioned pleas for help that indicated otherwise.

From a reader: Spare me from the TNTP survey that never asks about district personnel or leadership. They are afraid, so very afraid, to add those questions to the survey. They can anticipate the answers they would get.

About the weather days, we are the only county in Northeast Florida making them up. Read that again, the only one. I think if they can get by without making them up, so could we but if we have to make them up, then lets dissolve early release days. There has been a lot of conjecture if they are valuable or not and let me tell you about two of my last three. During the last we had our thanksgiving lunch, nice but hardly essential. Then two early releases ago we had an hour presentation from an outside entity attempt to sell us legal services, um, what? yeah.

I submit for about the millionth time that as long as we continue to ignore teachers, you know the people in the classroom doing the actual work, then we as a district will never meet our potential.

Brady asked that they at least stop pretending and wasting our time. 

3 comments:

  1. The district ignores teachers because DTU allows it. It's a simple question with a simple answer.

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  2. "We don't do discipline" is what DTU says. Why not? All DTU does is rubber stamp anything Vitti wants.

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  3. Wasting teachers' time through the years: When bond money became available, we all sat in the media center with the task of coming up with an ordered list of priorities. Much needed science equipment topped our list. The principal vetoed that and said redecorating the main office was more important. I was on a textbook selection committee, and we decided on Book A. The district chose Book B because the publisher would give us 10 books for the price of 9. Our principal was retiring and we were given the task of developing a list of characteristics we wanted in our new one, even though everyone on the faculty was convinced "downtown" had already picked the replacement. Do you recall when high schools went to a 7 period schedule with 3 1/2 periods per day, and a district administrator told principals to let faculties decide on when to insert the half period in the schedule because it didn't matter and would make the teachers feel good to decide? I think it was sent in an email that went to the teachers in addition to principals by mistake! That's what they really think of us!

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