In Duval County it is okay for teachers to be called “Bitch”.

She stood up and literally had tears in her eyes. She said I am done, I am tired of being disrespected by administrators, I am tired of spending my own money, I am tired of the fifty hour weeks but most of all I am tired of being called a bitch by second graders and nothing happening to them.

I asked, have you written any referrals?

Of course but referrals at my school just go to the office and sit and kids never get any consequences. I would rather wait tables at least there I would be appreciated for bringing food.

She went on and said things like, you know the reason they make teaching so miserable is because if a teacher makes it to year six they get vested in the pension plan (about half of all teachers don’t last five years, over eighty percent of Teach for America teachers don’t last three) and they don’t want that and about how she waited her whole life to become a teacher but they (not the kids) had made it unbearable.

She finished with, they have lost so many good teachers and they are about to lose one more. It was then a tear ran down her cheek.

I could hear this same story a hundred times a week from a hundred different teachers with just a little effort.

Friends teachers have all the accountability and none of the authority and over the last four years, thank you Burney, Barrett, Gentry, Hazouri and Pratt Dannals, they have gone from valued partner to easily replaced cog, yoked animal and somebody that is allowed to be disrespected by administrators and students alike. They are nothing but bitches to them.

Welcome to Duval County Public Schools