A novel idea: Take teacher sabbaticals during the summer while everyone else works

The BBQ Pit
1

June 19, 2003

Randi Weingarten
President, United Federation of Teachers
NYC, NY

Ms. Weingarten:

I just wanted to voice my opinion about Jon Dennis Regier’sdenied sabbatical request in today’s paper. Now I’ll be the first to concede the Post’s editorial position runs contrary to the teacher’s union member’s agenda, but I have to admit I took a little pleasure in Mr. Reiger’s predicament. I, for one, am glad to see School Chancellor Klein plans to limit the number of paid-leave sabbaticals from 1,700 in Year 2000to 700 in the next school year. I applaud his making the once acceptable, unacceptable and can only hope that one day, the number of paid sabbaticals will be zero. I feel if your members want to take college courses that enable them to become supervisors, let them do it on their own time: either by taking evening courses or attending school during the summer. Last year’s sabbatical program cost the city $70 million dollars, wouldn’t you concede that’s a little excessive?

Speaking of excesses, don’t you think it’s a little unfair to constantly rant and rave about class sizes and student teacher ratios when more than a thousand teachers this year chose to attend classes as students as opposed to teaching in them in front of a chalk board? I’m not bashing your profession, I just refuse to buy into all the complaints you and your members have about being overworked and underpaid.

Now I realize you’ll probably write back to me detailing the virtues of paid sabbaticals and how it enriches the educational system. I’m sure you’ll cite firms in the private sector and other government agencies that offer similar paid-leave programs to their employees. In either case I strongly doubt they also receive the benefit of 12 weeks vacation.

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Well, many teachers are underpaid and overworked. Depends on the state and even the city, but teachers generally land at or near the bottom of the pay scale for degreed professionals.

Fuck, I make more than any of the teachers I know. Many of them have spouses that work, too. So maybe it’s not all that bad.

Still, I really don’t get your beef.

'Splain, please.

3

This is inaccurate. Requirements change from state to state and from district to district, but saying that more than a thousand teachers “chose” to attend classes is simply an inaccurate statement. In most districts, teachers are required to take a certain number of clock hours every year in order to maintain their credentials. Further, in many districts, teachers are required to earn a Masters degree in a certain number of years, or risk their contract being discontinued. Some districts will only award provisional contracts (non-continuing) until teachers have a Masters under their belts.

These are reasonable requirements, to me, in most cases. Teachers should be well-trained in their craft, and that training should be paid for by those who most benefit from it. That would be us. Do you not agree that teachers should receive training that brings them up to date with current methods and curricula?

I won’t even start on the “12 weeks vacation” bit, which is simply ignorant and sounds petty. Most teachers I know spend most of that “vacation” either dealing with things that didn’t have time to deal with during the previous year, many of them work-related, or gathering lesson plans and materials for use in the following year.

I can understand that you’re frustrated by something here… however, before you rant on about it, you might want to get a little better informed about it. Your letter above just sounds like you’re mad, but about something you don’t really know much about.

4

I can understand some of the points made by JohnBckWLD, many people think that teachers get off easy with summer vacation. I do take issue with a few of his statements however.

I teach. I worked until June 5th of this year and will go back during the third week of August. I think this comes out closer to 9 weeks of vacation, rather than 12. I will be teaching summer school for 6 of those weeks. I do get paid, not much, but someone has to do it. Most teachers I know either work in the summer, or go back to school.

The state I teach in requires that I earn a Masters Degree before my second liscense expires. This basically gives my a total of 8 years from the time I started teaching to earn this degree, while working full time. Even going to school all summer makes this a difficult task.

Many of the benifits of being a teacher are fading out of existence. Permanent certificates are no longer attainable, which means even more classwork on top of that Masters degree. The amount of time given off for the summer months is being shortened, which does hurt teachers who need full time jobs in the summer to supplement thier current salary. The standardized testing craze has put enormous pressure on teachers to get the same result from every student in their class, regardless of innate ability.

Educators are doing many things these days and are required to juggle many different tasks. Teaching subject matter, manners, basic life skills, proper behavior, sexual education, not to mention those who also coach, direct quiz teams or subject matter clubs, drama teachers and so on.

I am very proud of my proffession and would still be in it if I made less than I do now. I won’t complain, because I chose this position. Unfortunately, I don’t have to look far to see why so few students respect teachers in the classroom today.

Thanks to those in this post who have shown respect for my craft.

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Moejuck, you could also add that many of the classes and conferences that teachers need to stay current in their field are not offered over the summer, that some districts require a certain amount of original research (which may require a one or two semester sabbatical) from their staff, and that teachers have to develop a coherent lesson plan over their summer break (unpaid time, of course) in order to begin teaching in the fall.

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I am mostly sympathetic to the hardships teachers face and don’t consider them overpaid. However, as a former (college) teacher I would point out that work done over the summer is not unpaid. Teachers are salaried employees who, like the rest of us, have contracted to receive a certain amount of money per year to perform their duties, however many hours those duties may take.

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Of course this is true… my only beef with the OP is that calling teachers’ summer time “12 weeks of vacation” is just as inaccurate. Teachers work during the summer as well, even if most of it it is out of the classroom.

The OP seems to think that teaching is a nice cushy job. My wife would beg to differ.

moejuck, thanks for doing what you do.

8

How? The kind of courses you talk about run through the school year, not in the summer.

I find it strange when people complain about the long holdays teachers have. After all, they have those holidays because the schools are closed, not because they just want time off. Do you want teachers to go into an empty school and teach to a non-existent class just because you’re pissed off that you are still in the office all summer?

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Sometimes sabbaticals are the only way you can get that coursework done. If I want a masters in my subject area I’ve got to drive two hours each way to take a class. I could take one class a semester and still teach, but then I’d be ready for retirement by the time I got my hands on that degree. So, sabbatical it is, I can take a full schedule and be back in front of that whiteboard ASAP.

I’ll also second that a lot of colleges don’t offer classes during the summer. The one I’m thinking of offers two or three classes, every other summer.

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Has anybody other than the OP read the article? The teacher in question wants to get a full year of paid sabbatical to take classes so that he can become a supervisor or principal The reason his sabbatical was denied was that the courses were not related to his field of study. Can I say that again? The courses were not related to teaching. Given that there is a shortage of teachers perhaps teachers should not get paid time off if the courses aren’t related to teaching.

Think I can get MY company to give me a full year off with pay to pursue a field of study not related to my current job? Heh, that’s a good one!

BTW, I have a masters, and frightfully few of my classmates were on paid sabbatical while taking their courses. They either worked fulltime and took classes too, or they didn’t work, didn’t get paid and borrowed a bunch of money instead. Why teachers can’t do the same is beyond me.

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I did read the article. The teacher did want to take courses that would enable him to be a supervisor. Schhools need teachers, and schools also need supervisors. He said that the superintendent’s office said that the courses were not job-related, but whether they were or not is anither question (the article doesn’t state exactly which courses he wanted to take).

The OP wasn’t just talking about this particular case, it took on all paid sabatticals for teachers.

I wouldn’t expect many companies in the private sector to give their employees paid sabatticals (though a few do). However, that’s different - this is a field where, as you say, there is a huge shortage. Teaching is incredibly stressful, the day hours are long (even if the day finishes early, there’s lots of marking and preparation), the responsibilities are daunting, and the pay is terrible. There have to be some perks to make up for all this, and long holidays and probably paid sabatticals probably come into it. take those away and you’ll have fewer teachers.

If teachers took classes in the evening while teaching all day, don’t you think their work would suffer? (even if the courses were all available in the evening). If teachers took a year of unpaid leave to complete the course, the schools would still be short a teacher, and what’s more that teacher would feel no obligation to go back to that school.

I can understand why, if the budget’s tight, sabatticals might be one of the areas in which cutbacks are made. As a temporary measure, it might even work, but if it keeps on, it will drive teachers away. And it shouldn’t be covered up under ‘those greedy teachers are whinging about how they don’t get their sweeties any more.’ It should be honest - this isn’t an act of principle, it’s just because they’re broke.

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CHEESESTEAK, are you required to obtain a Master’s in your field? No one is saying that teachers can’t take classes while they work, only that they should be given some credit for doing so. Also, there are other problems for teachers who want to take classes related to their field.

I teach middle school math. I love it. I am certified currently only to teach up to 8th grade. I would love the chance to move up to teaching high school. However, to do so, I would need to student teach in the high school setting. That would take at least 10 weeks to do, where I could not continue to do the job I do now.

13

Disclaimer: I am a teacher.

Why is it whenever issues of teacher pay come up, everyone talks about what teachers “should” have or what they “should” be happy with, or compares teaching to whatever job they do? Why does the issue of teaching compensation always have this sort of moral tinge to it?

When all said and done, teaching is a job. It’s an unusual job with unique challenges, but that can be said for all kinds of fields: retail has its own set of challenges, as does brain surgery. Like filling any other job, paying teachers (and everything from summers off to sabbaticals is just payment in a differnet form) is about figuring out how to get the quality and quanity of employees you want for as little as you can get away with.

Right now we have a teacher shortage. This suggests that we are not paying enough to get the quality and quanity we need. When employers in any field face this problem, they often try and come up with more creative solutions to the problem of attracting the emplyees they need than straight salary increases. They do this for two reasons: one, it can be cheaper for the company to provide perks (for example, universities often give tuition discounts to staff and their family. A top rate secratary may take a job for 14k a year becasue he’s saving 35k a year in tuition for himself and a couple of kids. This costs the university much less than 35K). In addition to being cheaper, perks are easier to remove when the shortage of employees turns into a surpluss: people bitch when you take away employee discounts, paid sabbaticals, and generous expense accounts, but it’s nothing like if you actually lower salaries.

So if some district is finding that in some cases they have to offer one year paid sabbaticals in order to attract the talent they need, well, sucks to be them. They must be facing one hell of a shortage, because they can’t like doing that. Unless there is evidence of corruption (like the relitives of board members being the only people approved for the sabbaticals or something) I think we have to assume that this school board is doing what any business does: experiencing with different ways to get the employees they need for the lowest possible cost.

I don’t need to justify the fact that I get summers off. The issue isn’t whether or not I deserve it, I don’t have to prove that I work hard enough during the school year or that I spend enough time working on school stuff during the summer to pay for my sweet, sweet freedom. A huge chunk of very flexible time each year is a part of what my job is. It’s one of the things–among many–that I took into acocunt when I considered whether or not to take my job. No one expects airline employees to justify cheap tickets, no one sneers at daycare workers 'muct be nice to get ceap daycare".

If a school district had positions that they were having a very difficult time filling, and they had a person (or people) who they felt would be very, very good at that job, it might make sense to pay that person for a year while they got the training they needed to fill that position. Many large corperations have “management training” programs that last htree months to a year when management canidates spend that much time geting paid while not directly contributing to productivity. This is the same sort of thing, only the training takes place off site.

I repeat, there is a teacher–and administrator-- shortage. Districts try different things to meet this shortage. If the things they do make teaching–and administration–more and more attractive, the shortage will turn into a surplus. Then the districts will scale back the perks until there is a shortage again. Rinse and repeat for as long as we have a (mostly) free market economy.

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I’m with you on every point except for one, Manda JO: there’s nothing cyclical about the nature of the teacher shortage. We’re far enough into a period of high unemployment and not-quite-recession that, if we still have teacher shortages now, we can regard those shortages as more or less permanent.

ISTM that in a number of fields, especially in traditionally heavily female fields like teaching and nursing, employers (public or not) got used to having a cheap labor supply, back in the day. They’ve tried a lot of tricks to maintain an adequate labor supply without resorting to substantial escalation of salaries and better working conditions, but nowadays those tricks seem to do little more than hold off systemic collapse.

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My mother has been a teacher for 29 years, and currently works full time in the public school system in Pennsylvania in an elementary school. Her contract is for 185 days a year, and she is paid based on that 185 day contract. She has the option of having her paychecks during those days garnished in order to receive a check in the summer, or to not receive a check in the summer. She does not receive a paycheck during the summer.

She is required to continue having additional training (although not a master’s degree because of how long ago she was licensed), which has to be paid for out of her own pocket. She often has to purchase supplies for her classes, and probably puts about $500/year out of her pay into buying things for her classroom and her students.

Because of her tenure, the schoold district can’t refuse to grant her another 185 day contract for the next school year without cause, so I can see how that would look as if she were ‘salaried’ and to ‘be paid a certain amount of money per year’, but that’s not the case.

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catsix, the total of what your mother receives for the year is her salary, regardless of how many checks she gets. It’s analogous to the ‘exempt’ status of regular salaried employees–you get what you get, regardless of overtime, travel time, frantic calls from the boss on the weekend, etc. Not having her checks spread out over twelve months is her choice to make.

The issue of having to pay for supplies is a separate one. As I said, I’m quite sypathetic to some of the problems teachers complain about and this is one of them. My daughter just finished kindergarten at a public school, so I’m aware of those issues. One of the differences between “good” public schools and the rest is the amount of time parents can be persuaded to put in to compensate for these lacks. One of the main budget items for our schools fundraising Foundation is no-questions-asked grants to teachers for supplies.

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RTFirefly

Agreed, but I think that there does exisit a hypothetical level of compensation where there would be more qualified job applicants for teaching positions than there are positions avaliable. And when (if) that happens, I am pretty sure that school boards will start lowering compensation packages ASAP.

And super competent secrataries! I am convinced that the backbone of the US economy is a vast, silent army of pre-baby-boomer secrataries who have funnelled an incredible amount of intelligence, talent, and drive into low-payng, unrewarding, unappriciated jobs because there weren’t any other options back in the day. And every single one of them is on the verge of retirement.

18

My beef is with the hypocrisy that so often spews from both the NYC UFT President and its members. A fairly substantial chuck of union dues goes toward PR ad campaigns that tout the “it’s for the children” line. Quite often, the union’s agenda runs contrary to student needs. I just wish the union was more honest. They can’t have it both ways: Rant about class size (which many studies have proven to debunk) and then want to be paid to not come into work to teach. Am I saying the union shouldn’t be a strong advocate for its members interests? No. What I’m saying is the teacher in the OP complaining about his sabbatical denial (in which the reason for taking paid leave was to get the education credits required to become an administrator) epitomizes the conflicting interests between teachers and students.

Many spouses have to go to work in non-teaching profession families too. Blame that on the tax burden. An ever-increasing burden that ironically, that can be partially blamed on more and more educational spending. In NY State, the state and local tax burden in now more than 12%. I’m sorry, but an $11,200 average cost per student is too high, especially when less than 40% meet or exceed grade level.

No, I don’t see the need for paid sabbaticals. The average school day is 7 hours, of which teachers get a minimum of 2 and in some cases 3 periods of non-instructional breaks per day…that’s plenty of time to do course prep, grading & brushing up. My two siblings are both teachers. They have it easier than most because they’re PE teachers. They’re honest enough to admit they both have it pretty good.

When you look at the big picture annualize NYC teacher’s pay, it seems fair and equitable to me…definitely not underpaid.

Entry Level Certified: $39,000 ($48,750 Annualized)
5 Years w/Masters: $45,500 ($50,625 Annualized)
Top Teachers Pay: $81,200 ($101,500 Annualized)

It’s not safe to assume the teacher shortage is a result of low compensation. It could very well be other factors, such as: putting up with unruly students, demanding parents and overbearing bureaucrats.

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No, cher3, it’s not the same as what you’re saying. She is not paid for her summers. That’s why her contract is for 185 days and is renewed to begin around Labor Day and end around Memorial Day.

It’s not an annual salary because it’s not an annual job. It’s really not that much different from a landscaper who works only from March through November being paid only from March through November but having to live off of that pay for an entire year. Her summer isn’t a ‘vacation’, it’s an unpaid time that her contract doesn’t cover.

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Damn, John. My mother needs to move to New York, obviously. See, she’s required to get to school at 7:15 (unless she has bus duty, then it’s 6:45) and stay there until 3:15. Classes run from 7:50 to 2:30, and during that time she gets a 22-minute lunch break, a 10-minute recess (unless she’s on playground duty or has a kid who needs to stay in and work on something, which is more often than not), and on some days she gets a 20-minute break while the kids have music, library, or PE. You’re proposing she get 100 essays graded, lesson plans made, and continuing ed done during the 35 minutes before school, the 10 minutes she may or may not get during the morning, the 20 minutes she might get in the afternoon, and the 45 minutes after school (assuming she doesn’t have afternoon bus duty).

Uh, sure. And for an encore she’ll make the Statue of Liberty disappear.

Of course your siblings have it easier than most. Gym isn’t a terribly paper-work intensive class, in case you haven’t noticed. When I took gym, our grades consisted of whether or not we dressed out, and taking a multiple choice once a month about the rules of the game we were learning. And a lot of the time we didn’t even have tests. We spent a day or two going over the rules, then the rest of the time we played whatever game we were learning. Lesson plans go really quickly when most of the week consists of playing baseball.