The new substitute-teacher policy in Darren’s district is good for laid-off teachers, who’d get first dibs on substitute assignments. But it’s bad for his high school math students, he writes.
None of the laid-off teachers are math teachers.
So if a math teacher calls in sick, he or she cannot request a math teacher (or, in my case, cannot contact an awesome retired math teacher) as a substitute. Instead we get whatever laid off teacher is next “on the list.” If I were to call in sick, I’d get a laid off third grade teacher–who probably isn’t capable of teaching trigonometry or statistics. In other words, I’d get a babysitter, and my students wouldn’t get any instruction that day.
And my district and local union agreed to this.
The teachers’ union always claims “education first” and “children are our special interest,” Darren writes. The district’s job is to educate students. But they couldn’t be bothered to write in a stipulation that the first qualified teacher on the sub list would get the job.