Teacher Sick Out

[CAT Scratch FVR]

While I'm not familiar with the Louisville landscape, my own experience is this;

Lived in a small east coast city, high taxes, schools mediocre, towns that bordered mine, more affluent, paid less in taxes, rated some of the best public schools in the country. Yet, some parents still made choice to send to other alternatives.

I'll say this, a school system is only as good as the parents in it. Do they parents value education, making their kid want to learn, support the school, not just by money? If so, you probably have a good school system.

 

[mashburned]

Naughty teacher >>>>>>>>>>>> Sick out teacher

 

[Bill Cosby]

Please present your qualifications to question what most who have studied the subject have agreed to.

To question climate change is nothing but placing one's head in the sand. You can debate what causes it, you can debate what can be done about it but you can't debate that it occurs.

As I've said before, I went to 12 years of private Catholic school, where they still teach science. Thankfully, you nongender binary science deniers haven't infiltrated those schools yet.

"Muh you can't question or do any studies to contradict the narrative" sounds a hell of a lot more like what they taught in the religion classes.

Are you also a flat earther? Anti-vaxxer? Those seems to be gaining some pop-culture steam. Get enough of a critical mass of idiots to believe it and we can start calling it a consensus that can't be questioned.

 

[rmattox]

While I'm not familiar with the Louisville landscape, my own experience is this;

Lived in a small east coast city, high taxes, schools mediocre, towns that bordered mine, more affluent, paid less in taxes, rated some of the best public schools in the country. Yet, some parents still made choice to send to other alternatives.

I'll say this, a school system is only as good as the parents in it. Do they parents value education, making their kid want to learn, support the school, not just by money? If so, you probably have a good school system.

Agree. Money is secondary to having supportive parents. A mentor of mine once said, "Give me a good teacher, supportive parents and a Sears Catalog and I'll give you a successful student".

 

[rmattox]

It appears to be fairly "tough" to become a teacher. 4+1 years of schools. Form the generation before me in my family, several teachers in poorer schools, why should you HAVE to have a degree to teach? My best teachers didn't have degrees. You don't need a college education to motivate. Make the pay higher, increase demand.

I don't think teachers have it nearly as bad as they think. I mean listening to Fuzz's complaints.. Sometimes we have to use a rubric to mindlessly grade papers in front of the TV during primetime!... But I do think the pay is ****. Raise the pay, weed out the freeloaders who should be gas station attendants, kids profit.

Obviously it's never that simple, and parents are a lot of the problem. I'm hoping this whole heli-copter "my son could never do wrong" style of parenting dies out.. a lot of my age group, late 20's early 30's, is disgusted by parenting lately.. the pendulum will swing back. I fear for kids being born from 2020 to 2030. Life won't be easy.

The best reasons for raising pay...in fact, the only good reasons for raising pay are:
To keep the best (I used to recruit teachers from other districts once I found out who the good ones were);
To attract quality future teachers. The profession should be competing with Fortune 500 type companies or high paying professions for workers....not Walmart.

 

[BlueVelvetFog]

********.
Might I add...when do you think they grade papers, talk to parents, etc? I can tell you that both my mother and wife when our kids were young often left school as soon as they were free to go because someone needed to be home when the kids got home...only to go home and put in another 2+ hours of grading papers, calling parents and preparing for the next day's lesson.
You wouldn't last 2 days as a teacher. Guaranteed.

Why are you being an insufferable douche?

 

[blubo]

While I'm not familiar with the Louisville landscape, my own experience is this;

Lived in a small east coast city, high taxes, schools mediocre, towns that bordered mine, more affluent, paid less in taxes, rated some of the best public schools in the country. Yet, some parents still made choice to send to other alternatives.

I'll say this, a school system is only as good as the parents in it. Do they parents value education, making their kid want to learn, support the school, not just by money? If so, you probably have a good school system.

 

[fuzz77]

As I've said before, I went to 12 years of private Catholic school, where they still teach science. Thankfully, you nongender binary science deniers haven't infiltrated those schools yet.

"Muh you can't question or do any studies to contradict the narrative" sounds a hell of a lot more like what they taught in the religion classes.

Are you also a flat earther? Anti-vaxxer? Those seems to be gaining some pop-culture steam. Get enough of a critical mass of idiots to believe it and we can start calling it a consensus that can't be questioned.

 

[Cousins Fake Tooth]

It's all about kids until it comes to letting kids be able to go elsewhere to learn.

 

[csrupp]

So you will have a bunch of would be public school kids now attending better/safer private schools. The public schools lose power/money in the deal and thus are very opposed. Public schools get money based on butts in seats. The teachers unions view this as a back door voucher plan.

Then make the public schools better so those people don't feel the need to go private? We've considered private school in the future but not until middle school because we live in such a good elementary district.

I was fine with the sick out they did last year because it was a big bill that was getting rushed through but calling for a sick out every single time a bill comes up the KEA tells teachers not to like is going to lose a lot of good will.

Not possible. Leftists have destroyed public schools and they will oppose any measures that attempt to improve them.

 

[WayneDougan_rivals170043]

Schools

"A disturbing fraction of students, and by extension their parents, do not take school seriously."

While other problems in this thread have some merit, the statement above is the most relevant imo. Increased interest from parents would help bring about higher pay for teachers because of the pressure that could be put on lawmakers. Also, more involvement from parents in the child's school life would go a long way to helping teachers when it comes to discipline in the class room.

With that being said, school administrators need also consider doing a better job weeding out substandard (bad) teachers. Unfortunately, and we see this in other professions as well, the bad stuff makes the news and gives the overall perception to the public and when it seems nothing is done about it, the public loses interest and figures nothing is going to be done so, why should I care?

Why should I take school seriously when these knucklehead teachers do not?

 

[JumperJack]

Bravo to you teachers on this thread...keep up the good work.

I live in an affluent school district in NY and all my friends and neighbors have zero complaints about our high school taxes. You want good teachers and education, well, that costs money. If you can't pay, then cash out and move out.

You all need to quit being so cheap about one of the most important things our kids will get while growing up.

Of all the stupid **** you’ve posted through the years, this may be the clincher.

 

[funKYcat75]

There’s been an amendment filed to a ‘Day of Prayer’ bill. It allows the superintendent to appoint a principal if he/she doesn’t agree with the SBDM’s choice. That’s probbaly going to be a big deal next week.

 

[bushrod1965]

It's all about kids until it comes to letting kids be able to go elsewhere to learn.

The school choice debate is a rigged debate to begin with when comparing student outcomes/performance. Other states who’ve gone the voucher/tuition tax credit route show that only about 2% of student enrollment exits their public school for a private/parochial school. Which 2% is it? It tends to be high achieving students from two parent middle/upper SES families with educated involved parents. A group of students who would be high achievers regardless of their school choice.

And the flip side is who the private/parochial schools don’t have to take with selective enrollment. Students with IEP’s or learning issues - they don’t take them. Students who are disruptive with behavior issues - they don’t have to take them. Students with parents who don’t meet stated parent involvement guidelines - they don’t have to take them. Where does this group end up? Back at their public who has no choice but to take them.

Again, any comparison with student outcomes/assessments is not valid. Different raw materials on the front end = a different product as a finished product.

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

I have no idea if actual global warming is occurring, and if it is, how much of the warming is attributable to man. Personally, I don't think it matters much if 100% of any warming is attributable to man because the "world" will never act in unison to solve it. Acting alone will not solve the problem and will adversely impact our economy relative to other countries.

That being said, I wish more people would look at the data with a critical eye instead of accepting it at face value. Think about the concept of a global average temperature and whether that concept has any real meaning with respect to climate. The global average temperature is the average temperature for each longitude and latitude grid for which they have data, added together and divided by the number of point days, weighted by the size of each grid, to get down to a single global average temperature. Think about what that really means. For example, for just two points, if you have -100 and 100, the average is 0, assuming the two grids are the same size. The value of zero in that case tells you nothing about climate in either place. If both places then record values of 0 and 0, the average is still 0, but the climate has changed dramatically. However, the global average temperature hasn't changed. They are doing this with hundreds of data points averaged together. Also the grids aren't the same size. Because the average is weighted by grid size, temperature change in some areas will have a larger affect on the global average than changes in other areas. I have very serious doubts that condensing that data down to a global average has any real meaning. Let's apply the same logic to interest rates. It makes sense to compare interest rates between the USA and Mexico, for example. But would a weighted average global interest rate tell us any meaningful information? Not much. It just doesn't seem to be a meaningful mathematical exercise.

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

The school choice debate is a rigged debate to begin with when comparing student outcomes/performance. Other states who’ve gone the voucher/tuition tax credit route show that only about 2% of student enrollment exits their public school for a private/parochial school. Which 2% is it? It tends to be high achieving students from two parent middle/upper SES families with educated involved parents. A group of students who would be high achievers regardless of their school choice.

And the flip side is who the private/parochial schools don’t have to take with selective enrollment. Students with IEP’s or learning issues - they don’t take them. Students who are disruptive with behavior issues - they don’t have to take them. Students with parents who don’t meet stated parent involvement guidelines - they don’t have to take them. Where does this group end up? Back at their public who has no choice but to take them.

Again, any comparison with student outcomes/assessments is not valid. Different raw materials on the front end = a different product as a finished product.

I don't think it matters if the outcomes/assessments are completely valid or not. There are no valid reasons for the State to limit access to schools. Parents should have as many options as possible for educating their child. Choice equals competition. Schools competing for students will be more innovative and will work harder to meet the expectations of the people purchasing their services. If they don't do that, they will go out of business, and should go out of business. The bottom line is that increasing real competition in the education system will create better schools. Protecting schools by forcing children to attend specific schools, or making it hard for parents to send them to an alternate school, is poor public policy and creates mediocre schools. I have never understood this desire to protect a public school from closing its doors if it can't attract students based on the merits of the education it provides.

 

[CAT Scratch FVR]

As I stated earlier, some of the best school systems are in areas with lower tax bases and they still offer the most competitive salaries around. Throwing money, via taxes, does not solve the problem of a poor school system. Heck, look at Beechwood or Highlands versus Holmes or Newport. Guarantee Newport and Holmes spend a lot of tax payer money with little to show for it. There are probably underlying reasons why the schools are poorly rated and it's not because of a lack of money.

 

[warrior-cat]

Why are you being an insufferable douche?

When is he never?

 

[warrior-cat]

Schools


Why should I take school seriously when these knucklehead teachers do not?

That is when they should be canned.

 

[EastKYWildcat]

There are some poor (below average) teachers and the teacher's union protects them. That is one of the main problems that I have with the teacher's union. Also I blame the unions for the left wing politics that have been infused into the school system. Once upon a time, schools didn't inject so much politics into education.
As for the pensions, I am ok with most of it. However I think that it is perfectly reasonable to stop the practice of using +20 years of unused vacation to inflate the final year of pay and thus the pension calculation (which is only based on the last few years of salary). I had a teacher/neighbor that also never taught summer school until the last few years so that he could inflate the few years that were used to calculate his pension. Those type of things are just gaming the system. I think those should be fixed.

Agreed. It also impacts women who are teachers because they were more likely to use their vacation to care for their children. Anecdotally, male teachers in the local school system always had way more unused vacation saved up.

 

[fuzz77]

If you’ve paid the required quarters into social security, why should you not be eligible to receive the benefit you’ve paid? More and more second career teachers are in the classroom. They don’t work enough years to receive their full teacher pension, yet their teacher pension reduces their social security they paid in their first career, as well as reduces any spousal benefit they may have from social security. How is that fair?

The question isn't "How is that fair" but "What dumbass thought it was the smart or right thing to do?" It only discourages people from being teachers and it definitely discourages people who may look at teaching as a second career.

 

[fuzz77]

I have no idea if actual global warming is occurring, and if it is, how much of the warming is attributable to man. Personally, I don't think it matters much if 100% of any warming is attributable to man because the "world" will never act in unison to solve it. Acting alone will not solve the problem and will adversely impact our economy relative to other countries.

That being said, I wish more people would look at the data with a critical eye instead of accepting it at face value. Think about the concept of a global average temperature and whether that concept has any real meaning with respect to climate. The global average temperature is the average temperature for each longitude and latitude grid for which they have data, added together and divided by the number of point days, weighted by the size of each grid, to get down to a single global average temperature. Think about what that really means. For example, for just two points, if you have -100 and 100, the average is 0, assuming the two grids are the same size. The value of zero in that case tells you nothing about climate in either place. If both places then record values of 0 and 0, the average is still 0, but the climate has changed dramatically. However, the global average temperature hasn't changed. They are doing this with hundreds of data points averaged together. Also the grids aren't the same size. Because the average is weighted by grid size, temperature change in some areas will have a larger affect on the global average than changes in other areas. I have very serious doubts that condensing that data down to a global average has any real meaning. Let's apply the same logic to interest rates. It makes sense to compare interest rates between the USA and Mexico, for example. But would a weighted average global interest rate tell us any meaningful information? Not much. It just doesn't seem to be a meaningful mathematical exercise.

First, your claim that the "world" would never act in unison...the Paris agreement says hello.

Second, your writing about "global average temperature"...holds merit if we are comparing only two years of data. When we collect 150+ years of data and that average rises or falls and shows a trend...that tells us something. It tells us something if we can observe that the polar ice caps are shrinking or growing over time. It tells us something if ocean temperatures show a trend of cooling or warming. The "zero" that is used is the average from 150 years of data. When we then plot the average for each year and chart it, it shows us if there is a trend. That is what we see

For anyone to argue that climate doesn't change is to completely ignore science. The last ice age ended about 11000 years ago...are we warmer or cooler than that period when a majority of the North American continent was covered with an ice sheet?

I have said in every discussion on this matter that we can debate the human contribution to this warming, what we cannot debate is the fact that it is happening.

 

[DSmith21]

First, your claim that the "world" would never act in unison...the Paris agreement says hello.

The Paris Agreement was a complete sham. None of the G-20 countries are close to meeting their CO2 emission goals. The one country that has cut the most is the United States thanks to our domestic natural gas bonanza (much cleaner than coal). Trump was right to pull us out of that crap agreement where China (#1 polluter) and India didn't have to make any cuts for ten years. If the rest of the G-20 aren't going to live up to that Paris Joke, why should we.

As the report shows, most G-20 countries aren't on track to meet the modest greenhouse gas reductions they pledged to achieve by 2030. As the Climate Transparency report notes, the EU "is not on track to meet its 2030 target." Nor is Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan or Turkey.

A number of G-20 countries actually saw their emissions increase in 2017, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-g20-emissions/

 

[cat_in_the_hat]

First, your claim that the "world" would never act in unison...the Paris agreement says hello.

Second, your writing about "global average temperature"...holds merit if we are comparing only two years of data. When we collect 150+ years of data and that average rises or falls and shows a trend...that tells us something. It tells us something if we can observe that the polar ice caps are shrinking or growing over time. It tells us something if ocean temperatures show a trend of cooling or warming. The "zero" that is used is the average from 150 years of data. When we then plot the average for each year and chart it, it shows us if there is a trend. That is what we see

For anyone to argue that climate doesn't change is to completely ignore science. The last ice age ended about 11000 years ago...are we warmer or cooler than that period when a majority of the North American continent was covered with an ice sheet?

I have said in every discussion on this matter that we can debate the human contribution to this warming, what we cannot debate is the fact that it is happening.

First, if the global climate change situation is as dire as it is being portrayed, you can't seriously argue that the Paris agreement really addresses the problem. Second, a very small percentage of the countries that signed the Paris agreement have actually met their obligations. It was simply a way for governments to look like they were doing something without actually doing it. You are fooling yourself if you think every major economic power on earth will put their economy at risk over this issue. If I remember correctly, we actually reduced our green house gasses by more than any country in the agreement and that was market driven, not because of mandates, since we withdrew.

Another point about global temperature data, is that the data points from the late 1800s and early 1900s don't cover near the percentage of land area that current measurements do, so the comparison of today's average is not really comparable to an average calculated 125 years ago.

Actually, a global temperature tells us very little. Because of the way a global temperature has to be calculated, it is possible for some areas to be warmer and other areas to be cooler, and yet show a higher, or lower, overall average temperature. In other words, a global average temperature doesn't tell you anything about what is happening to climate. When people hear global temperatures are rising, it gives the impression that the entire globe is heating up, but the single average number does not mean that at all. It could mean any number of things given the thousands of data points that make up the average. Climate is a regional phenomenon. A global temperature tells you nothing about a particular climate and what is happening to it.

 

[JimmyWa11]

The public school system is a virtual lost cause. Centralized/federalized education took control of schools away from the local communities and Dewey's secularized model became mandated everywhere. I'm not sure there's any going back to what we've lost and I don't blame a single parent for not wanting to send their kids to public school.

 

[WayneDougan_rivals170043]

If JCPS cancels the rest of the week I'm moving to Texas.

 

[fuzz77]

Cutting the sick leave benefit for retirement purposes is just another example of pushing state costs down to the local level. If a teacher takes a sick/personal leave day, the district has the expense of paying their daily wage plus the expense of the substitute for the teacher. As a retirement benefit, the value of the unused days is reduced to 30% of their value, saving the school districts money but costing the state extra retirement.

This is just one example of the state trying to push costs to the local level. Another would be transportation costs, which the state fully funded at one time, but has since pushed 40% of transportation costs to come from local funds.

The list goes on but the continued effort of the state to pass costs to the local level will continue. It makes the local school districts look like the bad guy with local school tax increases and the state legislators look fiscally conservative for not seeking new dedicated revenue for schools.

As if not seeking dedicated revenue for schools is a good thing.[eyeroll]
This tells us where we have gone as a society. I recall the days of state officials campaigning on being able to raise state spending on education. Now they want to avoid it.

A good friend is a school board member and has talked about this a lot. The sad thing is that it will be the poorer districts that are most negatively affected as they have the least ability to raise the additional revenues needed.

 

[Henogee1975]

I heard that over 1000 JCPS teachers have called in for tomorrow. This is gonna backfire on them big time.

 

[Henogee1975]

Up to 1500

 

[Tannerdad]

So now the scheduled ACT test was cancelled and moved to late April thanks to those poor teachers calling in sick.

I’m sure those kids and parents love waiting an extra 6 weeks.

 

[lil2coupe]

Your comments demonstrate your ignorance of the problems.
"get the public system to up its game"? What do you suggest? What funding is going to be provided? What parental involvement will you dictate? What resources available to "successful" schools can you put in place?

It's amazing that public school systems in affluent neighborhoods/districts don't have any problems. My daughter who lives in Nashville took a $6000 pay cut to go from a public school in Nashville to a public school in Brentwood. She teaches kindergarten. In her Nashville school she had 31 kids (the state mandated max classroom size for K is 23) because they couldn't find another teacher to take an open position. She had 3 kids who could count to 10 on the first day of class...a similar number that knew their ABCs. She had 2 special needs kids who had no business being in the classroom but again, because they were unable to hire additional staff (money was there to hire, nobody to take the job) she had to deal with them without the help of any aides. When it was time for parent/teacher conferences she had 6 parents show up. Her entire classroom qualified for free lunch...

So she takes a pay cut and goes to a classroom of 20, has a full time teachers aide, EVERY child started the school year already knowing their ABCs and being able to count past 10. Every child had a parent or 2 attend parent/teacher conferences... While the two schools are only about 8 miles apart, they are in reality...worlds apart.

If we can not adequately fund our public schools then what makes us think we can afford to pay for private schools?

 

[buckethead1978]

Wayne is going to move

 

[funKYcat75]

Jefferson County kids are hilarious on Twitter. Much funnier than Fayette County kids.

Adults, not so much.

 

[bigblueinsanity_rivals250340]

It's all about kids until it comes to letting kids be able to go elsewhere to learn.

It's all about the union and politics. That's really what it's about. The teachers are just mindless pawns in the kea army

 

[cricket3]

Jefferson County kids are hilarious on Twitter. Much funnier than Fayette County kids.

Adults, not so much.

What happened to the 3 teachers per school? Was that Fayette and not Jefferson?

 

[funKYcat75]

What happened to the 3 teachers per school? Was that Fayette and not Jefferson?

Jefferson had an agreement with the teachers association to do that, but it sounds like most people did not agree with it. Fayette’s was unofficial, as far as I know.

 

[Bill Cosby]

These teachers are doing absolutely nothing to win over the KY voter who doesn't have a dog in the fight. Calling in sick to intentionally postpone the ACT for a bunch of kids who are trying to get into college? What ********. The kids had nothing to do with it.

Fine, don't do anything differently or make any budget cuts. Then, when the state of KY goes bankrupt and can't pay their pensions we can have a big sick out at the homeless shelters so the teachers can reap what they sowed.