Making Sacrifices, Getting Sacrificed

I worked for a large company years ago. I was part of the telephone customer service team for a large bank. But the department was relatively small, and the business was well-run, for the most part, so I never got the feeling of what it is like to work in and for a bloated bureaucracy.

Now I do.

I got my room today, but while I am now more or less happy, the decision has caused hard feelings in the rest of the team. Not feelings toward me, but feelings of betrayal in the teacher I displaced, feelings directed at the general unfairness of a situation in which faceless bureaucrats we have never met make decisions that affect the immediate comfort and workability of our employment situation.

Here’s how it works:

Students need teachers. Teachers cost money. Therefore, it makes wise business sense to hire only as many teachers as the amount of students warrants.

So the number-crunchers look at last years’ year-end enrollment data to project how many students will be at Y High School this year, and allot budgetary resources accordingly.

In a perfect world, last year’s numbers would always be pretty close to this year’s numbers, so life at Y High School could remain fairly smooth.

But, as my experience lately has shown me, and as I have heard from others who have been in this system longer than I, life at the beginning of the school year is never smooth. I didn’t have a room. One of my colleagues was shifted to another position at the last minute. Actually, this happened to at least three people I know, and in one case, a pay cut was the result. This when he had been told at the end of last year that he would have the same position.

And today we find out that instead of X number of students, we will have X + 300. All to fit into eight not-overly-large classrooms. And we’re not getting more space, that’s for sure. If teachers cost money, capital improvements/ expansions cost MONEY.

OK, this sounds bad. And it will be—for at least two weeks. Maybe more, but after two weeks, the sad truth is that many of our students will stop coming for a variety of reasons. Some will be chronic truancies. Some will move and not tell anyone in the system. Some will transfer to another school. Some will run away from home. So, eventually, conventional wisdom is that no matter how many students a teacher starts the year off with, societal attrition will reduce that number by anywhere from 25 to 50 percent.

So, although our principal is doing all he can to get us more desks, on the first day of school, we will have rooms with about 20 desks, and each class will have at least 30 students.

Assuming, of course, all of the students who are on the rolls actually show up to school. It’s always a crapshoot, but I’d feel better if we were looking at more desks than students. Then again, if that were the case, I’d probably be out of a job as soon as the number-crunchers figured out a more cost-effective student-to-teacher ratio.

I’ve been complaining about the bureaucracy that I find myself mired in, but, really, the higher-ups in the bureaucracy aren’t faced with any really attractive choices.

Ugly Choice #1: They could hire as many teachers as they think they will need to service every student effectively. And then when attendance numbers drop and stabilize in October, the system will be paying for more teachers than the system needs, and the taxpayers will point an accusatory finger at the district for overspending. To avoid this, all of the “extra” teachers will be pink slipped. No “wasted” tax dollars, at the cost of seriously undermining recruitment and retention in the district.

Ugly Choice #2: The number-crunchers could hire as few teachers as possible, which they know will mean over 40 students in some classrooms, depending on the school, but which will keep the budget in line, at the cost of teachers’ sanity and a classroom climate conducive to education. But this situation probably won’t last long, so what’s a week of quality instructional time lost against thousands of dollars of budgetary savings?

Since money is the most important thing in our society, it’s obvious which choice the number-crunchers make year after year. Education is seriously under-funded, so to make every penny work, fewer teachers are asked to.

Those who are asked to, however, face a monumental challenge in the first few days or weeks of school. How can a student be comfortable enough to learn when he or she doesn’t even have a desk to sit in? With not even a desk, students will feel angry and/ or neglected. Some will start to act out. In a room of 30 or more students, one angry student can cause a nasty behavioral chain reaction. Maybe some expert veteran teachers can get some learning happening in a situation like that. As a second-year teacher, I’m not sure what kind of success I will have.

And teachers don’t have much choice other than to play with the hands we are dealt. Because, the bottom line is, the kids are coming on Tuesday, whether we’re ready or not. We must rise to the challenge, like teachers do every year, to be ready.

While I am proud of myself and my team for working together, despite hot rooms, rising tempers, and personality conflicts, to get ready for our students, I can’t help but feel a little used. The students have to come first. Teachers don’t just make sacrifices, teachers are sacrificed. Large bureaucracies—and, more importantly, the public that spawns them—know that good teachers will always break their backs doing whatever it takes to be ready to teach their students, and so, intentionally or not, take advantage of them.

Bureaucracies make their unpalatable decisions because of money, and money is dependent on wildly fluctuating enrollment numbers. And whether a student comes to school or not is ultimately the responsibility of the parent. Too many times, the answer is “not.”

Of course, the only way that’s going to change is through education.

I guess teachers are screwed any way I look at it, caught in a catch-22 that only wide-spread and monumental school & societal reform can ever hope to fix. Maybe I should look more carefully at Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 program. Critics say it doesn’t go far enough, but at least it’s a step in the right intention.