Sick of In-Service Days
I, and many parents I know, am tremendously annoyed with their school district’s excess of in-service, no-school days. The district euphemistically calls them “Learning Improvement Days”. My current level of irritation has been triggered by January’s excess of them: winter break, plus MLK and an in-service day, plus an end of semester in-service day. My son has nearly been out of school as much as he’s been in it!
I went through and counted. Not including winter and spring break, our school district has:
- 7 Learning Improvement Days
- 6 Half-days
- 3 “Most employees don’t get the day off” holidays
That’s 13 days in 9 months of school! Coincidentally, that’s exactly what my employer gives entry level employees in combined paid time off and floating holidays.
I realize that schools do not exist to provide childcare; their purpose is education. Nonetheless, we families structure our lives around the school year, and schedule disruption is problematic. I’m fortunate; my older teens require little supervision so it doesn’t much affect my professional life. Parents of younger children, though, can end up burning all their paid time off just to make up for the district’s lackadaisical commitment to actually providing classroom education.
I actually taught for a year and a half, as a long-term sub for Department of Defense schools in the UK, so I can see this from a teacher’s perspective too. Many of my colleagues and I found the in-service days to be a complete waste of time; we’d show up late, for the minimum required time, and duck out early. The only days that were useful were parent teacher conferences and the quarterly grading/prep day. In today’s age of electronic grade reporting, I’m not sure why a grade compilation day is necessary, the information is already in the system.
So, my question is, why do districts get away with this, especially with today’s pressure to perform well on standardized tests (another subject for another rant)? Is it a concession to the teachers’ union? Is it simply an established institution that’s become bloated over time? I don’t recall more than a couple of in-service days a year when I was in school.
It certainly indicates no respect for the students or families attending schools in the district, nor a commitment to consistent classroom instruction.
What it does do is instill a sense of reciprocal apathy. If the school is going to treat classroom days so cavalierly, then I as a parent can treat my son’s school schedule with equal disregard. The easiest time for him to get into the dentist is during the school day? No problem. We can’t get a decently-priced flight back from our family vacation until a couple days after break? Oh, well, we can live with that. (I do realize two wrongs don’t make a right.)
Given the institutional indifference, it’s no wonder our children’s performance is falling behind that of Asian and European nations.
January 25th, 2008
I’m curious how prevalent teacher’s unions are around the country. I know here in Michigan, the union is a huge detriment to actual teaching. I think the inservice days are largely cowtowing to the unions unwillingness to do any work past 3PM. They only way the union will agree to “learn” the curriculum stuff is if it’s during the normal work day. And even then, the inservices are mostly a farce. I know that’s an unfair generalization, but I doubt it’s far from the truth in most places.
We’re most likely going to be homeschooling again next year, due to poor education at the public school. (The school in which I work!) It’s depressing.
January 25th, 2008
Don’t.even.get.me.started.on.school.districts.
To be fair, I suppose one could play devil’s advocate and cite the lack of instructional funding, time, blah blah, blah teacher’s have but still….
We have Wednesday early dismissals in our district so they definitely get ample extra time. And I still cringe each June, knowing my kids are getting out of school a full two weeks before their Canadian counterparts.
Holy Son is off Monday but Holy Daughter isn’t – she’s cheesed. Oh well, I have to confess – after countless homework nights til 10:30 and 11pm, the break is most welcome.
PS – that’s laugh out loud funny yet, at the same time, sad that Shawn homeschools despite working at the public school.
January 25th, 2008
Possibly only marginally related but … it’s stuff like this that tells to me that America is anti Family Values. The neocons can yell that buzz phrase all they want, but until the rest of our society/culture actually puts some real priority on family – workplaces allowing parents to actually take proper care of their children on non-school days without impacting their pay/vacation time, putting a useful amount of funding into public schools so children can actually learn something and teachers will actually want to work, etc. – I don’t see how we have any family values at all.
Scandinavians have family values. And they don’t need to loudly beat their breasts about it, either, because they have it right.
January 26th, 2008
Rant on, sister.
January 26th, 2008
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will have to provide the bulk of my children’s education. The school is there to provide the piece of paper to validate what my wife and I have done. I’m not ready to take the home school route yet because my kids need the English-speaking environment, too.
Shawn – I don’t know of a single district in the US where the Unions don’t rule. My mom was a teacher for 25 years, and she finally opted out of her Union for supporting political candidates she did not agree with. She agonized over it because she benefited form their health-care plan contributions, but ultimately, she was fed up with the make-work stuff they instituted. She had all her class stuff ready – on her own time – over the summer. She despised the teachers who left everything to the 2 paid weeks before school started, and then needed the days off just to catch up. She also said that she got nothing out of the 4 days of in-service crap they filled up those 2 weeks with, and would not have had to use her own time to, you know, actually prepare to actually teach, if they hadn’t forced her to attend seminars by people who spent two years in the classroom and then got the hell out of Dodge to jump into administration.
MWT – I’m not sure what we could do for the vast majority of people in the US who are employed by small businesses. They can’t hire one or two excess staffers to cover for staff who take those off days like a big company can. And honestly, I’m tired of covering both my job and the job of one woman in my department who’s been on maternity leave for 2 years out of the four (3 kids)I’ve been in this unit. Europe’s allowances make for huge productivity losses. In my company we often have to cover for them when they take off for this or that, and we hire more people in the US than in our EU offices because of this – it hurts their economies by sending jobs elsewhere.
What impresses you about Scandinavia? I admit I’ve only spent a few weeks there, but I was less than impressed by their society or their economic and scientific output.
January 26th, 2008
Shawn – it is indeed ironic that you’re considering homeschooling. I’ve thought of it myself over the years, but my oldest was such a handful I would not have been able to deal. It’s funny how I was able to teach other people’s kids more comfortably than my own!
Holy, your son’s school seems to be a totally tremendous choice, the more you write about it. It’s so great that he has the opportunity, even if it is hard at times! Is Canadian education more rigorous than US – or is it as uneven as it can be here?
January 26th, 2008
MWT – the family values thing is indeed an issue. I’ve struggled a bit with the mommy track, and actually had one manager tell me that I shouldn’t take time off with my kids when they had chicken pox; they could fire me for that. (I’ve never been at all a person w/ excessive or even normal absenteeism.) Without a support system, the schedule is just not do-able – unless we leave our kids home as latchkey kids far younger than is wise.
John, thanks for coming by! I agree with you on families providing education. Schools are so short-sighted about that; they consider only structured, rote classroom subject matter to be education, when in fact the world should be our kids’ learning lab. My kids have traveled widely, read voraciously, and had lots of real-life learning like boater safety, CPR, personal finance, and computer/network troubleshooting. Any of those will be more beneficial to them than multiple choice about the war of 1812.
Actually – widely traveled is probably a ridiculous claim next to your multi-cultural, international family. LOL But we’ve been to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and probably 25 of the 50 states – and have more travel planned next year.
January 27th, 2008
Jeri – you’ve got me beat on Mexico – never been. We’re going to Taiwan in April, but that’s a family thing. I’m going to need a lot of booze to get over a 19 hour China Air flight with a 5 and a 3 year old. You can hide a lot of embarassment in public if you speak a foreign language with your kids, but on this flight everyone around us is going to speak Chinese or English or both.
The Mommy track thing is a difficult one. Europe gives leave for too long (1 year) – businesses can’t plan around that. If you are out 50% of a 4 year period, there comes a time when the business is paying other people to do your work (or, as in my company’s case, not paying the remaining employees more, but bumping up their workload by 50%). So I see both sides of the issue. But that’s maternity leave. Getting emergency time off or being able to work from home should be an option if the kids are sick. But for jobs like small-business retail, it’s not really a viable option.
January 29th, 2008
John the Scientist: Well, that’s just the thing. Do we USians value our businesses more than we value our families? Why are businesses getting the priority?
Jeri: Schools are so short-sighted about that; they consider only structured, rote classroom subject matter to be education
I think there are teachers would like to do it very much differently – but without sufficient funding, they don’t have much choice but to treat the students like cookie cutter clones instead of individual people.
(I know I’m really late in getting back to this; the Hijack thing kind of distracted me.
)
January 29th, 2008
I guess I should also mention that I have some friends in Sweden. There, the government pays 80% of your salary if you have to stay home with a sick kid. The number of days allowed per year is very generous – 60 per year (she thinks).
In general, everything I’ve heard about how they do things – how the government takes care of its families – points to the concept that they actually know how to value families there.
January 29th, 2008
mwt – my preference is to have an economy that is much more versatile and innovation driven to make life better for my kids in the future. If I have to drag my son to work with me as I did today becuase my wife has an emergency dentist appointment, well sometimes it sucks to be me. I made the choice to have kids and other people’s productivity should not suffer for it – within reason. I’ll still pay taxes to support the public school without grumbling even if I decide they are not good enough for my kids, and I’ll still fight to make them better.
No job I know of outside academia can take a 60 day hit in productivity – on top of 6 weeks of vacation! Business is not “privileged” it’s what creates wealth. With very few exceptions (roads, hospitals) government redistributes and decreases wealth (every transaction has costs, and they are gouged by the government and its contractors). That is why the Scandinavian is not a driver of world propserity, it’s a parasite.
I’m willing to take the long view in “family values”. But we agree that neocon posturing is just that. Their version of family values amounts to little more than censorship and institutionalized bigotry.
January 29th, 2008
John – that is a seriously long flight! I hope you have bulkhead seats and Benadryl!
MWT – I, too, have heard that the Scandinavian countries are very family-oriented, with fabulous child care, health care and leave policies. And yet… we aren’t buying cell phones and satellite dishes made in Norway, are we? I think everything is a tradeoff.
At some level, I am going to be considerably more productive if I’m a satisfied employee with reasonable work/life balance and minimal family crises. In a mid-management professional role, I have a lot of flexibility but it runs both ways. I can take time here and there for a school awards conference or a veterinarian visit – but I also have to work the occasional weekend deployment, all-night troubleshooting session, or answer a page from a basketball game. I also have a fairly generous leave policy – 13 days, plus an additional “purchased” five days a year.
I think another piece of ‘family values’ that is rapidly vanishing is balance between adequate income and reasonable cost of living for a family. The median income family in Seattle cannot afford to live anywhere near Seattle. It’s much worse in New York, San Francisco, LA. So, employees commute – a long time. My husband’s 1.5 hour each way commute, via car, ferry & bus, certainly impacts his family time & energy!
Most families we know who have made a decision to have one parent stay home with their children can only do so because the other partner is employed in a lucrative, excessive-overtime job. Those families still have to scrimp, budget and worry near the end of the month, and the challenges are far greater for single parents.
MWT – do you see reverse discrimination because you have no children? I see that at work – the single folks get asked to work the evenings and weekends, have a harder time getting holidays off, and in general have far less flexibility than their married-w/-kids counterparts.
January 29th, 2008
Scandinavia may not be world leaders in technological innovation and science, but the people are happy. My friends who live there don’t want to come here. So I suppose it all depends how much you value the having of happy healthy lives.
(And I’d appreciate if you don’t call them parasites. My friends aren’t parasites, thankyewverymuch. :p)
I agree that it is a tradeoff. But I also think that the U.S. takes it too far into the extreme for the pro-business/productivity end. You can only go for so long in “emergency sacrifice” mode before stuff starts getting all frayed at the edges and everything eventually breaks down. There has to be downtime for repair and rejuvenate. Otherwise the productivity will eventually come to an end.
On reverse discrimination: actually I don’t. But my workplace is really nice.
It’s nothing like the traditional type corporate structure. I can pretty much work whenever I want and take off whenever I want (as long as I have the allotted vacation days). My boss is mainly concerned that I get my work done, he’s learned not to be overly picky on exactly how I do it. It’s why I can spend so much time wandering blogs (no Internet content restrictions here at all, aside from antispam/antivirus) and chatting in IRC while I’m working. Overall, morale here is quite high and the guys in charge recognize that that’s of value, and they do a lot to defend us and our wacky ways from the state beancounters.
January 29th, 2008
On a tangent – if the average Scandinavian taxpayer is taxed at an 80% rate – how can they afford to live?
I’m going to use dollars as an example, because I don’t think in their currency:
Assume a slightly above average annual income of $60,000
That would be $5,000 per month
The remaining 20% of that is $1,000 per month
(In the US you’d see roughly $3,500 per month)
Out of that remaining sum, you must buy all things not subsidized:
– housing
– food
– clothes
– entertainment
– major purchases like cars, computers, etc.
Either their salaries are grossly inflated, or their cost of living is phenomenally low. Or both.
January 29th, 2008
Well, it’s not 80%. I think it’s more like 30%. I’ll ask when they wake up…
January 30th, 2008
Okay, it’s 30% income tax, 12.5 to 25% sales tax, and there’s also property tax (but they don’t own a house). Steep, but they get a lot of government services in return and it still leaves enough to live comfortably on.
January 30th, 2008
Two other things:
1. Most people don’t use up all 60 of their allotted days on taking care of sick kids. That only happens if the kid has cancer or something.
2. Day care is subsidized too, and very low cost there.