More mismanagement

When people say, "Oh, the schools are so underfunded, it must me so hard," I want to rip all of my hair out and explain that what makes it "hard" has very little to do with lack of funding, but more with lack of vision or competency on the part of administration. Case in point: On Tuesday we had a half day for the students because REGULAR CLASSROOM TEACHERS had parent teacher conferences all afternoon (emphasis intended). Now cluster teachers, I love you, but you have to admit that parent teacher conferences are not all that strenuous for you. That said, my administration decided that there would be no prep coverages for the half day. This means that teachers got no break whatsoever from 8:30-12:10 AND had to take the class to lunch and perform lunch duty before dismissal....literally no break, not even five minutes.

When I saw that preps were cancelled I wasn't that put out because I didn't even have a morning prep anyway, so I wasn't expecting anything. I figured the cluster teachers were probably having professional development or something and actually had a moment where I thought my administration did something smart, like schedule professional development at an appropriate time that wouldn't disrupt everyone. This was until my AIS person came at 9:30 (Don't get excited, it's the first time I've had an AIS person in all my five years, and I've only had her for a few weeks). She is a cluster teacher and she did her normal AIS routine with me. When it was time for her to leave, she asked if she should stay. "Don't you have PD?" I asked. "No," she replied. "I have nothing to do all morning." That's right, our cluster teachers got the morning off the day of parent teacher conferences when regular classroom teachers are the busiest. They didn't even have to cover lunch duty. How convenient for them. Needless to say I stared some of them down as I was bringing my student up from lunch and encountered them entering the building with fresh cups of coffee and food from the local deli. My AIS teacher ended up staying with me for 20 extra minutes and gave me some much needed time to get my assessment binder organized and the summary sheet completed before my conferences, but she didn't have to and none of the other cluster teachers did the same.