The Continuing Marysville Nightmare

Note: If you aren't interested in my whining about the Marysville School District, just go to the next entry.

As if extending the contract of the most hated superintendent ever hired in the district weren't bad enough...

As if a 49-day strike and all the consequences it brings weren't bad enough...

The Junior High (where hubby-Eric works) "had" to reschedule everyone. Every student, and every teacher. Four weeks into the actual school year, every student got a new schedule... handwritten instead of by computer like the first one. Why? NO ONE KNOWS.

First off, while the classes were unbalanced, they weren't impossible to fix. The intelligent, reasonable way to adjust things would be to find out which classes had too many students and work from there. Trashing the entire system and starting from scratch seems like a really stupid way to work. Heh, forget "seems like" and substitute "is".

Then there's this "no computers" aspect. What? All this rescheduling has to be done BY HAND? Several hundred students, all manually? What the heck does the district have computers for if they can't be used to fix this? The parents were told that the computers could only do "one schedule each year". I say "BULL" to that. There isn't a software program written that couldn't be tricked into rescheduling if it needed to be done. I bet, if you'd given me ten minutes with the program, I could have come up with three or four ways to redo schedules. The fact that they apparently didn't even make the effort is disgusting.

Especially since the results were so bad: I'm a Junior High teacher who has just downloaded his list of classes this morning. I expect many angry parents to converge on MJHS this afternoon. The whole reasoning behind changing schedules was to "even" out classes. I have over 100+ new students that I have never seen before. I have classes where I have 8 more students than I have desks (or even chairs). Conferences are next week. I can't wait to tell parents....Um..I don't even know your kid's name yet... I'm sorry. This is not going to be pretty.

The writer of that quote later wrote to say: I now have 12 kids per class (in at least 2 classes) more than I have actual chairs.

And then, finally:

Day 2 at MJHS and my classes are still seriously overcrowded.

Sticking 44 students in a small classroom with only 30 desks is the most asinine experience that I've ever had as a teacher.

To top it off, I have some "sweethearts" who are vandalizing my room because I have them sitting in areas where students are normally not allowed. They are stealing personal things from around my desk, because I have to have them sitting in it. I can't supervise this many students! If a fire marshal came in he would throw a fit, because if there were an emergency, some students would be "stuck" trying to get out of the nooks and crannies they've been shoved into. I have a couple of students trying to sit "two students to one desk", but it's not working.

I have told counselors about my overloaded problems yesterday morning. They can't fix it yet because they are still dealing with students who are still missing classes. I'll end up wasting this entire week of classes because I can't even have students do any writing because of the lack of desks.

This district is very close to losing another "valued" teacher. I haven't been this angry after a day of teaching...ever! I have over 100 NEW students and I have teacher conferences next week. This was the equivalent of starting a new semester....except that I had "0" preparation time, had no idea what classes I'd be teaching, had no way to copy a new syllabus (remember that MJHS teachers are limited to only 200 copies a month...while downtown has a $300,000 budget), and had no room to house all of my classes!

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

This is responsible? This is "together for the children"? I want to run the administration out of the district on a rail.

Hubby-Eric didn't get it as bad, because for some reason his classes actually got sorted out. But now he's got five different classrooms to teach in instead of two. He no longer has a room he can call his own by any definition. And the poor kids aren't getting anything close to the education they are supposed to be getting. Teaching them about dealing with lousy administration is NOT on the curriculum.

We had a Marysville parents meeting on Monday night. Lots of people working hard to try to fix the problems in the district through whatever efforts they could. People who care about the teachers, who want to make the district work again. It was inspiring. But when the teachers have hit an all-time low and feel like they are being stomped on by the administration, how can even the parents help? When they feel like they are being punished, and the students with them, how can anyone make things better? The school district is now a joke. A bad joke, and insulting joke. What on earth can anyone do to keep it intact?