Decatur Schools Make Up Days Announced
Decatur Metro | January 13, 2014Located near the conclusion of a letter to the community from Superintendent Phyllis Edwards regarding school closings last Monday and Tuesday…
The first make-up day will be March 10th, which was previously a Teacher Workday. Now we will have school for students on that Monday. I am aware that many of you make plans early for the February and Spring breaks. To every extent possible, I am trying to leave those days intact. The second day will be Thursday, May 29th with the post-planning day moved to Friday, May 30th for teachers.
Latest from Decaturish
That’s good to hear. Some DM commenter reported a while back that the make up days were officially scheduled for part of the February break. Glad that proved to be bogus intel.
Actually, unless I dreamed it, it said at the bottom of the current year calendar on the CSD home page that those days would be used at the Superintendent’s discretion, so it wasn’t set in stone, but it was a possibility.
I saw it too
I didn’t realize there was no “wiggle room” in the schedule and that all missed days had to be made up. I seem to recall a time (maybe it was waaaaaay back when I was a student myself?) when there were a few days – say 2-3 – that were “forgiven” and only days in excess of that threshold had to be rescheduled. I’m somewhat surprised to see that we have to make both of these up, but count me in for grateful they didn’t schedule them for the February break, too!
The US already has such a short school year compared to most other 1st world countries. One might think that 2 days doesn’t make a difference but when in a learning system that is up to 20 days shy of other similar countries then it does! Personally I think the school year should be at least 10 days longer – maybe then our educational stats would look better due to having more learning time which leads me to the subject of the low level of educational outcomes we have compared to other countries! Grrr.
Not buying it. The number of days behind a desk shouldn’t greatly affect something like an SAT score. Maybe for rural or extremely low-income students, but I doubt in a place like this. The truth is uncomfortable but perhaps the reality is many American students don’t have the hunger or appreciation for educational opportunities that Asian or European students have, and have become complacent and lazy compared to their worldwide counterparts. I’ve read things here and there about the lengths that Asians students go to, out of school hours, that get them into the top American universities. I’ve traveled to dirt poor countries and people can immediately spot Americans and are eager to try out their English, and give you their opinion about our leaders. Some Americans don’t even know the name of the VP. I guess what I’m saying is it’s a highly individual thing. This is America, if a child/youth has the hunger to be educated, it is possible. We have easily computers in this country (libraries), we have resources which many don’t, we have no more excuses.
“The truth is uncomfortable but perhaps the reality is many American students don’t have the hunger or appreciation for educational opportunities that Asian or European students have, and have become complacent and lazy compared to their worldwide counterparts.”
Though you’re making a broad generalization, I tend to agree with you, based on my own experience. You don’t even have to leave the country to notice this. In the encounters I’ve had with recent immigrants, both those of means and extremely poor refuges, I’ve noticed a veneration of education and teachers that isn’t as common here. Sadly, the difference is most pronounced when the comparison is made to the lower middle class and poor among native-born Americans. Maybe it’s because of their own bad experiences with school, but there seems to be an anti-education mindset among that strata of society, at least in my experience. By that I mean there seems to be less of an interest in learning for its own sake and more of a “what use is it to me?” attitude.
Children follow the model set by the adults. When the adults only care to pay for 160 days of instruction compared to what used to exist and what exists in other parts of the country, never mind other parts of the world, it makes a statement. There is almost a culture of suspicion of education in this country–too intellectual, too egg-head, too nerdy. The culture, emphasis, required time in school, willingness to pay for education compared to what is spent on other priorities is quite different in some other countries.
Without re-checking the analyses, I recall that some of the countries with better educational outcomes actually spend less than we do on education.
The key is compared to what? What are countries spending compared to other priorities? And what do we get for value from that spending? We’ll always spend more in absolute value, and have more waste, because we’re a huge, mostly prosperous country. What message are we sending to our kids by how we prioritize our spending? A country as wealthy as ours could afford more than 160 days of school in all school districts if it wanted to.
Some of those countries spending less on good educational outcomes probably spend more on social services, universal healthcare and/or have a high standard of living for a broad segment of their society. Too many hungry, unhealthy kids in our US schools have difficulties concentrating and change schools every 6 months.
I know little to nothing about educational systems in other countries, but I’m curious if it is a fair comparison. How many of these countires, like the U.S., have compulsory education for all children up to the age of 16?
In other words, we educate EVERYONE, to one degree or another. Do these other countries operate the same way? Or is education provided only to the wealthier portions of their society?
I’m not challenging, just asking. I once heard that this is why U.S. scores lag behind other countries, but I have no backup for that statement.
“In other words, we educate EVERYONE, to one degree or another. Do these other countries operate the same way? Or is education provided only to the wealthier portions of their society?”
I’d say it’s more a matter of the U.S. educating everyone in pretty much the same way at the K-12 level. Not everyone is automatically on the college track in other countries, and in some countries there is much more robust vocational training than here. So, from what I’ve read, it isn’t necessarily that other countries with higher scores than here are educating a lower percentage of people. It’s more that only certain students (the ones bound for university) are taking the tests, like the SAT, that are de rigueur here, while others are put on different tracks.
Ah, thanks, brianc. That makes sense.
It might also help explain the difference in test results between students in different countries. If you’re comparing U.S. scores on tests that all students took (whether or not they are on a college track) with the scores of foreign students only on a college track, I would expect ours to be lower.
Given that there’s only 180 school days, I like the call to make up those days. But also glad that the two breaks will not be affected.
I recently read somewhere that several Georgia school districts have a school year that is only 160 days long. Apparently related to state budget cuts.
I find this so disheartening.
Civilization going in reverse….
From what I can tell this takes away one of the two scheduled post planning days from teachers. That makes end of yr tasks a bit daunting to complete in one day, and many teachers will likely end up taking an extra day off the clock to finish.
Not that I don’t sympathize, but they should take that up with their boss. Besides, I and many like me already had to do the same because of the “snow” day.
I don’t sympathize. They’re salaried professionals. Working an extra day off the clock, here and there, should be expected, just like it is in most other professions.
I might agree with you if they got paid what they deserve to begin with.
Oh, please. Tired of this nonsense comment. Teachers in COD get roughly 11-12 weeks off a year and they get paid pretty well for the amount of time working. Especially if they have a masters degree.
I know most of them work hard and have a tough job, but they get adequately compensated in my opinion.
Agreed. Plus, evaluating teach comp requires one to evaluate benefits, which are often quite substantial, including defined benefit pensions. I don’t know about Decatur specifically, but often teachers are able to retire in their early to mid 50’s at annual pensions very close to their highest salary. That is a massive benefit that is worth a ton of money.
According to the AJC, state medical benefits have taken a real hit. People who tout cushy state comp, benefits, retirement, are usually out of date. Only the few oldsters left have the good stuff. But everyone keeps quoting old info on what state workers get.
Obviously it isn’t the same for everyone, but the value of the pension alone is worth a substantial portion of the annual salary. Yes, I make more than most teachers. But, in order to “guarantee” my salary for life after 25 years, I would need to invest much, much more than I am now. I am trying to not get involved in whether their level of compensation is “fair”, but the public sector benefits have to be factored into the equation.
The old retirement plan was great; current is nothing like it. Few folks are left in the old one.
OK, but are you saying that public sections pensions aren’t as good as the ever-shrinking 401(k) contribution matching programs that SOME employers in the public sector offer? Or, how do they compare to the retiremment “plans” of the self-employed who are solely responsible for their retirement? Fine, I concede that the current pension plans may not be as good as they once were. But, the value of those pensions (or at least the value over and above what is generally available in the private sector) need to be considered in this discussion.
FWIW, the argument goes both ways. If the public plans were to be deemed worse that private sector plans, that should also be included in the debate about whether teachers were adequately compensated.
I think you’re missing the point AHID. The issue isn’t whether today’s set of benefits is as good/better than yesterday’s. It is that when the subject of teacher compensation comes up, it is highly misleading to talk only about cash compensation. Everything needs to be factored in. And, as DawgFan said, pensions are a huge factor.
The current cash value of even a modest defined benefit pension is huge, and most private sector jobs don’t offer any defined benefit pension at all. A teacher’s true compensation is much, much higher than the cash portion of his/her overall benefit package.
Oh, please to you. Give me a good reason why a fresh out of law school attorney makes twice what a teacher with 20 years experience does.
Your statement is a gross overgeneralization. Yes, many law students who go to work for big firms downtown make twice what teachers make, but they only make up about 10% of recent graduates. Many recent law grads (those who work in the public sector, non-profit, rural areas, etc.) would love to make what a teacher with 20 years experience makes.
Well, they should stop whining and go get a master’s degree and a teaching certificate! And be prepared to use up their $300 in allocated classroom supplies in the first 3 weeks of school and start begging and scrounging after that. Just saying….
IMHO, teaching is surpassed only by missionary work in the ratio of unrecognized work and effort to pay/benefits.
That’s the funny thing, I bet most of them aren’t whining. They go into those sectors for a reason. A lot of them enjoy the work that they do.
Absolutely. I was making much less than that out of law school.
You are correct. Attorneys in the areas you mentioned don’t make what attorneys in big firms make. But replace “attorney” in my sentence with another professional service career. What I’m getting at is that teachers are grossly underpaid and undervalued when compared to other professions.
Shouldn’t teachers (the people educating our children) be some of the highest paid people in the community?
No, they shouldn’t. Importance of the job does not necessarily equal how much pay the job is worth. It is VERY important that a plane gets de-iced properly, but we don’t pay that individual that much. Want me to say it? Being a teacher ain’t that hard. Good teachers tend to be naturally gifted at the work. The job itself, not very difficult. Yes, I said it.
And you keep forgetting (or ignoring) that they have more than double the time off than other “professionals”.
Have you ever taught in a real classroom? Please try it for 10 to 20 hours first.
1) It is incredibly hard to do it well–the level of skill, creativity, and experience needed is quite different from de-icing
2) For the amount of effort, creativity, experience, and skill used, the credit and respect that a teacher gets from the administration above and general society is unusually low. I credit our anti-intellectual culture and a management and administrative structure more appropriate to the manufacture of widgits.
Not going to get into the difficulty level of teaching debate, but teachers do receive generous pensions compared to most in other professions, and that offsets lower working salaries, at least to some degree. Of course, this is also true of police officers (which I don’t believe is a very difficult job at all. Potentially dangerous yes, difficult no.), and others in the public sector.
If teacher pay were a higher priority, we’d have better teachers who stuck around longer. And probably smarter kids as well.
With regards to how difficult teaching is, I think it’s a tad bit harder than you think. You could have every Ph.D. in the world and still be a terrible teacher.
Wow, folks don’t think being a good police officer is hard as well as dangerous? I guess I just have a different idea of what difficult is. To be able to make good decisions, at least a few of which are life and death, rapidly, in an environment of high stress, takes skill, experience, and training, IMHO. I have always thought that there’s a lot of similarities between being an ER physician and a police officer on the street. The fact that the former goes through much more education and training and gets paid many times higher has always bothered me.
“You could have every Ph.D. in the world and still be a terrible teacher.”
________________________
I agree, but that still doesn’t make the profession “hard.” Some people are cut out for teaching and others are not.
“Shouldn’t teachers (the people educating our children) be some of the highest paid people in the community?”
This sort of normative evaluation of pay is popular but ultimately a waste of time. We don’t decide compensation in this way. Instead, it’s a matter of supply and demand, as it should be.
Schools can fill their hiring needs offering the salaries they offer. You may think they should be higher, for whatever reason, but the fact is, the teachers are willing to accept those salaries. Moreover, in most cases, unions artifically distort the market for teacher pay in a way that favors incumbent protection and security over a highly competitive market that might result in higher pay for the very best teachers.
The example of highly paid junior lawyers is the same. Those high salary jobs are offered to a tiny sliver of the market — those with the best credentials. There is a relatively low supply of top graduates from top law schools, that’s why they are paid so handsomely from the get-go. Employers are competing for those people and that competition has driven up the price. Believe me, if the firms could attract those same people with a salary of $35,000, that’s all they’d pay.
“Schools can fill their hiring needs offering the salaries they offer.”
You can’t compare public teacher salaries to the supply and demand of the private sector. There aren’t major differences in starting salaries from one district to the next within a state. Granted, this is partly because of a seniority-based compensation system, as you point out. But it’s also because voters have generally chosen low taxes over paying more to attract the best candidates to teaching. And, at the risk of getting slammed for insensitivity and stereotyping, it’s also because K-12 education, public and private, remains largely a female-dominated field, and women generally aren’t as demanding about salary as men.
And thanks for telling me that my comment is nonsense. You can disagree, but that doesn’t make my comment illogical.
Anytime, Bulldog.
What does “off the clock” mean? If you are talking about work outside school hours I can assure you most if not all teachers are already doing that. It is not fair to insinuate that they don’t.
I don’t think anyone was insinuating that some teachers don’t work off the clock. However, for one to get on here and whine as if they were somehow uniquely affected is inappropriate. If nothing else, teachers had it easier. We all have to make up work, but at least they didn’t have to worry about finding child care.
Agreed.
Teachers are expected to be professionals but their compensation and management are handled more like they are hourly workers on the bottom of the totem pole.
I don’t know anything about what goes on here, but I’m sure it’s exactly the way I think it is.
Anyone that thinks being a teacher “ain’t that hard” has absolutely NO clue what they’re talking about and should remove themselves from this conversation. Don’t even get me started.
But it’s a comment that pertains to roughly 90% of this conversation. If you have a differing view, which you obviously do, perhaps you should “get started.”
I think the comment made was very tongue-in-cheek, as The Walrus did admit that teaching is a tough job, and that most teachers do work hard. However, a lot of people work hard and have tough jobs, this does not automatically mean they all are entitled to a pay raise.
Please get started, because your response added nothing. I believe a good teacher for the most part has a natural gift. Is the job frustrating at times? Exhausting? Yes. Is it a difficult job for someone that is made for that kind of work. No. It’s not. Sorry. And even if it is hard, 12 weeks off a year should cure that. And you have no idea whether this comes from someone with teaching experience or not.
I appreciate teachers. I love teachers. Some of my favorite people. But I get a little tired of the whining about not being appreciated and compensated. I don’t hear my friends over at Legal Aid who have massive student loan debt, make less than most teachers and have half the amount of time off, whining about being underpaid.
I feel so the opposite. IMHO, teachers are asked to do the supernatural. Instruct all levels of students, differentiating to each student but adhering to a set curriculum and making sure that all students meet state standards, keep order but give individual attention, do mounds of paperwork and yet be a compassionate mentor and role model, identify and report neglect and abuse, prevent bullying, promote creativity but make sure that factual material is mastered, fill out multiple academic, special ed, disciplinary, and other reports often on short notice, interact with parents who range from overinvolved to neglectful and can be anywhere in between or both, counsel and inspire students (expecially at the middle and high school level), lead extracurricular activities, communicate well with parents, all of which tasks are performed mostly while standing, in front of a group with no privacy, and on an inflexible schedule that does not allow for teleworking or flexitime or non-break associated leave. Its like parenting only there’s much more responsibility– 25-35 students at a time instead of an average of 2.2–and less resources and control. Just typing this is giving me a headache and convincing me to vote yes on any proposals to increase the pay or benefits of teachers.
Eh. Sounds pretty easy to me!
No, well written description of the work.
I think the reason we sometimes think teaching is easy is because we all know a slackard from high school or college who went into teaching because they couldn’t do anything else. But the fact that slackards sometimes get teaching jobs and hang on to them doesn’t mean that the job is easy. If pay were higher, there would be more competition for teaching jobs and it would be harder for slackards to get one. And it would be easier for school systems to let slackards go.
By the way, I think that CSD does a particularly good job of hiring and retaining the best as teachers. It’s harder for a larger school system to do that, especially if it has certain schools and grades/subjects that are hard to fill. The day before school starts, I imagnine that even a slackard can look good as an applicant if you’ve got spots to fill.
As far as I can tell, there are no teachers on here whining about being underpaid. Just people (some people) who support a higher pay scale for the admirable work they do. And others who think their job is easy and that they don’t deserve another nickel.
Don’t be a butthead to people. It’s not helpful.
I know you guys are best of friends, so I’ll allow a bit of name-calling.
Walrus says: “Is it a difficult job for someone that is made for that kind of work. No. It’s not. Sorry.”
I’ll just assume you are apologizing for being 100% WRONG. I accept your apology. This whole conversation is ridiculous. Teachers work full days, then have to plan what they are going to do tomorrow, then have to grade papers and deal with parents. If they coach or are involved in another extracurricular activity, they have to do that too. Some teachers, not many in Decatur, slack at some or all portions of this job. But the good ones, and most in Decatur are good or great, excel at all of that. I don’t care if you are “made” for that or not. 70-80 work weeks are hard. That’s what most teachers are working. Even the teaching part is infinitely harder than it’s ever been. In addition for being on the hook for their student’s test scores (and because of that) they have to basically have a lesson plan for every kind of learner in their room. That’s typically at least 3 maybe 4 or 5 different approaches to teaching the same thing. That ain’t easy, folks. Even if you are “made” for it. Teachers do get 2 months “off” nowadays, certainly not 3 like it used to be. You would have a hard time surviving the school year, if you didn’t have time away. Not to mention, it’s only the future of the country at stake (and you have to do it standing up). This is not a job that someone who de-ices planes could typically do (making assumptions about that person, admittedly). To do a job in the classroom that is anywhere near good is as tough as any job anywhere. Period. Walrus, I so bad want to call you a name, but I won’t. Suffice to say, you are way off the mark.
Should have said 70-80 HOUR work weeks are hard. That’s a lot of hours to be working, no matter what it is. That’s what good teachers are doing.
70-80 hours a week! That’s hilarious. And CSD teachers get 6 weeks off during the year and at least six during summer. There’s your 3 months. It just cracks me up how open minded liberals are so intolerant of other people’s views. And the name calling y’all do! Tickles me…
I know a few teachers that take up extra jobs in the summer or attend professional learning workshops. There might be 6 weeks of unpaid vacation but I assure you 100% do not fully take the entire time “off”. I mean who could really afford a six week holiday on a teacher’s salary. Also, forget trying to buy a house in the city limits with a teacher’s salary today.
“How can be people be so heartless? How can people be so cruel?…..Especially people who care about people! Who say they care about social injustice!” (Hair, 1960- or 1970-something)
Agreed. It’s too difficult to reward great teachers and also too difficult to get rid of bad ones.
To be back on topic about the make up days…The second one is May 29th. Not a lot of teaching going on that day as everything will be wrapped up. Won’t the K-8 kids be finished with their curriculum by the middle of April after the CRCT’s (do they still do those, it’s been a while for our family), and the 9-12 kids be done by the first week of May when the AP tests are given? So essentially, they are seat filling for dollars, not education. The kids aren’t in their seats, the school doesn’t get paid. It’s babysitting and one more day for students to prove the point that school is stupid. I get that no one wants their winter break disturbed, but what’s the point otherwise?
I apologize if this was mentioned above but my eyes glazed over in all the arguments and name calling.
This is totally anecdotal but I’ve been told more than once by teachers in CSD that the post-CRCT period is one of their favorite times for instruction. They can concentrate totally on quality, engaging, authentic instruction without worrying about teaching to the test.
Another benefit is for the students end up not passing the CRCT. I think they get another chance over the summer and every day of instruction helps.
I always sense more learning for enjoyment in my children after the CRCT, EOC (end of course), AP, whatever tests are over.