AnonymousBy Doug Carmean
After reading recent articles about Santa Barbara Unified School District in the local media, the casual observer might come away the idea that the SBUSD administration and school board are prudent and fiscally responsible problem solvers.
When faced with racism in our schools, they studied the problem and looked for solutions. When workers started asking for raises, they held the line to maximize capital to spend in the future and reduce costly expenditures on human resources.
But the truth is very different. Shhh – I have an open secret to tell you: the SBUSD administration is irresponsible and self-serving. Money that should go to the classroom is being wasted on newly created salaried positions and subcontracting administrative work that should be done by the administrators who draw a salary for the very work they outsource.
Clearly there are challenges our local schools face and a study of the current racial climate of our schools is a great place to start to support our schools. Understanding the problem will help all SBUSD educators hone in on solutions and best practices that will directly benefit all of our students and staff. But when the district uses words like “we got pushed to do (a Racial Climate Report)” and CEO Steve Venz presents the findings, it glosses over the fact that these highly paid administrators hired a consulting firm from Kansas who actually conducted the research and wrote the report. One might argue the need for an objective third party to investigate matters of such crucial importance, but the SBUSD has a pattern of outsourcing the work they are hired to do. And they keep cashing their checks.
In the recent past, the human resources department has outsourced the hiring of our crucial special education paraprofessionals to a for profit company. Similarly, the superintendent agreed to the job and was hired only to subdivide the duties of superintendent and create a $200,000 a year administrative position of Chief Operating Officer–the first in the district’s history. At the April 11th, 2023 board meeting, the administration created and the board approved the new $200,000 a year Director of Community Partnerships who will answer to the CEO. Until Dr. Maldanado, these tasks were the purview of the Superintendent. Teachers don’t get to subcontract out their jobs or their lunchtime tutoring, writing letters of recommendations or interview time with district lawyers fighting lawsuits brought against the district. What gives? While teachers are helping students facing unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety, the administration is off to Washington to learn about solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations (admirable but ill-timed and perhaps could have been accomplished with less jet fuel).
Finding 3.1 of the Anti Blackness/ Racial Climate Report Recommendations states that the district should, “Refine talent management strategies. Strategies should address recruitment, retention, and development of a talent pipeline to identify career options and advancement, particularly for staff of color.” The recommendation to address recruitment and retention is easy to follow:
- Make current class sizes permanent.
- Cap current Special Education caseloads to protect our most vulnerable student’s access to their teachers.
- Re-open salary negotiations. Stop the flight of educators out of the district. The money spent on professional development goes out the window when teachers leave. This last school year the district needed to hire more than 100 new certificated educators.
The district has the resources to do something now. Last year the district ended with $14 million more in unrestricted reserves that belong to today’s students and projects millions more in new revenue (think rising property values) for this year.
The district prioritizes new administrators in the District Office over class size and retaining educators.
That sound you hear is your family’s favorite teacher packing up and leaving town only to be replaced by another teacher who will soon do the same.
It’s time to think about sending money back to the classrooms, back to your students, back to your fellow community members: the hard working teachers we all love and appreciate.
Sincerely,
Doug Carmean
In my 29th year as an English teacher in the SB Unified School District and father of three current district students. (Go Tigers, Condors and Dons!)
Op-Ed’s are written by community members, not representatives of edhat. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of edhat. [Do you have an opinion on something local? Share it with us at info@edhat.com.]
Superintendents have a powerful position. Too powerful if they don’t manage well. When they are hired, boards are typically enamored with them and will accept their vision and okay their expenditures with few questions. They think they are listening to an expert, but in some cases, the superintendent usually fails to consult with the other admin and especially the site admin and teachers who are in the trenches to see if their ideas and expenses are even worthwhile. And the board simply takes the Supes word and assumes that she is speaking for her admin team. In Hilda’s case, she wants a copy of LA unified’s management levels where she came from… No site admin would have said that the new district admin positions were needed and they certainly would not have agreed to many of the outside contracts. I saw the racial climate report presentation and the findings were no different from a summary of best practices from any book or journal on the subject. I would have expected more specific direction rather than a laundry list of all the things that should be done even when some of them are being done. I was not impressed. I understand that the Supe wants to be responsive, but she desperately needs to listen to those around her.
I guess this didn’t work: https://www.noozhawk.com/santa_barbara_superintendent_hilda_maldonado_executive_coach_leadership/
Couldn’t agree more with the author. SBUSD is clearly failing, and they’re not alone. The ‘Admin-heavy’, big time pension/healthcare for life scheme they’re running is a joke. It fails kids, parents, and our future. Not to mention taxpayers, which is all of us. Ready for another big Bond? I’m not. Who would be at this point? Only a very naive or rich person I suppose.
Hey Hilda, here’s what you need to do. Make yourself and your heavy hitter Admins around you who are ALL making six-figure salaries look in the mirror and ask yourselves what your job is. Next time you want to spend some more money NOT making decisions and spending the public’s money on a random consultant to tell you how to do your job, why don’t you figure it our for yourselves? Just do it. If it’s good, it works. If it fails, it’s on you. That’s how the real world works.
The teachers are the last ones to blame.
Word salad.
Agree, a strike isn’t good for the students nor for the teachers. After COVID? Hilda and the District will find a way to vilify them all if they do. It’s gotta come down to pressure from the PUBLIC on the Super.
Random bs from citizens like 2:51 is useless and distracting.
Of course no one wants to strike, but people like to be able to pay their rent and have money leftover to save. SBTA needs to get serious and start planning for picketing, walkouts, and as a last resort, a strike. Enough is enough. We don’t need to be martyrs.
Special Ed Paraeducators are paid so low and are treated like dirt. They work hard, often with the most difficult students and are not appreciated. Best way to show appreciation is by paying them at least $30 hourly rather than give them lip service about how they are so important to every school site. Mickey Mouse awards at the end of the school year don’t pay the bills and they only make administration look good giving them.
We all would hate to see a strike, but it’s the teachers’ decision and I would support them wholeheartedly if they did strike.
This is for public schools nation wide but over the past 20 years there has been only an 8% increase in the number of teachers, and a 75% increase in administrators.
not sure where you go those numbers…
School enrollment has increased about 8% from 99-2000 to 2017-18
Number of teachers has increased 18% during same time period.
Number of site admin up 8%.
Could not find numbers for district admin – this is from National Center for Educational Statistics.
I’m only responding because this should not be a contest between teachers and all admin… site admin and maybe even district admin may not be making these decisions…
Teachers jobs are way more difficult than they were and site admin jobs are ridiculous and not sustainable. However, when a new supe comes in and makes little changes to the actual school staffing, but starts creating new positions at the district level, that should be a red flag. That is where the problem lies.
I appreciate the authors courage to write this Op-Ed.
So much of what he says makes sense. Certainly teachers deserve a cost of living increase now. Why are we only paying
many para educators only 17.00 an hour when they take care of students with learning differences who are doing the absolute worst with stagnant scores for 3rd grade reading proficiency as well as college readiness. I agree too, that we don’t need a Chief Obfuscation Officer in charge of LCAP a 13.8 million dollar fund that is not being spent in the most effective way for the students it is intended for and in accordance with California ed code. It is spent on things district wide like family engagement liaisons when what we really need are experienced reading interventionists. Leadership needs to focus on the unmet needs of the students. When the Superintendent gave the teachers a 2500. stipend it also extended it to the admin. according to a para educator I spoke with. This is a misuse of funds that many students desperately need to get proficient in reading and college ready. When 88% of the monies go to salaries that only leaves 12% for student needs, facilities, field trips etc. It is also not something a leader focused on the stagnant scores would choose to do. The board could ask for a FCMAT report, a state audit which points out weakness and gives course correction which is long overdue.
Our district has a “wait to fail ” culture where it takes too long to help students waiting until they are in the bottom 25%. Our district needs a “proactive model ” that will save money that can go instead to reducing class sizes and teacher & para educator salary increases.. If our district embraced what other successful district do, that includes screening all students, training teachers, using structured literacy for reading approach, reducing class size , our district could have 70% less students in special ed which costs 4x more. And these strategies will lead to 95% reading proficiency by end of third and college readiness for our students. This is equity. What we have now are whites and asians succeeding while five vulnerable subgroups,( students with learning differences, emergent multilingual students, foster, homeless youth and those with socioeconomic hardship) continue to have painfully low scores . We need a proactive culture to have systemic change and take care of our students and staff not this top down model that leaves little for the students.
The financial struggle for Paraeducators in SB is even more dire. They are paid peanuts for the hard work they do. All Special Ed classes would not function without the Paras. If the Paras alone would go on strike, it would cripple the system. Parents would be livid and they would get things done so Paras would get that raise.
Go on strike
i am a teacher and talk to lots of teachers (check out our instagram account: sbunified_hates_me), and i can tell you that every single teacher would be perfectly willing to strike, but we REFUSE to impact our students. if the miners strike, it hurts the mine owners; if the farmworkers strike, it hurts the farm owner; if the teachers strike… it hurts the kids! every single teachers cares about their students more than themselves, so no matter how frustrated we get, a strike is not an easy choice for any of us.
We appreciate everything you do SBUnifiedHatesMe. I haven’t yet met a teacher that didn’t put the best interest of their kids first. Thank you.
We don’t need to be martyrs. The kids will be ok if we strike and they will ultimately end up with happier teachers.
Yes. I also support a teacher strike.
The hiring out of contract employees to do the work of the civil service, appointed or elected staff is a long standing problem. It started mostly with the idea that an occasional crisis or lawsuit necessitated the hiring of people knowledgeable about the issue and with the idea that the contract would be specific and result in cost savings. Over time this has become an escape for the hired personnel who do not want the work, political outfall, or “distraction” of such jobs. It is not just schools that have dramatically increased “administrators” by the way. What is worse is that all these managers/supervisors are ignored when a top job opens up and the agency hires another consultant to do a “nation wide” search. So our staff is then recruited elsewhere and we bring in strangers. Etc.
I agree wholeheartedly with author Doug Carmean. Having worked as a bilingual teacher and specialist for both Goleta and Santa Barbara Elementary Districts (18 years), the difference in administrations is obvious. Goleta is student, parent, teacher and community oriented. They are concerned about the wants and needs of all. They keep admin costs down.
Santa Barbara District is very sensitive to a few loud voices, but the overall administration has been insensitive and self serving overall. Any wonder why so many parents have taken their students out of public schools in the SB Elementary District? Goleta District does not have that problem, people highly respect the teachers, staff and school program. The SB District board should have an independent financial and administrative audit, pare down admin and start to LISTEN to students, parents and teachers.
Administrators have taken over schools with the backing of their union at the expense of teachers and students.
There is no way that an assistant superintendent should be making 240,000 (Fran Wagineck) with the pathetic performance of our students.
The admin class should be drastically reduced and class size reduced with new hires, as well as a focus on mental health and diversionary tactics for kids headed in to the juvenile justice system.
the SBTA (teachers union) does NOT “back” administrative hiring.
fran was qualified and capable (240k seems like a LOT tho), but she quit, along with all but one managerial position in the district, during Hilda’s second year (i think it was second year). the district said “covid was tough and people are burned out”, but my understanding is that they were all committed career locals, who did NOT like the new leadership.
Wagineck did a lot of damage.
The unions DO NOT support the increase in administrative staff! That is antithetical to their effort to reduce class sizes and get more teachers and aides in the class room itself.
Santa Barbara’s K-12 Schools are a rolling train wreck with less than 48% of ALL students having a grasp of English and Math. The biggest education gap is in our Mexican/Hispanic children, many of whom are sent into the world as functionally illiterate adults. The SBAUSD Board has become nothing more than a vehicle to higher office for some Democratic Party members. Limon and Capps left the kids that they claimed to be helping and jumped ship in the middle of their elected terms!
stepping stone? Maybe people believe in community service and start small. I don’t think that is a bad thing. I’ve encouraged people to join boards and some of them have been excellent. I would not be dismayed if they sought a different or paying public office…
I don’t agree with all you say, but I do agree it is despicable that people use the school board as a stepping stone to higher office. I think both Capps and Limon should be ashamed of that.
I support teachers and want to pay them as much as we can possibly afford. Didn’t SB Teachers Union just negotiate a major raise? I read that somewhere recently. In Carpinteria we have a completely broken Teachers Union. I do believe there should be closer equality in pay between teachers and Administrators who do make the big bucks.
oxnard negotiated 12%
ventura negotiated 12%
la just negotiated 21%!
sbunified… said “no, we won’t talk about raises this year”
The current agreement between SBUSD and SBTA was ratified in 2020-21 and included a 3.5% salary increase for 2021-22, a 2.5% increase for 2022-23, and a 2% increase for 2023-24. Meanwhile inflation has been around 6% for each of those years, so teachers have effectively taken a pay cut every year.
SBTA asked the district to reopen negotiations on salary a year early, given recent major inflation and the exodus of teachers who can’t afford to live here. SBUSD refuses to negotiate salary at all, while other districts in the region have negotiated significant salary increases (10-20%) for their teachers.
Going on strike is the only action that will make SBUSD respect a raise .
All employees at SBUSD except administration should get a raise.
The disrespect is across the board, not just towards teachers.
ENOUGH is ENOUGH Let’s all go on strike and shut down the system like in LAUSD .
The District has suffered under Maldonado’s “leadership” since day one. Until she goes, the ship will continue to sink. All she cares about is her inflated paycheck and any photo ops she can find. Something stinks at the District, and it starts in HER office. We finally had enough of their bull and pulled our kids out of their schools. They’ve never been happier, and in turn, neither have we!
Zebon: So appreciate you sharing your experience with SBUSD. I looked online at a current ad for bilingual para educator that is currently advertised at..
https://www.applitrack.com/sbunified/onlineapp/default.aspx?Category=Instructional+Services
What stands out to me is that the pay is listed as:
Salary Schedule Range: 21 – Hourly wage range from $16.39 to $19.31 DOE + Additional stipend: $104 a month for bilingual stipend… it goes on to say:
“Santa Barbara Unified School District is currently hiring for para educators (teacher’s aides) to help our Spanish-speaking students within our junior high, high schools and elementary. These positions are six hours a day plus a 30 minute unpaid lunch break, from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm. Fluency in Spanish is required.
So the district expects a bilingual individual to work only 6 hours a day with an UNPAID 30 min lunch and somehow survive. So for 30 hours at 16.39 which comes to 1,966.80 a month or a grand 23,601.6 annually.
The CPL california poverty line index indicates that a family of four making under 36,90.00 is considered the CPL poverty line. the average rent in Santa Barbara as of December 3, 2022, was $2,815 for a one-bedroom …which for a year comes to 33.780 for a one bedroom. It is not even possible to live here as a para educator . In fact a para educator would be 10,179 short to even just have a one bedroom somewhere in SB and no food etc.
Now let’s compare that to our Chief Obfuscation Officer who worked as an Instructional Program Coordinator for Orange County Department of Education and in 2015 had a reported pay of $127,254 according to public records. This is 118.5 percent higher than the average pay for school employees and 83.5 percent higher than the national average for government employees.
His pay was inflated in Orange County and now in SBUSD it is 200,000.
I am troubled how poorly we pay para educators and how lavishly we pay for a position we are better off without… Way too much indulgence at the top and way to little for our para educators who should get training, and benefits, so that the students they work with do more than have pathetic stagnant scores year, after year, after year. Only 15% of the emergent multilingual students and only 15% of those students with differences graduate having taken the necessary classes (called A-G’) to be merely eligible to apply to a UC.
How come we have bloated salaries at the top and anemic salaries for bi lingual educators. No wonder students have such dismal outcomes. The revolving door is so unfair to the students that need it most. All the while our leaders are focused on looking good instead of actually being good.
I hope the current para educators have the courage to speak their truth and that our local media , which is limited covers this. This is why students scores languish because the leadership is not intentional on fixing it… just making sure they get to live here and have golden parachutes as they leave much like our former Superintendent who also wreaked havoc on the district and left with a bloated package and retirement to enjoy with his loved ones. Para educators who are in the trenches meanwhile work below the poverty line for a family of four.
I hope Zebon that our community hears this and rectifies it. So many of our students need you and you deserve respect and compensation not living below the poverty line.
I am sure the Chief Obfuscation Officer was able to find a lovely home as was our Superintendent @ $254.37 annually without having had any experience as a Superintendent or her doctorate when she arrived. Lack of experience is one thing but pretty much wiping out all the former admins and institutional knowledge while she’s at it is painful to this community. Please continue to speak out Zebon. Change is needed for you and all our struggling students… all 6,500 of them.
Lovesbalot thank you for your reply. Administration treats Paras like second class citizens who don’t have rights. At San Marcos High School administration continues to illegally dock Para’s pay due to a fraudulent digital system that was implemented by John Becchio in HR back in 2020. Only Paraeducators are mandated to sign in and out of this digital system. If this isn’t discrimination and stealing, I don’t know what is. Administration taking working hours and sick time away from Paras is illegal and just morally wrong.
SB Unified is massively and extensively overstaffed. Every assistant superintendent or director they hire has one or more person working for them. Many of these positions didn’t exist 10 years ago. it would be understandable if those additional staff made a huge difference in student outcomes but they don’t! Very little of what they do downtown improves the quality of classroom education one bit. To add insult to injury, most of the new people are from out of town with no institutional knowledge or experience in the SB community whatsoever, and the minute Hilda is gone they will be too. The board has not held Hilda’s feet the fire at all, and all too often both the board and the Superintendent deflect criticism as being undeserved because of the lockdowns and on-line schooling. Meanwhile, teachers are unhappy and leaving or retiring early, class sizes are bigger than they were 20 years ago, special ed aides are quitting regularly, facilities maintenance is massively underfunded and the buildings are shabby. The district needs to adopt a philosophy of existing solely to support the sites and the classroom teachers, rather than telling them what to do or implementing any new programs. Get rid of some of the extraneous people downtown and stop hiring consultants, and use the money to reduce class sizes, pay teachers and aides more, and hire more maintenance personnel.
No one knows what most of these people even do. Total waste of money.
Special Education gets a lot of money every year and yet where does that money go? It doesn’t go to Special Ed I can assure you of that. District refuses to pay Special Ed Paras a living wage which should at least be $30 hourly. In addition Paras who are Bilingual and interpret for IEPS get a measly $100 per month when outside interpreters district contracts get roughly $100 for one hour session . This is a professional service , why aren’t Bilingual Paras who interpret for IEPS paid the same rate as outside interpreters ? Paras are mandated to complete an extensive training to interpret for IEPS and they are paid crumbs for this professional service. Paras are treated like peons even if they have professional skills.
Talk about Exploitation!
Talk about Exploitation!
Thank you for this piece Mr. Carmean. We have a huge problem of exploding “administrative bloat”…
… saying so often labelled an anti-government, right-wing nutjob. To the contrary, I am a lifelong progressive who wants systems that work… and that means funds getting to families, kids, and teachers.
Keep up the good fight, and thank you for your years of service in the classroom.
It takes a huge amount of courage and conviction to write a piece like this. I have worked with this dedicated teacher who is mild mannered and committed to his students. Never would I have expected that he would be pushed to speak out to this degree. Somehow the district under the previous leadership of Matsuoka and the current leadership of Maldonado, has strayed greatly from the primary mission to teach students and respect and reflect the values of the community. Remember that the entire administration, save one, made a mass exodus last year, replaced by many additional out-of-towners–who by the way are paid plenty, so that finding suitable housing didn’t seem to be the problem that teachers have when they come to town. I’m so sick of the sense of entitlement, lack of transparency and superior attitude of the current administration that has turned our school district into something that very few of us recognize anymore and their incessant press releases patting themselves on the back. The re-writing of the mission statement under Matsuoka should have been a big clue of the massive transformation that was about to take place. It went from “The mission of the Santa Barbara Unified School District is to ensure the educational success of all students through high expectations and a commitment to excellence and to empower them to reach their full potential as responsible, ethical, and productive citizens in a diverse and changing world,” to the insipid “To prepare students for a world that is yet to be created.” Neatly released from all accountability with that one.
Well said yourself, Sal, thanks.
Zebon: I am interested in understanding how this digital system docks your pay. Is it like a time card that you put in on arrival and when you leave? Does it not work properly? And have you let HR know that it is not working properly. Thanks for the update.
Yes it’s a digital timecard for Paras to sign in and out of work everyday. Not all employees are mandated to sign in and out using this digital system, only Paras which is a discriminatory practice. Admin claims that it’s to keep track of student coverage but if that’s so then why doesn’t everyone who works with students mandated it to digitally sign in and out? There are definitely glitches in that digital system and it’s already been brought to the attention of HR , even to John Becchio and nothing has been done. They keep illegally docking pay and sick time from Paras. They treat Paras like insignificant employees who don’t deserve respect. They keep violating California Labor Laws and they don’t care. They are shameless.
How about an audit on the SBUSD’s books? Who would be able to spearhead that? The School Board? A lot of us would like to understand where all the money is going, because neither the students nor the teachers are thriving, to say the least.
Yes open an audit and see where all the money is going.
Where is all the money in Special Ed going?
District can’t retain Paras due to low pay and the way they are treated by administration is an abomination.
While we’re at it, how about an accounting of the district’s legal fees and full transparency about the amount spent on the private settlements that are made behind closed doors for remedial instruction and other issues, bound by Non-disclosure agreements. The issues around Special Ed continue to be just awful with the sad reality that some 60 percent of the kids who qualify are there due to the pervasive reading struggles–caused by the ridiculously ineffective “balanced literacy” approach. Teaching kids to read the way the brain learns would reduce lawsuits, save $$ by keeping kids out of Special Ed and greatly reduce the endless academic and emotional struggles caused by this fundamentally flawed approach. The lack of accountability and flat-out mistreatment by the highly paid so-called “leadership” is stunning, and teachers like the one who wrote this original piece, have every right to feel abandoned by the system, just like so many students are.
The school board is not going to spearhead an audit because they have allowed all these positions to be created. Has SBTA demanded an audit? Where is our SBTA leadership in all this? Marching in front of the district office isn’t going to cut it.
Please, this is not about special ed kids and “para” educators. This is about ALL the kids is the district, the majority of which are looking to learn, in a standard classroom with dedicated teachers who want to teach. Start there folks.
It certainly is not just about Special Ed kids and Para educators , it is about all students. However, Special Ed is a marginalized department and it is treated as such. It’s about time people know how marginalized it is.
Basic, yeah, yeah, we know “all lives matter”.
Basicinfo: A FCMAT report is an audit by the state that the Superintendent, and the board can request it. It is an excellent tool and which will tell us areas of weakness and course correction. In the past special ed was always flagged for being out of compliance and being short staffed. FCMAT assists and provides guidance to local educational agencies in the areas of business and financial management practices. One auditor who was doing a FCMAT on special ed said that students come into this district with learning differences and leave with emotional disturbances. I took him to mean that because they needs are rarely met and sometimes not until high school or junior high( unless you have means sue, or beg , or know someone). When a student finds themselves years behind motivation gets lost, and many fall behind and have low self esteem. Others drop out. And juvie is filled with a disproportionate amount of special ed students.. Sad but true .. and so avoidable. Certainly does not help that so many in Admin and on the board still call these students, students with” disabilities” a perjorative term that may be needed on government forms (SWD) but certainly when we speak about this group we can just as respectfully use “differences” instead of disability both start with a “d” as well so it works. I ‘ve been asking for years for the board and leadership to stop calling these students this way. For our english learners the board under I think Matsuoka went with Emergent Multilingual Learners because it was not deficit based. Personally english learner does not sound any where near as traumatic as “disabled” Nuerodivergent or students with learning differences is the appropriate term. Also usually the IEP’s which typically aren’t given until you’re in the bottom 25% typically have mediocre goals with hardly any support. I have personally met countless students whose parents knew in 3rd grade that their child was behind but it took 2-3 years to get an IEP. The whole way special ed works is deficit based and frankly humiliating and soul sucking for the student. We need to do special ed correctly by screening and being proactive and generous early on. Not trying hard not to identify anyone but the exact opposite. Early identification leaves students self esteem intact so they still have the will to develop their strengths and passions. Being generous and acting early will lead to 70% less students in special ed which costs 4x more . We as a community need to see where the monies are going and correct the culture around how we teach reading and how proactive we are to all our students. Avoiding teaching reading in the way that is best is why we have the achievement gap. The destructive painful, apathetic culture around special ed and early intervention is costing all of us in so many ways. And all of it is so very avoidable if leadership had a clue and a heart.
Basic Info: It is about how resources are spent and how needs are met, whether it’s teacher needs or the 5 marginalized subgroups. Whites and asians manage to do well enough to get into UC eTc. The 5 subgroups all need the same thing. … early intervention and the scientific, evidenced based to reading. Once they can read by end of third they are on their way to college readiness. That is not the case now. only 15%of our EML emergent multilingual learners and 15% of those with learning differnces are ready to even apply to college. We need better outcomes faster and changing how we do reading and approach struggling students early will save so much money and help teachers get a liveable wage like they get at other districts nearby.
Yes it’s about teachers being underpaid and disrespected but teachers alone are not the only ones being disrespected and underpaid.
Paras contribute greatly to classrooms and they are the first ones to be wrongfully put under the bus by administration. This school year alone, administration at a school site tampered with school video footage to pin something on a Para in order to protect teachers involved. Paras are treated as disposable employees.
Your sentiment sounds like Paras shouldn’t be recognized at all because they’re not teachers on paper, but I can assure you that in a lot of classrooms, Paras do alot of the teaching while Specid Ed teachers are overloaded with IEPs .
SBEducator: Marginalization has everything to do with where money gets placed. The more insignificant the District deems a department, the less money it will receive. General Ed. teachers feel disrespected while Special Ed teachers and Paras feel invisible.
This Op-Ed is not about Sped and marginalized groups. It is primarily about teacher pay. While what you are saying is important and true, it is not what this is about. Perhaps you can pen your own Op-Ed to reach a bigger audience. This is about teachers being underpaid and disrespected.
This may be the most enlightening thread I’ve ever read here.
I’ve felt or suspected all these things about the administration.
What can a non-parent citizen do?
Besides share this thread with school board members and tell them I agree with what is said.
Yes share this thread especially with Special Ed parents, let them know how badly Paras are treated and how low their pay is. In some schools, specifically at San Marcos High School Paras are illegally being docked pay and sick time due to a digital system that was put in place by John Becchio who is in charge of HR . Is anyone docking his pay and sick time?
A COMMUNITY HAS NO GREATER THAN WEALTH THAN ITS CHILDREN. there is not one single person in this town who benefits when our education system crumbles. everyone in SB needs to engage with this topic: hug a teacher, beautify your closest campus, vote, and speak at school board meetings. if you think the district is making good moves, by all means, pat them on the back. but if you think our teachers and students deserve better, MAKE THEM HEAR YOU.
SB Educator: I appreciate that this article does emphasize more pay but one of the 3 things pointed to is”Cap current Special Education caseloads to protect our most vulnerable student’s access to their teachers.” Teachers leave special ed because it is too much work for too little . Special ed is a place with lots of waste and oversized case loads. We could save so much money here that can go to teachers and reducing class sizes. This article talks about class sizes and one of the other three points. This article is about being fair to teachers and paying more and less positions in admin. And it is about over loaded caseloads. I have heard that at previous board meetings from many at SB High. Sorry if you think it’s off topic but it is a place that has the worst outcomes and high expenditures so if you want more pay it really is prudent to be open to doing more that ignoring those heavy case loads and being out of compliance. Being out of compliance costs money and lawsuits. But you’re right no one likes thinking or talking about that… except special ed parents , para educators and special ed teachers who routinely leave our district..