Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

[mbperrin]

75. Actually, it's more like 6:30 am to 8:30 pm, typically.

They're there when I arrive at 7:15, and they're there at 4:30, when the last students are dismissed, and they are there at 6 pm when I drive back by on our way to supper, and they are there for evening events like basketball games, volleyball games, debate tournaments, and so on, as well as mandatory attendance at Saturday events involving our students, both in town and out of town, so sometimes coming back on the bus from Amarillo 300 miles away with a team that left there at 9, they eat, and arrive back here around 4 am.

They're also 12 month contracts, which means they off two weeks in the summer, rather than the summer, like 10 month employees like myself and other teachers. They also do home visits on weekends, do workplace inspections as part of our co-op education program with employers.

There are no public employee unions in Texas. They are prohibited by law. All teachers are on one-year contracts with no expectation of renewal, which basically means we're at-will employees, and the administrators are on 3 year contracts, again with no expectation of renewal. This way, if you're not offered a new contract in May for the following fall, you have no job. You weren't fired; you just were not re-hired.

This is Texas.