{"id":498606,"date":"2010-04-01T12:13:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2010\/04\/01\/2647802\/teachers-are-asked-to-give-more.html#mi_rss=Opinion"},"modified":"2010-04-01T12:13:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:13:55","slug":"viewpoints-teachers-are-asked-to-give-more-for-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/498606","title":{"rendered":"Viewpoints: Teachers are asked to give more for less"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t<\/a>
\n\t
\n\tJill Duman<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On most days, Jonathan Defty opens his classroom at about 7:45 a.m., a full 45 minutes before school begins. Tall and lean, with a stocking cap, jeans and a khaki-colored jacket, Defty looks more like the Marine that he was than the first-grade teacher he is now, 23 years later. On the walls of his classroom are the expectations for his small-fry students: Be Responsible. Be Productive. Be Kind. Be Your Best.<\/i> <\/p>\n

Defty, a teacher for 17 years, is at his post early for the handful of kids needing help on their way to reading fluently. At the end of the day, he’ll stay an hour after school to supervise the running club he started at Marguerite Montgomery Elementary. When he’s done, he’ll head over to the new Davis High School track where Defty, a former school athlete, is coaching DHS track and field runners over the hurdles.<\/p>\n

“It’s all about making progress,” he tells the runners who slow their pace on the approach. “Think about going through the hurdle.” <\/p>\n

The obstacle course is a perfect metaphor for Defty and teachers all over California. For the second time in two years, more than 20,000 of them received the dreaded Ides of March pink slips saying they may not have a job next year. Those who remain will face an array of challenges: less janitorial, counseling and front-office support, fewer resources for struggling students and larger classes, inching up to 30 students even in the lowest elementary school grades. Those ratios give even experienced teachers like Defty pause. “At 20-to-1 or 21-to-1, I can get all the kids to a place where they’re reading well in first grade,” he says. “With 30-to-1, that becomes a huge question.” <\/p>\n

The school district that employs Defty and other districts around the state are asking teachers for salary concessions to save the jobs of colleagues and soften the blow of budget cuts threatening all levels of public education. Some educators, including teachers in the Folsom Cordova, Twin Rivers and San Juan unified districts, have already agreed to compensation concessions. Teachers in districts like Sacramento City Unified and Davis Joint Unified have been slow to do so. <\/p>\n

Defty predicts his Davis colleagues will ultimately support some sort of salary concessions. Across the causeway, Erik Knudson, a sixth-grade GATE teacher at Sacramento’s Phoebe Hearst Elementary, is less sure. “We’re all in this together,” says Knudson, a 19-year veteran educator. “That’s what’s been heard several times in the past decade, but whenever they need something, they come to the teachers.” <\/p>\n

“We serve the parents, we serve the community, ” says Gail Johnson, who will retire from teaching this year after 26 years at the same Davis elementary school. “Our job is such a huge job, and we don’t get paid squat for it.” The budget news for California school districts is grim. Plans for 2010-11 call for laying off 88 educators in Davis; 700 pink slips were sent out in the Sacramento City Unified School District, although the district has rescinded 170 of those warnings. <\/p>\n

As a result, we will be asking a lot of veteran teachers in the coming year. We’ll be asking them to enlarge their classes and still bring students up to state and national standards. We’ll still want our fifth-graders up to speed on a new science curriculum, our eighth-graders whizzing through algebra, our gifted kids challenged, our special-needs kids nurtured and mainstreamed and our English learners scoring proficiently on standardized tests – all this in a safe, caring classroom environment. <\/p>\n

And that’s just during the school day. Off the clock, we will continue to count on teachers for extras: early morning reading intervention, late-afternoon parent conferences, weekend hours to change the classroom bulletin board, grade folders and tweak English papers. And it would be great if they would continue coordinating field trips, directing plays, transforming their classrooms into living history centers and coaching the debate team. <\/p>\n

We want all of these things from a California public school education, and we expect our teachers to do them enthusiastically and cheerfully, without making parents or the public uncomfortable about wanting them done. We’ve always wanted quality public school teaching for cheap. We worry about losing college presidents and distinguished professors to private industry, but acknowledge that we will never fully compensate K-12 teachers for the essential job of educating our kids. <\/p>\n

This year we are asking teachers to do what they do for even less so we can triage public education. All over California, we are asking public employees to make similar concessions as the state staggers under a budget shortfall that could top $20 billion. As school districts struggle to close multimillion-dollar deficits – $30 million for Sacramento City, $6 million for Davis – it is appropriate for taxpayers and parents to ask teachers for sacrifices. <\/p>\n

But it is also appropriate to acknowledge that we have not scaled back expectations for our children’s education – only what we are able to pay to get the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jill Duman On most days, Jonathan Defty opens his classroom at about 7:45 a.m., a full 45 minutes before school begins. Tall and lean, with a stocking cap, jeans and a khaki-colored jacket, Defty looks more like the Marine that he was than the first-grade teacher he is now, 23 years later. On the walls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}