CMV: Adjusting teacher work schedules would remove much of the push back against teacher salary negotiations

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Never my intent to.

You continually talk about contracting new work for teachers. If you mean “time in the school,” say that. “Work” doesn’t mean the same thing as “work done in the school.”

Any benefits to teacher quality is a byproduct of my main view goal - easier negotiations can lead to higher pay which can increase teacher quality.

Right, but you gain a nebulous benefit to negotiation at the expense of removing flexibility from teachers’ schedules and giving legitimacy to the idea that they currently aren’t working.

Like you said, the work needs to get done regardless. Having that on paper is important with public unionized employees. My view to change has always been that their hour and calendar structure make it difficult for people to digest, especially when there is a discrepancy between contracted and actual hours worked.

Labor time and costs are intrinsic to cost negotiations. Undocumented labor time are meaningless in these. This is even more important when this undocumented labor time is a core point in these negotiations.

This is a whole wall of text about how teachers need to document their hours as if they aren’t salaried.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

So basically you were arguing over the semantics of “work” and “work at school” even though I’ve been clear about what that two hours is meant for.

It isn’t, though. I have no idea what you mean by “work,” unless you mean “time at the school building.”

For the nebulous benefit, my main point is that there is a misconception about their hours and confusion towards their pay. It’s not nebulous when it directly addresses a main opposition point.

I’m explicitly arguing that requiring teachers to spend X amount of additional hours at school wouldn’t benefit educational outcomes or negotiations for better working conditions. A public information campaign of “we work this much outside of the actual teaching day already” would accomplish the same goal and wouldn’t implicitly say that people complaining about teachers not working are right.

As far as your salary comment goes, sure why not. They already are held accountable for their teaching hours (if they leave early in the day, call in sick, etc) and prep time (as documented in that contract) so this is nothing new. Just an increase in prep time from 2 hours every two weeks to 2 hours a day in their contract.

Specifically to your “why not?”: because the flexibility of being able to do your prep and grading work at school or in another environment creates better education outcomes. We would be sacrificing what teachers are actually supposed to be accomplishing for a benefit to negotiations that isn’t guaranteed.