Education Today

Support Staff

This is a touchy subject but I promised myself not to pull punches in these observations of "Education Today." Before I discuss support staff, I do want to emphasize that there are always exceptions to the rule. The criticisms I discuss are based on my observations as a 24 year veteran teacher. They are trends that, in my opinion, are destroying the idea of public education.

A modern school is a machine and when certain parts of that machine are not in synch then it does not operate right. The secretarial, janitorial, grounds, transportation, para educational, technological and maintenance staff are important pieces of that machine. Over the past twenty years someone has been fiddling with those pieces. Although a complex issue, simply put, support staff today is losing focus of the mission, which is to teach kids. While my examples are anecdotal, they do represent an overall trend in education.

The number of job responsibilities have declined. The custodian responsible for my room is only expected to vacuum the carpet and empty the trash on a regular basis. Granted there have been some personnel cuts due to the economy, but not long ago the classroom custodian also wiped down desks and cleaned the windows at least once a week. There was a time when the summer cleaning of rooms did not leave the furniture in total disarray. I schedule in at least half a day prior to my first paid day to put my room back in order, and that includes hooking up my computer and audio-visual equipment that has been unplugged and shoved into one corner of the room.

Instructional aides (para-educators) once actually showed their faces in my classroom to help students with special needs. No longer. Our compulsion to "mainstream" students and not in any way single them out has led to the disappearance of aides in the room. So what do they do? Help the Special Ed. teachers with their classes of 20? What is a teacher suppose to do when a couple Hispanic students that can barely speak or read English are put in their class with no bilingual aide? I actually had a Special Ed. teacher ask if he could send in a bilingual student assistant to help one such student, because he was not allowed to use a "para-educator."

IT and maintenance staff operate on their own sets of rules and because they can throw in technical jargon it sounds good. I can sympathize with the "We are under staffed" but everyone is. I have experienced cases in which maintenance requests were lost or simply ignored. Most of the time it takes a week or more to get anything other than the most important work done. Don't get me started on IT staff. Truly gufted IT people get picked up by high paying corporations and organizations with public institutions getting what's left.

Maintenance, custodial, grounds, and secretarial staff are largely as good as the people hired, but over the past 20 years the union has taken more control of what these school employees can and can not do. I totally sympathize with workers needing representation, but schools are not factories. Sometimes breaks can not be perfectly planned out. If a cog in the system breaks then people have to step up and fix it for the sake of the kids whether the union approves or not. In addition, managerial supervisors that place their own department above the overarching interest of the students are not executing their duty.

Districts have to negotiate contracts with classified personnel that places the needs of the school above the needs of the worker. A well functioning school is a nicer work environment and good schools will pay well also. More importantly, districts have control over the hiring and firing of managerial staff. If someone is not following the "Students First" philosophy then they should be let go. These are well paying jobs that should be easy to fill with quality people.

I want to close with a story. Manuel Lopez was the best custodian ever. He was elderly. His English wasn't that good. He moved kind of slow. But Manuel knew what his job was and he did it with pride and dignity and as a result was treated respectfully by everyone. The first day Manuel came into my class after school he asked, "Mr. Duvall is there anything special you need me t do when I clean your room?" He went beyond what the job description said and did not let the union manifesto get in the way of what he knew was the right way to do his job. He raised two great kids that went to college and now enjoys his retirement years.

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