1 in 4 U.S. teachers are chronically absent

Working 170 days out of 365.

That is a sweet fucking gig.

 

If they can't find time to get sick during the 185 days they're not working, they deserve to be fired.

 

In Pennsylvania it's closer to six weeks. They're in meetings and training through June and the back half of July.

 

One of the most amazing things about teachers is they can plan childbirth, illness, family emergencies, deaths in the family, etc., to always happen during the summer or over the Christmas break so they never should have to take time off when classes are in session.

Quite frankly I'm also amazed firefighters, cops, EMTs, etc., who often work several days in a row, then have several straight days off, can't also arrange for such things to happen on their off days so they don't ever miss work either, or at least plan it so these things happen while they are on vacation.

 

Those are all accounted for in the standard teacher contract.

PTO is "you have 10 days to do whatever you want with." 10 days of that, when you already have 10-13 weeks off during the calendar year, is ridiculous.

 

Just pulled up a CBA from a district in Pa., and there are four in-service days for training/orientation in addition to instructional days. Teachers don't meet during the summer for free.

 

The reason they got it in the first place is because it was cheaper than paying the salaries college graduates and postgrads normally expect. That was always the unspoken bargain for government employees. "We can't pay you all that much, but you'll get good benefits and a decent, secure retirement."

But in our wonderful new economy, where the private sector has wiped out so many good-paying jobs, government work now looks like a (relatively) comfortable outlier. But instead of seeing that and saying "We should organize and fight back to at least have it that good," our crabs in a bucket society wants to knock out the underpinnings of some of the last middle class careers so they can be as broke, stressed and miserable as the rest of us.

 

Eh, I've heard all that before and it doesn't move me.

I think two to three months of the calendar is enough time off.

 

When I was a kid, way too many years ago, we had a young family move into the house next to ours in our working class neighborhood in suburban Pittsburgh. Back in those days, neighbors would occasionally get together to chew the fat. I remember vividly the conversation between my Mom and a couple of neighbors up the block, discussing our new next-door neighbors. The consensus was that no one knew how they would afford it. She didn't work and he *gasp* worked for the state.

State employees were looked at as "lesser than" 30 years ago. Now? They're greedy pigs. Meanwhile, nothing has changed with the structure of their contracts. What's changed is everyone else.

 

Those crabs in the bucket are the ones paying for the government jobs that are near-equal in pay, and have cadillac benefits, whether its time off, PTO, retirement benefits, age of retirement, etc.

Ask one of those crabs to look at his/her 401k account at age 56 (when seeing the government employees retire) and compare it to the retirement package of the government employee.

 

The crab is welcome to take the civil service exam and apply for one of those jobs at any time.

 

"My life sucks!
Their life doesn't suck!
That's not fair!
Make his life suck too!
So we're both happy then."