Wife Like Me

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You may have heard I took a job as a public school teacher.  I've taught at public schools before, and private schools, and colleges; and been in administration half the time.  I've been a Principal and a College President… and now I'm teaching Spanish at an urban middle school.  Everyone comes up and asks whether this has to be the worst job in the world.  And let me tell you–it's not, I love it, and teaching is a lot of fun.  What isn't fun is the inane and intentional amount of inefficiency that defines being a government employee.  All the stereotypes are true, and they deserve what they get.

First, they hired me, and told me to stop by the school district office to pick up my new hire paperwork.  You're all familiar with new hire paperwork–basically a 15 page insurance application, and then 3 pages to sign saying you understand various policies against intrinsically wrong actions.  Not this one–it turns out the application and new hire paperwork will take me over 100 hours and hundreds of dollars to complete.  I have to drive an hour away to get fingerprinted at their official location, paid for multiple background checks, and paid close to $100 to overnight two sets of three transcripts to two different locations.  (Needless to say, these transcripts weren't opened for nearly a week by those who demanded I overnight them.)  I also have to get 4 TB shots over the course of six weeks from an office that not only doesn't take appointments, but has random and obfuscated hours of operation coupled with lines that can be hours long.  I actually have to be there at 7:30 am on Friday (but again, they don't take appointments.)  It's quite comical actually–you have to get a number and wait an hour to be called to get into line where your real wait begins. 

But let me digress back three sentences–we, as requested, initially called the HR department to ask when we could come by and pick up our paperwork, they said, "Oh, anytime."  We get there and are escorted into a side room, where we wait for 30 minutes, presumably for our three page packet.  After 30 minutes, there are 12 people in the room, all of them waiting to be handed their 20 page new hire packet.  Eventually the HR lady comes in, closes the door behind her and says, "I can now pass out your new hire packets for you to fill out and return over the next two hours."  I was there with a wife and crying kids.  So was the person next to me.  Not a one of the 12 of us knew about this two hour meeting, and so everyone was getting touchy.  Whenever we asked a question about our benefits, she responded, "I don't know that, but if you don't sign these things quickly it will take you far more than two hours to get out of here."  As an example, she was quite shocked when we asked her how to decide how many dependends to declare on our W4–they only had xeroxed W4s, without the backside; so she encouraged us to just make up a number.  And I won't even start on how horrified she was that we had dared bring kids at her spontaneous meeting.

Please, politicians, if you're reading this, know one thing: the easiest solution to the education problems is to make a universal teaching application that any school can access.  Private companies, make me a monster.schools that people will recognize.  Because as it is now, every district in the state requires a separate application, and because of the unions they won't even tell you whether they have an opening for you or whether they even teach your subject in their district.  And the applications, every one of them requiring original fingerprints, background checks, and letters of recommendation, generally only last 6 months… not even a full school year.

A teacher's salary isn't bad (an average year's salary for 180 days of 6-7 hours a day), until you find out what a lie it all is, and what "benefits" really means.  In the most Clinton-esque thing I've seen since Satan, there are a zillion benefits that are all mandatory.  So they offer me average money, but don't even mention until the captive new hire meeting that they take out literally half of it for all sorts of "benefits" I don't want and won't use.  I only want health insurance, and maybe a Roth-IRA-esque retirement plan.  No such luck, Bud.  Make way for 6% of your gross to be put into a non-matching money market account that you have no access to nor say over until December of 2035, providing no one's spent it by then.  They even used the line, "We like to have most things deducted before you see them, so it doesn't bother you how much it all is."  (That referring to the $650+ union dues.)

And there's no way to complain, because they're too Unionized here.  One of the many fundamental economic flaws with Unions is that the primary thing they do is create the need for a Union.  As long as there is an unnecessarily adversarial relationship set up between the Teachers and the System, then Win-Lose is the name of the game, and the System has a vested interest to be as heartless as possible–that is in fact their job–because if no one has complained through the only channel available for complaining, they obviously got away with it. 

So because they do hiring so late, I couldn't get my license reciprocity set up by the first day of training.  So they declare me a sub, and don't pay me for the first week!  But that doesn't matter, because they haven't decided yet what I'll be teaching or in which class.  On day one of school, I show up, finally get a key to my room, and lo and behold it is empty.  There is a stack of boxes in one corner and a stack of desks in the other–no computer, no phone, no teacher's desk, no stapler, no tape, no clock on the wall, no roster of students!  Not even enough books one class of students.  I put things together frantically and do what I can do.  When I ask where I get supplies–specifically a map, a CD player, posters for the walls, a TV and VCR, etc. they look at me confused.  We find out later my room had been robbed the night before, but no one knows what was there, and therefore no one knows what was taken.

I remember at Novato High when a teacher told me to watch, that a few weeks before every bond went up for a vote the school would announce it didn't have enough money for something really basic.  I don't know if any bonds are up soon, but they've told us now we not only don't get books, but we're out of copier paper.  So no books, no worksheets, no tests.

Pay day comes, and there's no paycheck for me.  I call the district office, and they say, "We don't even have a file for you on the computer!"  All this while my wife, two children, and I are eating rice and ramen, and little else.  Our water has been shut off at our old house and our gas shut off at our new.  Eventually they mail me a check for my one day of subbing–$85, along with an explanation that they "can't promise anything, but will try to get my application inputted for the next pay cycle."  Luckily my wonderful Principal went to bat for me, and got me paid $1000.  This pays most of last month's mortgage, and tides me over until I get a second paycheck, again only netting $1000.  Then a letter: while after two paychecks and a month of work I have only netted $2K, because of one-time fees that $2K reflects an overpayment of $850!  So my next paycheck will have an additional $850 taken out.  Oh, and because I was a sub that first day, and subs don't get paid for training, they're docking me another $1000.  And they're only giving m
e half-credit for my teaching experience, and not giving 100% credit for my degrees, so they're now only paying me $34000 for the year.  That's a $6000 pay cut in addition to the $15000 of "benefits" they're taking out. 

I've worked at private schools.  I know that without any government funds you can build an amazing school–so to see everything go wrong at every turn, and have people sheepishly blame society for not flushing more money down their hole is dastardly.  End of the day, I'm netting less than my mortgage, not including food or utilities; and it's not because the unions aren't strong enough or because the voters haven't raised the sales tax higher than 12.5% around here.  It's because the bureaucracy has grown so large and so socialist it can't be fed on freakishly high taxes, and no overworked employee has any remaining incentive to do their job.

So as of this writing, my gas and water are still shut off and my next paycheck will be for $400.