Thanks to the Mark Zuckerberg device used by millions.
Our school district has its first day with students three days from now. A teacher officially bailed on us three days ago. Two days ago we had a Board meeting to address this issue and a couple of other much smaller issues. By mid-afternoon of that day, a replacement teacher with better crentials was located and has agreed to be on-site by Wednesday.
The link came through our High School Prinicipal. He once worked 130 miles away from here and had this new teacher as a Junior High student in that school. I have no idea how he made the connection from contact to contact to contact to find her. Her parents no longer live in that community. She lives in Louisiana.
Checking her Facebook page I see one of her friends is a name that I see when following my wife's Facebook connection. Turns out the friend is a friend of the teacher's mother but also the teacher. The friend lived in the same house as my wife at KSU over 43 years ago and that's why they have stayed friends. Looked at the teacher's husband's Facebook friends to find two people I know who live in this county and one attended our high school. Her husband works in the oilfiled business and is native to the area where they live in Louisiana.
For some reason, she had resigned over the Summer from her teaching job there because they were planning to move somewhere closer to her family here in Kansas.
At 7:00 a.m., Monday morning I will be in a Special Meeting of the Board of Education to approve her hiring.
I don’t do that FB thing but the wife does. It is a small world. Glad y’all found someone. My girls stat back tomorrow. In the middle school we have a similar situation for math and science going on. They had to do a last minute change for the advanced math students so some block rotation. So 90 minutes one day next day 45 and rotates. So the 90 minute days larger amount of students and smaller amount on the 45 minute days . I will be honest I can’t keep up. Thank goodness my daughter is all over this situation. She needs to be in this advanced classes and such. So awesome to see people like you staying engaged and watching out for the next generation. My wife stays engaged and does pta. I am a silent partner to do things behind the scenes i am more comfortable with that. Those whom are more educated do a better job with all of that stuff. I know my limits. Lol.
The business end of operating public schools is a daunting task. Our District has approximately 100 full-time employees and quite a pool of part-time employees. From people who have an Educational Doctorate or Education Specialist degree to people whose highest occupation in life will be pushing a dustmop and cleaning toilets. A significant fraction of all employees willl change from school year to school year. Three of our seven elected School Board members have changed since about nine months ago. The Superintendent and the High School Principal are new in those roles and one moved in from nearly 300 miles away.
I cannot imagine the utter chaos that occurs in school districts across the US every year. There are districts with fewer than 50 students total for K-12 and there are many districts in the hundreds of thousands of students each. Many districts operate across huge stretches of territory with multiple schools from tiny to huge, such as occurs in Nevada where there are fewer than 20 school districts to cover the entire State.
The business end of operating public schools is a daunting task. Our District has approximately 100 full-time employees and quite a pool of part-time employees.
At one point in my wife's career she had 150+/- employees in one elementary school !
I'm not surprised. The list of issues that come up grows as the size of the district grows. The Education Service Center whose Board I sit on has around 500 employees. There are two primary clusters of employees with the others literally spread across almost the entire State. Some work with only a handful of other employees while some work with nearly 200. We have an internal weekly newsletter and other programs to help those who are somewhat remote to feel as though they are an important part of the Center. Which they are.
Thanks for stepping to serve. The measure of a good school board is how well their students are doing when compared to others in the state. Our locale has ranked in the bottom 10% for the past several years. It is not the $/student or the #students/teacher or the #minorities or the #of students in poverty level that are the problem.
Bottom 10% in our educated state......
A little follow up to this story. Our woodshop teacher found the high school principal Friday afternoon and handed him a slip of paper with a name and telephone number and announced, "Here's the next teacher you need."
It was only during the telephone call that the principal discovered that the potential new teacher had been a former student of his about 15 years ago.
Connecting all the dots and now knowing that the new teacher (officially hired Monday morning) is a graduate of KSU and was active in 4-H and FFA when she was a student. The local woman who appeared in the husband's Facebook friends was at KSU at the same time and had been active in 4-H and FFA. It is my guess these two women had both lived in what is known as Clovia Scholarship house at KSU. Strictly females with strong connections to 4.H in their youth are eligible to live there. That also fits my wife and her Facebook friend who is a friend to the new teacher and her mother. The truly crazy thing is that the husband's employer had promoted him and was relocating him to a city less than 40 miles from our high school. That is why they were planning to move from Louisiana to Kansas in the first place.
You just never know.
Are finding teachers a problem where you are? Here in Fl. there is a massive shortage of them from K through 12. The Central FLorida area is short hundreds of treachers and bus drivers. School just opened and the shortage is causing a real mess. Some classes have "baby sitters" to keep law and order in teacherless classrooms until enough staff can be found. Glad I quit in the 3rd grade and went to work.
That seems to be true everywhere.
Don't let this distract you from the fact that In 1966, Al Bundy scored four touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship game versus Andrew Johnson High, including the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds against his old nemesis, Bubba "Spare Tire" Dixon
Good ol' Al. According to Peg he scored more times in that game than he ever did at home with her.
