A catered lunch, and a canceled workday
Column by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
“I could understand it if somebody donated the lunches. Maybe that happened, I don’t know. But it just seems to me to send the wrong message. I mean, they’re facing a $2 million shortfall, $3 million, whatever, and they’re having a catered lunch? Something doesn’t add up there.”
The hot tip was called in to me on Friday – that the Waynesboro school system had served catered lunches to teachers and staff apparently across the city’s seven schools, which, if that was the case, would be a head-slapper of a dumb move for a school system that is indeed facing down pretty substantial budget cuts in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
I got in touch by e-mail with School Superintendent Robin Crowder, who quickly got back to me that he wasn’t aware of any school luncheons on Friday, and further explained that schools occasionally provide refreshments or lunches for staff on workdays and parent-teacher conference days.
A little later, I was contacted by Renae Deffenbaugh, the principal at Westwood Hills Elementary School, who identified her school as a host of a catered lunch on Friday. As Crowder had indicated, the lunch was related to a planned parent-teacher conference day, which had originally been on the schedule for Friday across the city school system.
With teachers expected to be on premises from 1-6 p.m. for the parent-teacher conferences, the move to provide lunches is a nod to the longer workday, according to Deffenbaugh.
Friday was supposed to be a half-school day, half-conference day, but the conference day was canceled due to the pressure put on the school system’s schedule from the recent run of winter weather that has forced numerous schoolday cancellations.
Deffenbaugh said the details of the lunch were arranged before the parent-teacher conferences had been canceled, and that when the word of the cancellation came down she called the caterer to cancel the catered lunch, but was told by the caterer that the food had already been ordered, and that the caterer would have to eat the cost of the ordered food if the lunch didn’t go on as scheduled.
My first instinct was to say that there was some smoke here, but no fire, no damage done, and upon reflection, I think my first instinct was right to a degree and wrong to a degree. On first glance, I think it’s laudable that the school didn’t expect the caterer to eat the cost of the ordered food once the parent-teacher conferences had been canceled, one, and two, I understand the thinking behind ordering lunches for staff on what is to be a longer-than-usual workday. It’s not out of sorts for companies big and small to do that kind of thing for their employees.
But on the other side of this, you can’t help but consider this in the context of the budget struggles being faced by the school system. And same as we’re all up in arms over bonuses being paid on Wall Street against a backdrop of a bailout, I think there is some justification to folks getting riled up over catered lunches, and I can’t explain it any better than the person who phoned in the tip to me that got me started down this line.
It just seems to send the wrong message, is all.
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Why not have a pot luck dinner with the food provided by the parents? The school’s PTA can send out a request well in advance asking for volunteers to provide the food. Western Albermarle High School in Crozet does this on different occasions and it is very successful.
How about letting the teachers have a lunch break (where they can leave campus if desired) on those days, like most professionals get every day? I agree that catered lunches seem like a waste in this budget climate.
I bet that a consolidated school system (Augusta County, Staunton City and Waynesboro City) would saving at least $1 million/year in redundant expenses.
These school types had better act more responsible! Catered lunches??? Come on, you mean the poor babies couldn’t, for ONE DAY, send someone out to McDonalds or order some pizza and actually *pay* for their own food?
Their mindset is so out of touch with their pleas for more funds always, to be spent wisely?
Over the years I have heard from now retired teachers about their many perks, such as travel to Tidewater for a whooppe weekend disguised as a “seminar”, etc.
Time for them to give back a little to the city next time they come with their hand out!
You can depend on that happening, regardless of what quality product they put out.
Average Joe, that’s actually a pretty good idea.
Every company I’ve ever worked for treated thier employees to a free lunch every now and then. Why would you want to treat the teachers of your children any different? They’re generally underpaid (especially in this area) and usually receive raises that fail to keep up with the rate of inflation. And I’m not, nor have I ever been, a teacher.
And as for seminar trips…yep…every company I worked for did those too in combination with training. You have reward employees sometimes. You gotta have a little carrot with the stick.
How about a compromise on special lunches? Ask for people to commit/contribute to a potluck affair, as well as ordering some pizzas, sodas/fruit punch, and cookies.
We have that where I’m attached and the potluck food is very good, as are the deserts. Everyone gets something they like to eat and the cost is held down.
Bon Appetit!
To the PAULY person, I am a teacher in Waynesboro City and I do not appreciate the comment “Come on, you mean the poor babies couldn’t, for ONE DAY, send someone out to McDonalds or order some pizza and actually *pay* for their own food?” We are entering our second year with NO pay raise, as well as this year an increase in our health insurance, and it will rise 20% more next year! YOU do the math, thats a CUT in pay, when we are already underpaid what the average person makes. DO NOT tell me that we are pampered, you come try to work a day in my shoes with parents, politics and other outside forces getting in the way of teaching our children. Do you take your work home with you EVERY night?? Do you take your work home with you EVERY weekend??? Do you use HUNDREDS of your own money to pay for things in your workplace so that the children will have the extras that our system doesnt have the money to provide??? DO NOT judge the jobs of others until you walk a day in their shoes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have to agree with One Mad Teacher, Pauley. You are way off base, clueless actually. The most thankless job in this city is our teachers. I would guess you don’t have children in the school system because if you did, you’d appreciate more the hard work these folks do. The starting salaries of an entry level teacher combined with the additional expenses they personally incur because of the cuts in the budget leads me to not get my feathers ruffled if the administration wants to provide a lunch. I seriously doubt the ‘catered’ meal was shrimp cocktails and lobster tails . . .
The average annual salary for Waynesboro schoolteachers, according to the 2008-2009 salary survey of the Virginia Department of Education, ranges from a low of $41,744 for teachers at Kate Collins Middle School to a high of $43,826 for teachers at Berkeley Glenn Elementary School.
The average wage-earner in Waynesboro in 2009, according to data from the Virginia Employment Commission, earns $31,408 annually.
The comment above: “We are already underpaid to what the average person makes.” Demonstrably false. The average teacher makes on order of 30 percent more than the average wage-earner in Waynesboro.
Chris, come on. You’re comparing degreed persons with the general population. You know better than that. You must be getting tired.
I think that Virginia has about 20% of the population with a 4-year degree (1 in 5), and closer to 16% (1:6) here locally.
I believe that once that’s put into the equation, we’re back teachers getting under-paid.
Which is it? One Mad Teacher! says: “(W)e are already underpaid what the average person makes.” Hilbilywilly wants the comparison to be “degreed persons” with other degreed persons.
Those are two different arguments entirely.
Also different: HBW’s guesstimates as to data regarding the portion of the city population with a four-year degree compared to reality. According to the Census Bureau, it’s 20.2 percent, not 16 percent.
I don’t know what good it does to make the observation that someone who presents facts that run counter to one’s own suppositions is “tired.”
Here is some more info on average salary compared to educational attainment.
Interesting to note that the average salary bump for masters versus bachelors degrees is $10,000, but teachers get grief for having a bump of $2,000 for that achievement.
Anyone who thinks teachers are overpaid ought to spend a year as a teacher assistant, or take the plunge and do a career switchers program so they can take advantage of the supposed gravy train themselves. There’s a reason attrition is so high among new teachers.
Thanks for the information, Jeremy. I could not, despite staying up well into the night, find Census information specific to Waynesboro with crosstabs for educational attainment.
I tried a couple of different approaches to approximating a fair reading of incomes by attainment, but the best I could do was using numbers from the VEC that I have to assume that by lumping people together by occupation rather than educational attainment would end up being skewed even slightly.
That said, what those numbers seemed to indicate was a slight inflation for teacher pay in Waynesboro relative to the industries where one would assume college graduates would tend to fall in by a factor of 2 to 5 percent.
To clarify, I am not saying, nor have I suggested, nor would I suggest, nor do I think, that teachers are overpaid. A suggestion was made on this thread that teachers are underpaid relative to the average wage earner in Waynesboro. Upon examination, that is demonstrably not true.
The argument that teachers have more value than we can ever possibly compensate them for is an emotional one, and I don’t disagree with that sentiment one iota. From a look at the data, it appears that teachers are at least fairly compensated.
My stats were close enough for my point. That is: teachers are on average more qualified (they all have at least a 4-year degree), so it’s not right to use the average person’s (who doesn’t have a degree) salary in determining whether or not they make too much.
Sorry I upset you calling you tired. Took you as being thicker-skinned than that. I’ll be more kind next time.
Bottom line is that I’m for teachers. It’s a tough job and an important one. Just sticking up for them a little.
I’d say I’m pretty thick-skinned. I didn’t respond like some people do on blogs by calling you a name or something even more juvenile. I’ve even documented here how I went the extra step of digging deeper into the data to try to test the thesis that teachers are underpaid relative to other college grads.
I don’t know how many thin-skinned people would make that effort.
The statement made by One Mad Teacher! was that teachers make less than the average person. The data show that to not be true. What we can piece together from other data points says to me that teachers are probably fairly compensated.
It seems clear that we’re going to disagree on that point, which is fine. My disagreement on the point is based on having spent way, way too much time trying to find data to either buttress or disprove my thesis.
To reinforce, I’m also “for the teachers.” I’d like to see them continue to be fairly compensated.
Westwood wasn’t the only school to do it. Berkeley Glenn had catered lunches on Friday too
One mad teacher forgot to mention two months off in the summer. Plus being off on snow days.
Mike, teachers make up those snow days. A teacher contract is for a certain number of days, not a certain season of the year. So when we have to make up days later in the year, it means we must give up any previous work or vacation plans. This makes it harder to plan for summer employment.
Thank you Jeremy, thats correct we do have to make up those snow days, we have now added a whole week more to our school year to make up those days, (they are not just given to us) We are contracted for 200 days, so technically we do NOT get two months off in the summer. Lets see by the time we finish out the school year we have to work additional contract days at the end of the year, that puts you at the end of June. Then we have to come in during July to work 4 more contract days, then we have to come in for meetings, staff development, workshops, getting our rooms ready, and then, HEY what do you know, but its August 1, and we go back to work that next week. SO, to the average person, they may think a teacher’s job is all “cush” and that we get our “summers off.” BUT do most people take their work home with them every night, sit in front of the tv grading papers, doing lesson plans, go in after school and work til 9:00pm or later preparing lessons, plans, work for their children, oh and lets not forget the weekend hours that most teachers put in to stay on top of things and be prepared to be a good teacher. Drive by any school on the weekend and there will be cars in that parking lot, those cars are driven by hard working teachers that are ,”Yep, you got it working on the weekend!” Don’t take this wrong, I LOVE my job, BUT NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING gets a teacher MORE fired up than someone making the comment ,”Oh, how hard can it be, you get snow days and summers off!” NO, not really. As, I said and as Jeremy put it, “you try to walk a day in our shoes!” As far as the catered lunches, I believe Berkley Glenn had subs, and I think that Westwood had soup and salad. Whoa, break the bank there!
OK, from the Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder from data from the 2006-2008 American Community Survey (which replaced the long-form census):
Median income of people with earnings by educational attainment, Waynesboro:
Less than HS Grad: $ 20,446
HS Grad: $ 25,581
Some college but less than bachelor’s degree: $ 34,986
Bachelor’s Degree: $ 38,723
Graduate/Professional Degree: $ 58,375
So teachers in Waynesboro make more on average than people with bachelor’s degrees, but less on average than people with graduate/professional degrees. This makes perfect sense. Many teachers have master’s degrees, so they probably should make more on average than people with bachelor’s degree. On the other hand, people with master’s degrees in education (or social work, journalism, divinity, etc.) usually make less than people with professional degrees in law, medicine, business, etc.
And those income values are in 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars.
A teacher’s contract is 200 days/year.
There are 260 days/work year. Take off 10 days for two-weeks vacation, another 10 days for holidays and you’re at 240 days.
I’d agree that teachers are under paid and under valued by many. My personal belief is that teachers are WORTH much more than they are paid. It does trouble me that school administrations have an apparent sense of entitlement in the name of “it’s good for children”, they seem to think that they can justify every dollar spent because “it’s for the children”. The teachers lunches fall into this category. “We’re doing it to show appreciation for our teachers and the work that they do with our children”, commented one Waynesboro administrator. Nice thought. Nice gesture. When there’s money to burn, maybe. When there are huge budget shortfalls, is it really necessary? I think not!
I have worked in education and out of education. I have taught in public schools as well as charter schools. I am a conservative believing teachers’ unions are one of the most destructive forces in public education. They do little to protect the teachers who really need it, and seem to go out of their way to protect the worst of the profession. I was a candidate for the Alexandria school board (sadly, an unsuccessful candidate) who campaigned on fiscal responsibility having not just talked the talk, but walked the walk as a teacher. Most school systems and districts spend too much of our taxpayer dollars on administration and other superfluous costs, for example, a $92,000 salary for an athletic director.
It is painfully obvious that the most severe critics of teacher complaints have never spent a day in a teacher’s shoes, and quite probably would not survive, not just the politics, but the parents, the principals and the perpetual pulling in too many directions to count. Teachers are professionals who are often treated as hand-maidens, and whoever pointed out the high rate of attrition is absolutely correct. I recall working with a rookie teacher in Baltimore who was so affected by the horrific working conditions, that when she went home to Missouri for Christmas, she did not return.
No college/university education degree or teacher’s certification program actually prepares teachers for the realities of the classrooms. Teachers get little to no respect from students, which is learned from the manner in which their parents treat teachers as well. Sadly, administrators seem to forget what it was like being in the classroom as soon as they become administrators and also treat their staffs, often times, like indentured servants.
Teachers are people, not machines, and they too deserve breaks. A teacher can not leave the classroom because he/she has to go to the bathroom or gets sick in the middle of the day. When a teacher is absent he/she is responsible for having work prepared in advance for a substitute. Many inner city schools do not even have substitutes because no one wants to go there. When a teacher is absent, and inner city school teacher absenteeism is higher than in the suburbs, the remaining teachers have to fill in for the absent teachers, thus losing any break/planning period they have.
As for a “catered” lunch, teachers, like any other employee of any other operation are entitled to a treat once in a while. I recall during the average school year having a “catered” lunch two to three times, consisting of subs and the like. Whoever mentioned not having shrimp cocktail, etc. was right on the mark. Most teachers are in school by 7-7:30 a.m. and do not leave until 5-6 p.m. – if they do not have extracurricular activities such as tutoring, coaching and the like.
Just about every teacher I have been associated with brings work home at night or stays beyond 6 or even 7 p.m., not to mention the weekend work preparing lessons, conducting research and even taking additional classes themselves. And, FYI – I have never been on a “whoopee” junket as someone described it. Every seminar I ever attended was within driving distance and held in some smelly/sweaty gym/cafeteria.
Most teachers I know work summer jobs, some even work weekend jobs during the school year. Why? Because of the cost of living in and around the school neighborhoods. There are many people critical of teachers who do not live in the communities in which they teach. Teachers should not have to live in substandard housing in order to live in the communities they teach because they can’t afford a decent place to live.
For all those folks who say “you don’t go into teaching for the money,” that’s true, teachers know what they are getting into, salary-wise. Likewise, about the notion that teaching is a noble profession, also true. However, one can not pay their bills with nobility, nor do they deserve to be disrespected by people who know nothing about the profession.
If we want to maintain our high standard of living as Americans, we had better pay teachers what they are worth in order to retain and encourage the good ones to stay in the profession. Without good teachers, we will not produce good and able graduates to go on to college and become the next generation of doctors, scientists, lawyers, leaders, and yes, teachers.