The word “absentee” has a context to it: it’s not always used to simply describe absence, but it’s often used to describe neglectful absence. Its context is generally one that’s perjorative, which is why it was alarming to see the headline in today’s Free press: “Absentee rates rise for teachers in Burlington.”
But the article itself isn’t referring just to unscheduled absence or people disappearing from their jobs:
Burlington teachers were absent an average of 14.6 days for illness, conferences, personal days and other reasons in the most recent school year, and school-district officials are studying that number as they address a 23 percent jump in substitute-teacher costs since 2007.
Now… if this piece had been serious journalism, it would have done a little investigation: how did these breakdowns vary from previous years? Are teachers really shirking off more (as the headline implies), or are they just being dragged to more work-related conferences? “illnesses,” “personal days,” and “conferences” are three very different things and lumping them all together into a single factor is irresponsible and potentially misleading.
From my point of view, I can’t tell if this is a deliberate attempt to make teachers look like they’re not doing their jobs or just a poorly executed piece, but either way, there’s a level of irresponsibility here that needs to be called out.
Speaking as a school board member who is becoming more and more familiar with related contracts, I would say “conferences” and at least some of those “other reasons” wouldn’t be absences anyway. If there is a requirement for an educator to be where they are, then they are present and accounted for.
But don’t let me get in the way of an attention grabbing (but easily disproved) headline.
The reactionary and holier-than-thou attitude of contributors to this site is laughable.
The article breaks down by percentage the type of days Burlington teachers have taken off. And the article indicates that school officials plan to do a further analysis of the days. I understand it’s more fun to see a conspiracy in everything and to paint the media as irresponsible, but the reporter is clearly reporting on the facts that are currently available.
Perhaps GMD will learn to be more responsible so its reputation be will viewed more favorably beyond the reactionary left. Good luck with that.
Coupled with another stupid “Commentary Lite” in today’s paper, this seems to be part of a new campaign by the BFP to attack workers and promulgate their new motto: “Aren’t liberals stupid?”
Here is the actual breakdown from the article:
So, roughly 25% were not really absences at all, but teachers legitimately doing school business. Generally (in school systems where I’ve worked), teachers must be pre-approved for these “absences” and they are at the discretion of the school district. If the district doesn’t like these numbers, they have enough control to significantly alter them.
While teachers do have a generous number of sick days (as the BFP hammers), people need to remember that teacher working through an illness have an opportunity to infect entire classrooms of students, causing illness to spread throughout the community much further. In my experience, there has been more of a problem with people in the school working sick because they didn’t want to give up a day of instructional time than taking extra days.
Like others above, I’d like to see a breakdown of the average length of sick day absences — are they skewed by a couple of serious illnesses? Also, note that you have 19% of days off not included above — presumably dominated by family medical leave type stuff, given that many teachers are of the age when they are starting their own families.
Sigh… it would be nice if the BFP would stop teacher bashing, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Substitute teacher costs are up 23%…paying Kelly Services 20%…I’m sure that the few minutes here, few minutes there that each administrator took to fill vacancies was not categorized and added to the previous years’ numbers…ergo, substitute costs are up 3%, right in line with inflation.
In fact, it’s likely that costs are down, because they didn’t count expensive administrator time in that category last year and have substituted a streamlined system. The fact that Kelly makes a profit is not surprising to me, that’s why they’re in business. I applaud getting teachers and administrators out of any clerical jobs we can think of.