20th Day

The 20th day of school is an oddly important one for CPS. The central office allocate money for teaching positions based on the projected number of students each school is going to have and a student/teacher ratio of 28:1. On the 20th day of school, they count how many students actually have been attending each school and rearrange funding. Schools with low enrollment get teacher positions cut; schools with high enrollment are given money to hire extra teachers.

In theory, this isn't a bad idea. In practice, displacing teachers on the 20th day of school means 5 classes of 20-30 kids will be temporarily teacherless until they can find some other classroom to put them in or find a sub to take over. Since we all know subs don't actually command any respect, especially in inner-city schools, these kids end up running wild and not learning anything until all everything gets sorted out. I've heard people claim this is a political move on CPS's part: cut teachers at low-income schools that are already struggling and then use the resulting chaos as further evidence that they need to be shut down. I don't think that's necessarily true, but I will say that 20th day displacement does tend to disproportionately affect schools in low-income areas.

In previous years, my school has hired some displaced teachers back to sub for their own classes. This is kind of a shitty deal, but it's definitely better than nothing, and at least you know your classes are still learning. But this year they seem to have thought it through a little more and the plan is to have extended homeroom Monday morning so that the programming office will have time to switch the schedules of all the kids who are affected and get them into other teachers' classes that day. Good news for the kids; less promising for the 5 teachers that get cut.

So as of Monday, there's probably a 90% chance I won't have a job. I'm not exactly excited about having to start my job search from scratch again, but at least this time I have a little more experience and probably a few references from my old school. I also can't imagine walking into a classroom five or six weeks into the year and still managing to get things done, but I guess it's not worth stressing over the inevitable.

I know HR is supposed to send you a packet in the mail about your displacement, but unless that comes today I'll be finding out Monday morning during homeroom whether or not I get to hang on to my job. Wish me luck.