The Latest Word - December 2010

The OUSD online, automated substitute teacher assignment system, SmartFindExpress, is unchanged from previous years.

In late September, Interim Executive Officer Barbara Gee sent notice to all OUSD substitute teachers that the OUSD had been forced to lay off an unspecified number of regular classroom teachers, and that under the California Education Code these laid off teachers had preference for assignment to work as substitute teachers.

At the same time that this notice was mailed, substitute teachers and school sites experienced problems in using the OUSD online system for requesting substitute teachers and for obtaining substitute teaching assignments.

As a consequence, a number of substitute teachers became concerned that the established online system for assigning substitute teaching assignments had been disrupted by an obligation to first offer substitute assignments to laid-off teachers.

This was not the case.

In discussions with OEA representatives, OUSD officials have confirmed that the online assignment system, SmartFindExpress, has not been changed. In fact, only four laid-off OUSD teachers have asserted a right under the CA Education Code for preferential assignments to substitute teaching assignments. Their right to preference has been met without any change to the normal system as used by OUSD substitute teachers. There have been instances of problems with the online assignment system, but these problems have been quickly resolved and are completely unrelated to an obligation to provide assignment preference to laid-off teachers.

To learn more about how the OUSD system for making substitute teaching assignments works, please go to the Did You Know tab on the OEA Substitute Teachers site.

Should any substitute teacher experience problems with SmartFindExpresss or with other aspects of the OUSD substitute teaching assignment system, please inform your OEA representatives via email at Substitutes@OaklandEA.Org.

The Latest Word November 2010

Welcome to the Sub Café

In this corner of the OEA web site, we hope to include a monthly Substitute Teacher e-newsletter. We aim to have column from the Substitute Caucus Chair Andy Young, letters to the editor, the blog, Sub Life and articles addressing other sub issues.

Current articles being researched include: An assessment of what benefits are included in union membership and what benefits might be available from California Teachers Association and the Oakland Unified School District for free or a fee. We are also following up a report that sub may face dismissal from the district using a measure of reaching the forth of four negative work place infractions or events without being able to document any of the infractions or events but the last.

We also hope to follow up on the letter from anonymous about changes in job referrals.

Get involved. Please stay a while.

Your wait staff

"Why it is Harder to Find Jobs: and Why it Oughtn't be Ex-Teachers vs. Subs”

By Anonymous

This is my third year being a substitute teacher for OUSD. I try to work as many days as I can, up to five days a week. And each year it seems incrementally harder to find work than the last. Talking to older subs, I have heard them say that they used to get tons of calls for jobs, back when it was all done telephonically, when the demand for needed substitute positions far exceeded the supply of substitute professionals, before the recession. But this year has been special. And although not an expert on the subject, I can tell you some of "what" has changed and also some of the "why.”

At the OEA Substitute Caucus two years ago, I remember sitting in on a Bargaining Session (with the same team in 2008/2009 as now in 2010/2011!!!) when there was talk about trying to "bargain" into the OUSD-OEA contract some "language" for rewarding long-time subs with some sort of benefits package. This idea was based on a precedent set in Los Angeles that substitute teachers who work at least 100 days in the previous year are awarded a form of benefits if they continue to work a certain amount of days the following year. Uninsured, this was and still is a very important issue for me. Ultimately the Bargaining team had to back off of this proposal. The following school year (2009/2010) there was a large number of teacher lay-offs in LA, and these laid-off teachers were given priority status over (regular) substitute teachers for acquiring substitute jobs within their district. At the time, this was a big deal because it became harder for long-time subs to maintain their benefits package through working consistently. This generated some animosity between the two groups. I don't know what has become of that situation today...

So, mirroring LA last year, OUSD has laid off a large number of teachers this year. I received a memo in the mail with some confusing jargon about teacher lay-offs that I thought was unrelated to how I go about getting jobs in this district. A fair number of my jobs come from teachers I have subbed for before, requesting me to come back, who put my employee ID directly into the system. Sometimes the secretary or assistant principal does this for them. But as I now understand it, this year there has been a change in the way substitute jobs are created. This request-method may have been replaced with a system where all jobs are listed on the Smartfind Express website to be offered first to laid-off teachers and second to (regular) substitute teachers. SO. That may be why there are less jobs on the system these days. This is what I believe the memo, which you may or may not have received, was trying to communicate.

A final point: This obviously won't generate the same ex-teacher vs. sub animosity it did in LA, particularly because benefits aren’t on the line. I still believe that this is neither groups’ fault. With no official contract and an attempted imposed contract still looming from last year (and the year before that), it is especially important to stick together as coworkers in the crazy profession of teaching: substitute or otherwise.

Where is the site administrator?

by Bill McCune

Because I am married to someone with a good job I was just able to take a couple of days off. Even so I compulsively checked the computer for work. I do this a dozen times a day from very early morning until quite late at night. Because I do this so constantly I work often but it means that I spend about 8-12 non-classroom hours a week in pursuit of work. But this is not what this entry is about.

Yesterday at 8:30 am there were two jobs available that day. These two jobs just sat. I checked back again and again, I even opened the entries and found the opportunity to accept the jobs. 9 am, 10 am and finally after 11 am the jobs were gone.

Why in the depths of this depression when many subs are saying they aren’t finding enough work to pay the rent and phone bill were these jobs going untaken?

Having worked at both schools and decided not to go back I think the word must have finally gotten out. Too bad the central administration can’t figure this out. Subs are the canaries in the mine. Zillions of dollars and hours could be saved by replacing every principal whose school takes more than 30 minutes to find a sub.

If you work at a school more than once and have never seen the site administrator (principal) and have never had an assistant principal or principal stick their head in the room and check you and your students out very carefully then you very likely have found a failing school. If you have disruptive students that are sent right back to the classroom or choose on campus suspension because it is so poorly supervised that it is more fun than the classroom you have a better sense of the school failing than all of the standardized tests in the world could provide. If subs don’t get support at a school I am sure that you will find that third of the schools students are failing and that it has more to do with an environment not suitable for learning than the efforts of teachers.

And the same principle applies to those supervising principals. A district with more than 4 or 5% failing principals needs to replace central administrators and school board members. I don’t think this requires spending boat loads of money just a little American activism. Much improvement could occur in a single year or election.

So what’s the fuss and spending about testing, laying blame on individual teachers and endless charter school chatter all about? It must be the money and political careers to be made promoting testing, antiunion opinion and charter (read corporate) schools.