Well, I'm sorry to say that my district (or possibly my principal) has screwed up and once again, there are issues with my paycheck. Not just me, but many of the teachers at my school as well.

Back in April, teachers at my school were asked to return bonus money that had been deposited into our accounts -- even though the district payroll office had told us to "spend it in good health."

Now, we're finding that stipends and pay-for-performance bonuses, which were supposed to be included on this month's paycheck, are not on there.

So I have a few ideas for how the district can earn some money in order to pay us what they've promised us.

1) Charge bag fees.
I heard this morning that the airlines mad 2.5 billion dollars this year on bag fees alone. Just think, if every kid with a backpack is charged a quarter, every day -- we'll be rich by summer!

2) Mandatory nap time across the district: 1-2.
If all the lights are off for this one hour every day, the potential energy savings could be tremendous!

3) Selling Hot Cheetos
I don't pretend to understand it, but Hot Cheetos to my kids are equivalent to Crack Cocaine to Lindsey Lohan. We could buy bags of Hot Cheetos for 50 cents each and sell them at the apartments for $3 each. Heck, we could probably sell them for $10 each.


Whatever happens, I just hope the district gets it together and gives us the money they've promised us. I'm reminded of the final scene of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where Clark W Griswold berates his boss with the line, "If you don't want to give out bonuses, fine! But when some of us are counting on them to make ends meet..." and the cop says, "That's pretty low, mister. If I had a rubber hose, I would beat you..."

Well, after a week of preparation at school, I can say I'm just about ready for the kids' arrival on Monday.

I say just about, because yesterday at 5:30, when I had to force myself to leave, I know that I still had a few things I wanted to move around. I figure I can do that on Monday after school, though.

The important things are in place. Desks are arranged the way they should be. Textbooks are inside desks. Accountable talk stems, math strategies, spelling words, etc are visible on the boards. Pencils are sharpened and in the cup. Air conditioning is... well, non-existent as of yesterday. But since my SCHOOL has A/C, my room apparently takes a back seat in the district's mind to all of the other schools that are entirely without.

I can sympathize with them. I mean, after all, they've only had 2 months and change to fix these cooling problems. Hopefully, they'll get around to me by Christmas break. Also, it's nice to see DISD not waiting till the last minute to make improvements to my school. There was a whole crew of guys painting the hallways this week, and I for one am certainly glad that they did not wait until NEXT Monday to start. Because setting up an 83 degree classroom swimming with paint fumes is one thing, but having to TEACH in an 83 degree classroom swimming with paint fumes AND students would have been horrible.

Thursday night, we had a Meet the Teacher night, and so I got to meet a few of my charges. I didn't meet anyone that seems like a holy terror, so hopefully that is a good sign.

Now I just need to type up my lesson plans, think through a few procedural things, and get a good night's sleep tomorrow!

It's SHOWTIME!!

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email informing me that the Dallas Independent School District now has a Facebook page. The email ended with this statement -- "Staff are encouraged to become a fan of the official Dallas ISD Facebook page and encourage other Facebook users who may be interested to do the same."

OK, first of all, THAT'S just not gonna happen. Second of all, that email was almost immediately followed by another email reminding us that Facebook was on the banned web address list for DISD, so we would not be able to access the DISD FB page from school. We were encouraged to enjoy the page and its contents from home or a library.

However, over the past week, I have been having a bit of fun imagining what I could expect to see if I DID become a fan of DISD's Facebook page.

• DISD needs help defeating Don Ramiro in Mafia Wars! Please help by sending grenades.
• DISD is playing Fishworld and discovered this rainbow jewel-encrusted seahorse egg!
• DISD has just let 23 teachers go" (I wonder if any followers would have the balls to "like" that one).
• DISD is friends with RISD, FWISD, and LVISD -- See 148 similar stories
• DISD has sent you 1,500 poker chips!
• DISD hates TAKS!
• DISD has reached Level 15 in Farmworld! Send them a free chicken egg!

And so many, many more.

Hmmm... maybe I should become a fan after all.

Naaahhhhhh.

I don't want to go into any details here, but the sad fact is that I am directly involved in my district's latest financial snafu. Through absolutely no fault of my own, things have happened with my paycheck that now need to be fixed, despite being a colossal mess.

I got a letter yesterday that had the superintendent's seal, that basically said, you need to contact payroll to get this resolved. Way to put the ball in MY court instead of taking responsibility. In addition, I apparently have to look up payroll's contact information myself, since no phone number, email address, fax, etc was included.

Gotta love the personal touch.

It's a little after 7am as I write this. I'm looking out the window, where the snow is coming down somewhat intensely, and the ground is covered in white.

Yet school is open today, just like any other day.

Thank you, DISD.

Some of you may recall a few of my district's poorer moments, in terms of decision making and money handling. The most recent and glaring of these, of course, was the $64 million dollar shortfall which resulted in the firing or "retirement" of almost 500 employees.

Well, it would seem that they have taken action to recoup some of that money. A little belt-tightening, a little budget crunching, a little cost saving.

Here are three great ways that my district is saving us money (even as we speak!):

3) Those supplies we ordered with our budget money way back in November? Yeah, they never came, so one can only assume that the orders were cancelled and the money recouped. Ca-ching!

2) I'd say the water bill is most definitely not an issue at my school, since several of the water fountains (most notably the one in the 3rd grade hallway) haven't worked since October. They say water is vital to brain function, but we say saving money is vital to budget!!

1) A decision was made last week to shut the air conditioning off in the classrooms at 3:15 every day. Nevermind the fact that many teachers work in their room PAST 3:15, or that after-school parent conferences are now held in an oven -- think of the coin we're saving!!!

This is just one man's observations. If you've noticed any other cost-saving measures, please feel free to submit them in the comment section.

I can't believe it. DISD is actually... CLOSED!

Sure, it's 24ºF outside.

Sure, the roads are frozen solid.

Sure, it's incredibly treacherous to be driving anywhere.

That just hasn't seemed to matter much in the past. But today we have an ice day, so I am home catching up on DVRed TV shows and much-needed sleep!

Big story in the paper late last week. Scandal rocks the Dallas ISD!!! For those of you thinking, um, you're going to have to be a bit more specific, seeing as how scandal seems to rock the Dallas ISD as often as Angelina Jolie adopts a baby. . .

It would seem that the district has been following a policy of assigning social security numbers to immigrant teachers so as to fast-track them into the bilingual program. The problem is that these SSNs are either made up or already belong to somebody else.

So Joe the Plumber in rural Pennsylvania is probably wondering why his ID # is showing up on a report in Podunk, Texas. Meanwhile, I'm thinking I might need to take a look at my own social security number. I always was suspicious of the fact that it was so easy to remember, but now I'm guessing 555-55-5555 is probably fake as well...

Ah, precious Tuesday... Enjoy it while you can, Dallas teachers. May I humbly suggest that you check out this week's Mr. Teacher column on education.com, titled "Benchmark This!!" It is of course all about the frustrations of district benchmark testing, which we underwent last week.

Also, for anyone who has not yet signed it, I've got a really nifty piece of gadgety Guestbook down at the bottom of my page. All you folks coasting in to read, please sign it before you head out!

Now down to brass tacks...

Tomorrow is going to SUCK. It is going to be atrocious. Hellacious. God-awful. Battlefield Earth-esque.

Tomorrow is the day that the news comes down about who stays, who moves, and who loses their job.

The other day, one of the kids in Mrs. Math's class asked her what was going on, since his parents had been talking about the news. So Mrs. Math explained how the district had made some mathematical mistakes when adding money. The student said, "But we've been adding money all week! Why can't THEY add money??"

There's been a lot of speculation and rumors about how things are going to play out. They range from the wildly fanciful --

"I heard that teachers will be taken down to the principal's office, told they're out of a job, and then beheaded right there!!!"

"I heard they're breaking out the tar and feathers!"

"I heard that they would be fired and then forced to eat those Halloween Circus Peanut candies, which I swear are just orange spray painted styrofoam!"


To the mundane --

"Teachers will be told and then they have to go right back to their class and keep teaching."

To the utterly ridiculous --

"Teachers that are reassigned to another school are expected to be at that school, teaching their new class, on Thursday."

I know someone at another school who says that teachers who are let go will be escorted from the building right then and there, subs will cover those classes, and the teachers will not be allowed back until after school.

I hate to think that these poor teachers (who have done absolutely nothing wrong other than to work for a district that can't handle money properly) would be shown such little dignity or respect, but it may just happen.

For anyone NOT going through this right now, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers...

____________________________________________

Update:

Tuesday night: 7:30

Got an email through the district server that says they've decided to push the layoffs back a day to Thursday. So all that stuff I said above? Yeah, just take it and reapply it to Thursday. Only throw in Parent-Teacher Conference Night for good measure.

As Seth Meyers and Amy Poehller would say, "REALLY, DISD?? REALLY??"

For those of you living through or following the situation here in the Dallas ISD, you know things are looking pretty dire. To sum up the story in a nutshell, people who should know better apparently made a very 3rd grade error in their math while doing the budget for the past few years (misplacing the decimal by about 6 spots), and now us lowly workers are left to face the consequences.

If you don't live in the Dallas area, perhaps you haven't heard, but the school district has mistakenly overspent and underbudgeted to the tune of roughly $64 million dollar. Yes, a number that is higher than third graders are required to have knowledge of, according to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

At any rate, there has been a lot of pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth over what this shortfall might bring -- layoffs, severe program cuts, class by candlelight -- but I am not here to add more worry to the situation. Instead, I like to go by Stallone's credo -- if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the disease (ok, maybe that's not the context or the quote) -- and heaven forbid I be part of the disease.

So I've been thinking about how we can get this $64 million back without anyone losing their jobs, and I've come up with a few ideas. See what you think.


1) Pass the hat around -- the simplest solution of all. We pass around the hat, everybody at each school throws in a couple of bucks. . . In no time at all, we'd have that $64 million knocked down to $63.8 million.


2) Charity auction of teachers/staff -- I've never personally taken part in or been to a charity auction, but they always seem to work on tv shows and movies. A teacher stands up on the stage, and the bidding begins. The high bidder gets to take the teacher/administrator/superintendent home for a day to be their personal servant. I imagine I would go for roughly $23.50, and I would be willing to walk a kid's dog, clean their room, and file their PlayStation games alphabetically for that, all in the name of helping out the district.


3) Concessions -- Let's start selling Cokes during class for $2 and popcorn for $4.50. Sure, there might be more spills and stained tests, but think of the profit we could make!!!


4) Talent show out behind the barn!! -- this sort of thing ALWAYS worked on Little House on the Prairie, so why the heck wouldn't it work here? Just think about all the untapped talent that the teachers and staff of DISD have. We could charge $10 a ticket, and I'm sure people would come from milles around to be amazed by the big show.

5) Corporate Sponsorship -- I've been pushing this for years now. We get some major companies to back us, and we place their names on certain things around the school district. "Kids, please take out your Visa spelling list, sponsored by Kellog's." "Your math quiz today is brought to you by IBM, proud sponsor of a new generation of scholars." The kids already have a dress code. Slap a Nike swoosh on the breast of each dress shirt, and we cut that shortfall in half immediately.


Any thoughts? These ideas have legs, people! Let's get it done!!

Dude, you gotta, like, check this out, especially if you, like, teach in Dallas.

Excellent!!