South Carolina school teacher ain't happy

[Backroads]

https://www.wistv.com/2019/08/13/sc-teacher-files-class-action-lawsuit-demanding-pay-classroom-supplies-she-buys/

[Midwest LDS]

Best of luck to her. I love teaching, I get to help kids which is very fulfilling, but I can't even begin to calculate how many hours I work outside of my work schedule for which I am not paid. I teach online and it's 10 times worse if you work in a brick and mortar (as outlined in the article, so many unpaid hours of work that are "covered by your salary😑"). I'm pulling for her.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

13 hours ago, Backroads said:

https://www.wistv.com/2019/08/13/sc-teacher-files-class-action-lawsuit-demanding-pay-classroom-supplies-she-buys/

Honestly, she gets three months off in the summer, often teachers even have their pay for the year spread out through all 12 months. Wish I got a three month break, this is nothing more than a cash grab.

[Backroads]

1 hour ago, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

Honestly, she gets three months off in the summer, often teachers even have their pay for the year spread out through all 12 months. Wish I got a three month break, this is nothing more than a cash grab.

But you run into trouble if you start comparing benefits. A lot of people have as much vacation as teachers--but paid.

I think the things are illegal intrusion of FMLA and murkiness of exempt/non-exempt.

[anatess2]

19 minutes ago, Backroads said:

But you run into trouble if you start comparing benefits. A lot of people have as much vacation as teachers--but paid.

I think the things are illegal intrusion of FMLA and murkiness of exempt/non-exempt.

Let's tackle the exempt/non-exempt issue first...

Teachers are paid salary right?  Not hourly? 

My husband is salary.  I'm hourly.  My husband works between 40 and 50 hours a week for the same salary.  I get paid for every hour I work and don't get paid for any hours I don't work... so if I only work 12 hours, I only get paid 12 hours.  If I work 60 hours, I get paid 60 hours.

So, how is a teacher's hours structured?

[Backroads]

20 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Let's tackle the exempt/non-exempt issue first...

Teachers are paid salary right?  Not hourly? 

My husband is salary.  I'm hourly.  My husband works between 40 and 50 hours a week for the same salary.  I get paid for every hour I work and don't get paid for any hours I don't work... so if I only work 12 hours, I only get paid 12 hours.  If I work 60 hours, I get paid 60 hours.

So, how is a teacher's hours structured?

Typically, we work according to a contract for which we are paid a salary. The contract usually stipulates contract hours and duties--teachers are paid for working such time doing such things. 

From what I gather from the article, the contract stipulated they work education-related duties and that running the concession stand outside of contract hours was hardly a teaching duty and thus ought to be considered separate from the teacher contract.

I suppose my opinion is if you really want me to do it, put it in writing.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Backroads

[anatess2]

4 hours ago, Backroads said:

Typically, we work according to a contract for which we are paid a salary. The contract usually stipulates contract hours and duties--teachers are paid for working such time doing such things. 

From what I gather from the article, the contract stipulated they work education-related duties and that running the concession stand outside of contract hours was hardly a teaching duty and thus ought to be considered separate from the teacher contract.

I suppose my opinion is if you really want me to do it, put it in writing.

Ok, that makes sense.

On the side of the administration... they would more than likely counter that the concession stand provides necessary funds for education.  I wouldn't really know because none of my kids are in school sports.

[JohnsonJones]

On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 9:51 AM, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

Honestly, she gets three months off in the summer, often teachers even have their pay for the year spread out through all 12 months. Wish I got a three month break, this is nothing more than a cash grab.

Depends on what state you are in, what they are doing may also be illegal.  Even salaried individuals have a maximum amount of hours that you can work in some places.  If they work you MORE than the allowed amount by law, they actually DO owe you overtime.

Furthermore, even by Federal standards, you need to be salary exempt for there to be no overtime.  No-exempt jobs, even if salaried have maximum hours you can work as well if you work over 40 hours in a work week. 

For teachers I think it is typical that you are salary exempt...but ONLY when involved with their primary duties of teaching or student instruction.  Anything outside of that is NOT salary exempt as is normally included as non-exempt in regards to maximum hours (which also includes hours worked already in the exempt status I believe) and overtime.

Many make the mistake of thinking a job is exempt when it is actually non-exempt.  Exempt jobs may have to do with supervisory or adminstrative roles, but lower roles in many cases are non-exempt.  Normally, for administrative, supervisory or other such exempt jobs (such as medical, police, firefighters) the exemption ONLY applies to specific duties. Forcing them to do things outside of those duties (For example, you decide to use your nurses as construction workers at a construction site to build a new hotel instead of what their contract defines) could actually also be in violation of the job and exemptions and put them into being in a no-exempt status.

In addition, imagine if your job had you not just buying supplies for yourself, but mandated that you had to buy materials for ALL your co-workers...including at times...your bosses, but it's not included in your contract or job description.  That is something that many teachers are dealing with these days from what I've seen or gathered from my personal observations in some school districts.  It appears this may also be what is happening in this teachers district and what she is also including in her lawsuit (good luck to her on that...she may win on the manning the booths, but not sure about the rest of it).

For Professors...well...we just jack up the price on the text book that we wrote and are selling to the students to make up the costs...or more aptly...that thick bunch of copies on copy paper that is sold in a stapled together pack at the university bookstore...

(I'm joking on that last line...well...maybe not entirely joking...)

Edited August 25, 2019 by JohnsonJones
grammar

[Just_A_Guy]

My sympathies are with the teachers on this, except regarding lesson plans during FMLA.  The nature of teaching is such that if the teacher goes on need, the work can’t stop—a substitute needs to be able to walk in and pick off where the regular teacher left off.  The absentee teacher basically becomes a manager to ensure that the work gets done, and managers sometimes have to work outside regular hours or even out in unpaid time to ensure that their designees do their jobs right.  That’s just 

I’m also a state employee, and because of the nature of my work—I stay in the office until the day’s work is done, whether that’s 3 PM or 11 PM; and  the “hours count” be darned.  If I needed to be out for two or three weeks, I wouldn’t dream of leaving my office without instructions as to what needed to happen on my case load during my absence—or expect to be paid extra money just for being a decent fellow and not leaving my co-workers and/or my client agency completely in the lurch.  I understand the nature of the work, and I accounted for it when I considered whether to accept the position at the pay scale offered.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

On 8/25/2019 at 4:49 AM, JohnsonJones said:

For Professors...well...we just jack up the price on the text book that we wrote and are selling to the students to make up the costs...or more aptly...that thick bunch of copies on copy paper that is sold in a stapled together pack at the university bookstore...

(I'm joking on that last line...well...maybe not entirely joking...)

Indeed, buy this textbook for $300 or you fail the class. lol

[Backroads]

On 8/25/2019 at 3:01 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

My sympathies are with the teachers on this, except regarding lesson plans during FMLA.  The nature of teaching is such that if the teacher goes on need, the work can’t stop—a substitute needs to be able to walk in and pick off where the regular teacher left off.  The absentee teacher basically becomes a manager to ensure that the work gets done, and managers sometimes have to work outside regular hours or even out in unpaid time to ensure that their designees do their jobs right.  That’s just 

I’m also a state employee, and because of the nature of my work—I stay in the office until the day’s work is done, whether that’s 3 PM or 11 PM; and  the “hours count” be darned.  If I needed to be out for two or three weeks, I wouldn’t dream of leaving my office without instructions as to what needed to happen on my case load during my absence—or expect to be paid extra money just for being a decent fellow and not leaving my co-workers and/or my client agency completely in the lurch.  I understand the nature of the work, and I accounted for it when I considered whether to accept the position at the pay scale offered.

 

You're comparing apples and oranges. Preparing for another teacher to take over vs actively working during supposed time off.

It's one thing to leave instructions to get the ball rolling. It's quite another to hire a dingbat warm body and expect full-time work from someone you are not even paying.

The industry norm is to prepare two-three weeks' worth of material, give the scope and sequence, all prepared before leave begins. This ought to be enough for a sub to take off with.

However, the idea of the substitute-the teacher who is observing and taking data--doing nothing with it but twiddling their thumbs for pay while the FMLA teacher must make sense of second-hand assessments and data and write every lesson plan? Why isn't the substitute with a better idea of how the class is progressing doing this? Why didn't administration hire a better teacher for the substitute job?

And why is the original teacher not being paid for any of it? Most of the time, teacher FMLA is unpaid. The salary is slashed. 

In your example, you are saying you leave a few weeks of instructions. What are you actively doing for work during your three weeks off?

 

[Just_A_Guy]

2 hours ago, Backroads said:

 

You're comparing apples and oranges. Preparing for another teacher to take over vs actively working during supposed time off.

It's one thing to leave instructions to get the ball rolling. It's quite another to hire a dingbat warm body and expect full-time work from someone you are not even paying.

The industry norm is to prepare two-three weeks' worth of material, give the scope and sequence, all prepared before leave begins. This ought to be enough for a sub to take off with.

However, the idea of the substitute-the teacher who is observing and taking data--doing nothing with it but twiddling their thumbs for pay while the FMLA teacher must make sense of second-hand assessments and data and write every lesson plan? Why isn't the substitute with a better idea of how the class is progressing doing this? Why didn't administration hire a better teacher for the substitute job?

And why is the original teacher not being paid for any of it? Most of the time, teacher FMLA is unpaid. The salary is slashed. 

In your example, you are saying you leave a few weeks of instructions. What are you actively doing for work during your three weeks off?

 

It’s hard to tell from the article whether the teachers are upset about having to make lesson plans before leaving, or whether they are expected to provide the sort of daily follow-up you describe with their substitutes even while they’re gone.  

Even if it’s the latter, though, I stand by what I wrote.  Supervising underlings to ensure that work gets done is the work of a manager, and managers don’t always get paid for all the time they put into their jobs.  It stinks, but it’s hardly a problem that’s unique to teachers.

When you ask about my own activities during vacation:  if I’m in cell coverage, I’m always “on call” during business hours no matter where I physically am.  That includes hearing caseworker updates and talking through problems with them, putting out fires with paralegals, doing postmortems on hearings with my substitute attorney after the judge does something wholly unexpected, and drafting emergency warrants.  I have done this on campouts, I’ve done it while hiking, I’ve done it on a boat in the middle of a lake, I’ve done it while in the back seat of my van cleaning up after a kid that just vomited.  It’s rare that, on a vacation during the week, I go over 24 hours without doing any work; and I don’t think I’ve ever been completely incommunicado with my office for more than two business days in a row.  

I certainly don’t expect everyone in every profession to stay THAT connected to their work—especially for free.  But, if teachers are complaining because they don’t get paid extra for writing out lesson plans and giving them to a substitute (which is all I could reasonably infer from the article)—my ability to empathize with that is, unfortunately, somewhat stunted.  

Edited August 27, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[Backroads]

1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

 

I certainly don’t expect everyone in every profession to stay THAT connected to their work—especially for free.  But, if teachers are complaining because they don’t get paid extra for writing out lesson plans and giving them to a substitute (which is all I could reasonably infer from the article)—my ability to empathize with that is, unfortunately, somewhat stunted.  

I inferred from the article the teachers were told to write lesson plans while actually on leave. I've heard of several cases as such going to courts before, and in each case the court determining it to be an interference of FMLA. It's not about being paid extra, it's about having pay docked (fair enough, I didn't think I was working), not actively earning benefits, and still being made to contribute. 

I see your point that it's a responsibility thing, but I don't see how that responsibility can be legally enforced.

It could be a perception between an unpaid vacation or such vs something as extensive as FMLA.

1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Supervising underlings to ensure that work gets done is the work of a manager, and managers don’t always get paid for all the time they put into their jobs.  It stinks, but it’s hardly a problem that’s unique to teachers.

You are using the idea the teachers at managers, which in my perception of the field is quite the stretch-- the principals are the managers. Plus the idea that the substitute is an underling. Why is it wrong for principal s to expect a nice pre-prepared buffer and then hire a capable someone to do the job for upwards of three months? 

Also, is this so common? Has it ever held up in court to send someone on months-long medical leave (not the weekend campout, not a week-long cruise), stop paying them, and still expect work to be actively done? Is this really a thing? Isn't a general rule of FMLA that employees be relieved of duty?

Edited August 27, 2019 by Backroads

[Just_A_Guy]

6 hours ago, Backroads said:

[1]I inferred from the article the teachers were told to write lesson plans while actually on leave. I've heard of several cases as such going to courts before, and in each case the court determining it to be an interference of FMLA. It's not about being paid extra, it's about having pay docked (fair enough, I didn't think I was working), not actively earning benefits, and still being made to contribute. 

I see your point that it's a responsibility thing, but I don't see how that responsibility can be legally enforced.

[2]You are using the idea the teachers at managers, which in my perception of the field is quite the stretch-- the principals are the managers. Plus the idea that the substitute is an underling. Why is it wrong for principal s to expect a nice pre-prepared buffer and then hire a capable someone to do the job for upwards of three months? 

[3]Also, is this so common? Has it ever held up in court to send someone on months-long medical leave (not the weekend campout, not a week-long cruise), stop paying them, and still expect work to be actively done? Is this really a thing? Isn't a general rule of FMLA that employees be relieved of duty?

1.  I can see your point, and maybe part of it depends on how rigidly it’s enforced/how explicitly demands are made and the formal consequences for ignoring them.  But even if it’s not made a condition of employment . . . as a parent with multiple kids coming up through the system, I want a teacher who’s going to stick with my kids throughout the school year; and if he starts a school year and not only can’t  finish it, but basically abandons all interest in the education of my kids mid-year—I’m naturally going to wonder why he took the job in the first place, and how seriously he takes my kid’s education; and I’m going to be less enthusiastic about any of my other kids going into his class.  As a principal, in addition to all that, I’d have to find someone else to do the job the first guy already said he’d do—and then, eventually, fire them to make room for the guy who wants his old job back.

2.  Is a teacher primarily responsible for the education of her class throughout the school year, or isn’t she?  It seems to me that if I want all the benefits and freedoms of being unemployed, I need to make myself unemployed.  Otherwise, my substitutes are going to continue to view my class or caseload as my class/caseload, and they’re going to look to me for guidance as to how I want things handled.  

I would also note that for a substitute to demonstrate as much initiative and ownership of the class as you’re describing—and to put up with the natural chaos that comes with taking over another class mid-year, as well as the lack of assurance as to whether they’ll even have a job next year—you’d have to pay substitute teachers much more than what I understand they currently make; and probably even somewhat more per hour/day than what a full-time teacher would tend to make.  Are full-time teachers (the ones who aren’t out on leave, I mean) prepared to take a pay cut in order to give substitutes a raise?

3.  Employment law isn’t my specialty, so I can’t offer a particularly informed perspective here.  But as a matter of policy preference, I have some conceptual issues with an overbroad application of FMLA.  Thirty kids still need to be taught a coherent curriculum whether the teacher is there to do it or not, and schools’ resources to cope with that situation are going to be somewhat limited.  Anytime an employee lets someone replace them, there’s an inherent risk that either a) management figures out that they are replaceable; or b) management learns that they are not replaceable—and the quality of the work suffers until the employee is back on the job.  That’s the inherent conundrum here.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Just_A_Guy

[Backroads]

37 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

1.  I can see your point, and maybe part of it depends on how rigidly it’s enforced/how explicitly demands are made and the formal consequences for ignoring them.  But even if it’s not made a condition of employment . . . as a parent with multiple kids coming up through the system, I want a teacher who’s going to stick with my kids throughout the school year; and if he starts a school year and not only can’t  finish it, but basically abandons all interest in the education of my kids mid-year—I’m naturally going to wonder why he took the job in the first place, and how seriously he takes my kid’s education; and I’m going to be less enthusiastic about any of my other kids going into his class.  As a principal, in addition to all that, I’d have to find someone else to do the job the first guy already said he’d do—and then, eventually, fire them to make room for the guy who wants his old job back.

2.  Is a teacher primarily responsible for the education of her class throughout the school year, or isn’t she?  It seems to me that if I want all the benefits and freedoms of being unemployed, I need to make myself unemployed.  Otherwise, my substitutes are going to continue to view my class or caseload as my class/caseload, and they’re going to look to me for guidance as to how I want things handled.  

I would also note that for a substitute to demonstrate as much initiative and ownership of the class as you’re describing—and to put up with the natural chaos that comes with taking over another class mid-year, as well as the lack of assurance as to whether they’ll even have a job next year—you’d have to pay substitute teachers much more than what I understand they currently make; and probably even somewhat more per hour/day than what a full-time teacher would tend to make.  Are full-time teachers (the ones who aren’t out on leave, I mean) prepared to take a pay cut in order to give substitutes a raise?

3.  Employment law isn’t my specialty, so I can’t offer a particularly informed perspective here.  But as a matter of policy preference, I have some conceptual issues with an overbroad application of FMLA.  Thirty kids still need to be taught a coherent curriculum whether the teacher is there to do it or not, and schools’ resources to cope with that situation are going to be somewhat limited.  Anytime an employee lets someone replace them, there’s an inherent risk that either a) management figures out that they are replaceable; or b) management learns that they are not replaceable—and the quality of the work suffers until the employee is back on the job.  That’s the inherent conundrum here.

A teacher pal of mine died last year. In October. I'm sorry he wasn't more thoughtful of his students. I mean, do you have any idea how ridiculous this sounds? And I get it. You're not talking about sudden emergencies, but the fact is, life happens.

I see and appreciate your philosophy here on devotion to the job, but if it's so important to have the teacher (or whatever employee) there in a still fairly strong role, why not just keep paying them?

I understand parents love teacher-martyrs, but are they willing to compensate the teacher? If the teacher is off for months having a baby/dealing with cancer/having a heart transplant, how can these parents who want such devotion convince the afflicted teacher to put in full-time work while being denied pay. Not for a few hours of help, but for months of work.

What should parents be willing to do to help a teacher teach when they don't believe in paying them?

Long-term subs, at least in my area, make as much as teachers, for the time they sub. The pay usually comes out of the money saved by not paying the regular teacher. Long-term subs often have a career of subbing. Sometimes they are looking to get a foot in, but often that is their happy choice to sub. It's honestly not a huge replacement fear.

[JohnsonJones]

10 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

It’s hard to tell from the article whether the teachers are upset about having to make lesson plans before leaving, or whether they are expected to provide the sort of daily follow-up you describe with their substitutes even while they’re gone.  

Even if it’s the latter, though, I stand by what I wrote.  Supervising underlings to ensure that work gets done is the work of a manager, and managers don’t always get paid for all the time they put into their jobs.  It stinks, but it’s hardly a problem that’s unique to teachers.

When you ask about my own activities during vacation:  if I’m in cell coverage, I’m always “on call” during business hours no matter where I physically am.  That includes hearing caseworker updates and talking through problems with them, putting out fires with paralegals, doing postmortems on hearings with my substitute attorney after the judge does something wholly unexpected, and drafting emergency warrants.  I have done this on campouts, I’ve done it while hiking, I’ve done it on a boat in the middle of a lake, I’ve done it while in the back seat of my van cleaning up after a kid that just vomited.  It’s rare that, on a vacation during the week, I go over 24 hours without doing any work; and I don’t think I’ve ever been completely incommunicado with my office for more than two business days in a row.  

I certainly don’t expect everyone in every profession to stay THAT connected to their work—especially for free.  But, if teachers are complaining because they don’t get paid extra for writing out lesson plans and giving them to a substitute (which is all I could reasonably infer from the article)—my ability to empathize with that is, unfortunately, somewhat stunted.  

It's not that, but it COULD be in violation of FMLA.

If the school system has more than 50 employees, and the employee has FMLA, the employer might be able to contact them for certain things.  However, actual work, such as needing to use 10-20 hours to fill out 3-4 weeks worth of lesson plans is normally considered interference of FMLA.  That's actually illegal, no matter how justified one might think or feel in regards to keeping someone up to date on their job.

Vacation and FMLA are very different things.

[Just_A_Guy]

4 hours ago, Backroads said:

[1]A teacher pal of mine died last year. In October. I'm sorry he wasn't more thoughtful of his students. I mean, do you have any idea how ridiculous this sounds? And I get it. You're not talking about sudden emergencies, but the fact is, life happens.

[2]I see and appreciate your philosophy here on devotion to the job, but if it's so important to have the teacher (or whatever employee) there in a still fairly strong role, why not just keep paying them?

[3]I understand parents love teacher-martyrs, but are they willing to compensate the teacher? If the teacher is off for months having a baby/dealing with cancer/having a heart transplant, how can these parents who want such devotion convince the afflicted teacher to put in full-time work while being denied pay. Not for a few hours of help, but for months of work.

What should parents be willing to do to help a teacher teach when they don't believe in paying them?

[4]Long-term subs, at least in my area, make as much as teachers, for the time they sub. The pay usually comes out of the money saved by not paying the regular teacher. Long-term subs often have a career of subbing. Sometimes they are looking to get a foot in, but often that is their happy choice to sub. It's honestly not a huge replacement fear.

1.  Sure, but the death example is a little extreme.  A dead teacher isn’t insisting that the principal hold his job open for him for when the resurrection happens, or telling the substitute teacher what classroom items can and can’t be moved, what bulletin boards can be replaced, what boxes of detritus can and can’t be thrown away.  The dead teacher isn’t drawing a salary, or insurance benefits; and isn’t accruing “years-of-service”/seniority/tenure for not working.  The dead teacher isn’t going to be back on the job before the end of the year asking the substitute to account for the substitute’s actions and/or potentially blaming bad test scores on the sub’s supposed failure to adequately cover this topic or that.

2.  Because you’re already paying a substitute.  

3.  Parents—and taxpayers—don’t want to pay two people—or even one-and-a-half people—to do a job that can reasonably be done by one person.  If the substitute’s not doing the entire job and the teacher has to make up the shortfall—I have no beef if the teachers want to go after the substitutes’ paychecks (or if the substitutes want to make argument as to why their paychecks should be bigger or their duties lighter, at the expense of the non-working teachers).  That strikes me as an intra-union turf war that doesn’t concern me (so long as the full-time teachers can find a perpetually-renewing underclass of substitutes who will take whatever scraps the teacher’s unions are willing to give them.  But . . . Not my circus, not my monkeys).

4.  All of which, if accurate and if universally applicable, sort of makes me wonder why the long-term subs apparently aren’t doing their jobs.  But, again . . . that sounds like a union issue. 

What I will note, though; is that pointing out there are a lot of people willing to take a particular job, doesn’t mean it’s a good job (see, e.g., the Chinese railroad workers in the US during the mid-19th century.  The fact that they took these jobs didn’t mean that the jobs were desirable; it just meant that entrenched interests wouldn’t allow them to work in any other capacity or on any other terms). 

Edited August 27, 2019 by Just_A_Guy