unrealized anticipation
kateI attended the Hillsborough County School Board meeting last night ready to raise hell about next year’s proposed schedule change. Or at least watch some other people do so. Went something like this…
One of the organizers (read: instigators. big fan!) told me 75 teachers would be there. Showed up and counted maybe 24. Tops. A few from Freedom and King amidst 20 from Armwood alone.
“Wow. Great turnout,” I told one of them.
Another Armwood educator said their spokesman was slated to speak toward the end of the meeting and would I like to see a copy of the speech?
Sure.
She handed me a three-page dissertation, but I read through it.
“Who’s reading this diatribe?” I asked, looking to tell Homeboy to cut it down to one page or run the risk of losing his audience.
Teachers. They love to hear themselves talk.
“He’s over there,” someone said and pointed him out.
My jaw hit the floor. Angry Armwood from the Holocaust Museum was our spokesman?
Good God. We’re f*cked.
“Umm… okay,” I said, “I’m going to sit in the back and kind of spread out. Write all this down.”
“So many teachers are afraid to be here. Afraid they’ll lose their jobs,” someone said.
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I just don’t want to be associated with Looney Tunes. Thanks though.”
I took a seat in the back of the room and listened to the proceedings with giddy anticipation. Several areas of the speech were in all CAPS. Couldn’t wait for Angry Armwood to lose it in front of television cameras, the school board and a comatose audience. This was going to be great. All I needed was some popcorn and a beverage.
After two hours, one of the board members said the time had finally come for audience comments. Angry Armwood stood up. Here we go! This was it! Got my pen, paper, and cell phone camera. Action!
Said cell phone began vibrating in my hand.
“Hello?” I whispered. “Mom? You okay? The boys okay?”
“Yeah, honey, but I’m getting tired. Your dad called and needs more medicine. I’m sorry but I need you to come home.”
“Are you f*cking kidding me?”
Haven’t had a buzz kill this bad since that time in college we couldn’t find the cow pasture.
***cross-posted at
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February 15th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
The Hillsborough County School Board has seriously lost its collective mind with this plan. I mean, they’re caught between a rock and a hard place, given the fact that the state government is mandating class sizes without any additional funding to make it happen and the several million dollar shortfall the HCSB budget ALWAYS has. If I were on the school board I’d just refuse to follow the class size guidelines. If Tallahassee bitched, my response would be, “You want us to have smaller classes? Fine. Pony up the money to pay for the teachers we need to make it happen, or go F*CK yourselves sideways. Teachers don’t appear out of thin air, and the ones we have are gonna walk if we dump any more work on ‘em.”
But there’s no way in hell Hillsbourough’s teachers are gonna stand for this for very long, at least not without a dramatic upswing in health care costs due to stress-related illnesses.
February 15th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Teachers have to get off their asses and get organized if anything is to change. Did you see the editorial in the Trib today? All on Elia’s side. And teachers will just moan and groan without the nerve to do much more. Tons would rather leave the profession than change it.
Pathetic.
February 16th, 2007 at 1:23 am
kate - Mary Ellen Elia and Rosemary Godreau are BFFs from leadership school; back in the last school board election the Trib editorial page did everything they could to elect Elia’s butt boy Ken Allen.
CTA could try doing something besides agreeing to crappy contracts and endorsing losers, too. The district has way too many administrators making too much money for the mediocre job they do, and the idea of promoting teachers into administrative slots makes about as much sense as .. promoting computer programmers to be CEOs. IOW, not much.