On the inside, looking in

It's Election Day, which I think is an appropriate day to comment on the sorry state of our schools in California. Here's what's going on:

The food served to the neediest is greasy, and generally brown, including the wilted iceberg lettuce. Cold pizza is served for breakfast, and warm pizza for lunch as an alternative to the main entree - which is almost always something fried, in addition to regular French fries. If it's not pizza for breakfast, it's a gigantic, icing covered cinnamon roll or some kind of sausage. No matter what, it will be something guaranteed to mess with the diabetics' blood sugars, as well as every child's cardiovascular health. Walking through the cafeteria is enough to make me want to lose my own breakfast.

The majority of teachers are undeserving of their reputation as lazy. They get to school long before school starts and leave long afterward, often times after required professional development meetings, and then bring homework home to grade. They sit in the lounge at lunchtime, lamenting their ever-growing holidays and the time they lose out to teach. They buy supplies out of their own pockets, even clothes and glasses. I'll be the first to admit they work far harder than I do.

Physical activity is limited to a short walk before school, a ten minute recess during the day, and then maybe a few minutes during lunch if they eat fast. I think we can all imagine what they do or, rather, don't do, when they get home too.

As far as infrastructure goes, some of it is literally falling apart. Air conditioning and heating units break regularly, phones in the portables only sometimes work, and it takes careful magic to unlock one of the cupboards in one of my offices - the one that has the epi-pens. The district recently moved to all electronic records, but did not have the foresight to update the computers. It takes 15 minutes to turn on one of my computers, which in case of emergency leaves me with the usually very limited history contained on that year's paper emergency card.

As far as staffing goes, one of my schools last week had three teachers call in sick on the same day, and could not get a substitute for two of those classes. They spread out the classes with the absent teachers among the other classes in the grade level, 4-5 students extra per class. Kindergarten classes contain 30 wild monkeys, and the district doesn't know why no one's learning. There is still a classroom vacancy at one of my schools; there have been rotating substitutes since August but it appears none of them stay for long. Then there's the office staff. The principals all get a bye, they are there dawn til dusk and are clearly passionate about their jobs. The rest of the office seems to spend a large portion of the day gossiping about one thing or another, on the phone with personal calls, or any number of things that can hardly be claimed as work. I'm trying not to implicate myself here, but if someone was detailed enough to audit the office staff, I'm pretty sure the work could get done with many fewer staff members. And the janitorial staff! My goodness, those guys sit in the lunch room longer than anyone. Granted, they're not paid that much, but wouldn't it be better to pay fewer people to do better work?

I could go on forever, but I think you get the idea. I'd say vote accordingly, but I'm not sure I have faith in any of the candidates to fix the mess: it is so messy out there.