Fairfax County Superintendent Jack Dale is planning to tell principals to ease teachers’ workloads outside the classroom, following months of complaints from school employees who say they’re overworked and overwhelmed. Dale also committed to carving out a chunk of the 2012-2013 budget to compensate teachers for work beyond their 7.5 daily contract hours like planning and using new grading technology, according to an email obtained by The Washington Examiner.
“We have learned, over the past several years, that these additional duties will be necessary for us all to continue to have highly successful schools,” Dale told school and teachers union officials.
Teacher representatives told the school board about workload problems in early January. Among other things, they were frustrated that school officials heavily structured their limited planning time.
A survey of roughly 10,000 school system employees revealed that 80 percent agreed “very much” that “FCPS requires an extraordinary amount of time before and after ‘contract hours.” Forty percent said they were doing “not nearly enough” when it came to “fostering a love of learning in students.”
School board member Patricia Reed said she kept Dale aware of the complaints because of stories from school system employees: “It’s not just teachers: The other day a janitor said to me, ‘They always, always ask me to stay late.’ And it’s not right or fair and he’s not paid for it.”
In addition to “permanently [placing] in the base budget funding to support teachers taking on additional duties,” Dale said he will “speak to all the principals about ensuring we do not create inappropriate work load/time demands on our teachers this next school year.”
Fairfax County Federation of Teachers President Steven Greenburg said he was delighted: “If he tells principals to do something, he’s their boss and they generally do it.”
But he was concerned that Dale didn’t mention flexibility in teachers’ planning time. And he said paying for extra duties wouldn’t do much: “It doesn’t do any good to pay people an extra three hours after work if you’re not paying them enough for the regular hours to begin with.”
