Jose Wells3 said:People call him a "veterinarian" as an insult because he treats students like a flock of sheep, assuming they can't tell the difference. Honestly, he should just stick to his degree—whether that means focusing on his actual field or tending to livestock—and stay far away from education reform.
There’s a running joke about those attending KFC, but I don't think it's helpful to weaponize someone's education level during a debate before they've even finished their own studies. Even if you believe it, it doesn't actually add anything to the conversation.
shadowtiger0 said:Because that’s exactly what it is. Every single one of my colleagues who came from competitive prep schools tells me that high school was actually tougher than college. And we’re talking specifically about the education major here, just so there’s no confusion.
I see people here using "veterinarian" as some sort of insult toward the Secretary (even though the man is a PhD, but let's just gloss over that for a second). Honestly, I wouldn’t want MY KIDS being taught by teachers who think being a veterinarian is somehow derogatory.
It’s an incredibly demanding program—certainly way harder than what some of my colleagues currently working in schools went through—so when they try to degrade him by calling him a "vet," they’re really just exposing themselves. It says more about them than anything else. But then again, I’ve seen plenty of that in faculty lounges: massive egos with absolutely zero substance to back them up.
If they wanted to call him a Republican Party hack, a bad politician, or whatever other labels they want to throw around—fine, no problem there.
But the guy is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and people with four years of experience from the College of Arts and Sciences are out here trying to use his profession as a slur...
The guy is a VET, NOT A TEACHER. Not even a professor. He has nothing to do with the Department of Education. And that department is a total mess. So, yeah—that's why they call him a veterinarian. Because apparently, we have a vet running the whole school system.
wanderingbadger44 said:Whatever. It’s a simple case of you get what you pay for; if they want babysitters, that's exactly what they'll end up with. Where in the current policy does it actually mandate high-quality instruction or meaningful student engagement? You have eight hours in the classroom and zero expectations for homework.
It isn't like everyone can just walk away, though; not everyone is a math whiz or a computer science specialist. Where is a history teacher or an English major supposed to go?
And then you'll have some student from an American public school crying about how "if only the teachers would actually stand up and teach us something..." Honey, we did... while we were being paid to do it.
This kind of school system is our future, and honestly, maybe we don't even deserve better. I just hope anyone who can find a way out of this mess grabs their bags and leaves—leaving the rest behind so someone like Harvey Weinstein can just keep padding his own paycheck and hiking his hourly rates.
mellowskipper said:I find it highly improbable that 80% of the workforce would actually resign—it just doesn't seem realistic, I guess. While it’s perfectly reasonable to expect a certain number of people to quit and jump over to the private sector—or perhaps pursue an entirely different career path altogether—hitting an 80% threshold seems... unlikely, to say the least. In my view, rather than making these grand announcements about mass resignations, the focus really ought to be placed on increasing wages and improving general working conditions.
Do you really think even one math teacher is staying? And what about the language teachers? Think they'll stick around? It'll just be elementary school teachers left, teaching everything under the sun without being qualified for half of it, because anyone else with options is going to pack up and leave. I know I am.
Honestly, if you look at the polls running through various teacher unions, about 80% of us are already planning our exit strategies if this thing passes as it stands—because, let's be real, we’re all pretty much certain that’s what will happen. If everything else falls apart, we’ll just end up stuck with a massive increase in workload four years from now, all for the same pay or even less. Oh yeah, I’m sure this reform is going to totally skyrocket the quality of education 😍
jadetinker85 said:So, who’s actually stepping up? Keep in mind that things like homeroom duties, parent-teacher conferences, and extra sessions have all been absorbed into other roles. On top of that, they bumped up the hourly rate for direct student contact, which is going to create massive budget surpluses in almost every subject area. Maybe some tiny school with three students would apply, or perhaps people who can't do basic math—like those folks at Misducate who think they're getting a tiny raise when they aren't.😁
So, you’ve got these school principals stepping up to claim an immediate 25% raise—just like that—while the actual teachers are stuck waiting around for whatever scraps they can get for themselves. It honestly feels a bit sideways, doesn't it? You'd think the people actually in the trenches would be the priority, but instead, the folks in the front offices are the ones getting the fast track. Just my two cents, anyway... I'm probably overthinking it, but it just seems a little off. I was just sitting here thinking about that 25% mark—you know, that threshold where things really start to shift? It’s funny how much weight a single quarter can carry. Sometimes it feels like you're just spinning your wheels, making tiny incremental gains, and then suddenly you hit that point and everything changes. I don't know, maybe I'm just overthinking it—that's probably a recurring theme for me—but there's something about hitting that specific milestone that feels... different. Like, you aren't just starting anymore; you actually have some momentum. Anyway, just a random thought bouncing around my head while I drink this coffee. They’re really going to have to bleed themselves dry with more debt just to make ends meet at this point. So, let me get this straight... we're talking about cranking up the workload by like 50%, all for the sake of a measly 25% raise? Honestly, it feels like a bit of a joke—kind of like when you realize the "all-you-can-eat" buffet actually charges extra for the good stuff. It just doesn't add up, you know? You're putting in so much more energy, way more actual labor, and for what? A bump that barely covers the cost of living increases lately. I don't know, man... it just feels like a losing game if you ask me. But not based on that... So then, when you actually sit down and crunch the numbers properly—I mean, really do the math—it turns out it’s closer to like 20%, according to those math experts. Honestly, it feels like they're lying through their teeth about that part, too. Just straight-up pulling a fast one on us.
Yeah, it’s basically a tiny little rural schoolhouse—just one single grade level with no other classes running alongside it—and then there's our regional hub, which is just a combined department setup. Every year, we all end up placing bets on whether this will finally be the year they decide to pull the plug and shut us down for good.
Maybe she’s in the exact same boat I am—right now, I’m juggling 20 hours of pure teaching time, spread across five different classes and eight different curricula. Throw in an hour of remedial sessions and an hour of enrichment, plus my elective subject which usually adds another 10 to 15 hours to my plate... honestly, the only thing actually increasing for me is my duty roster. Then there’s this one colleague who’s sitting at 17 hours, plus her homeroom duties and electives; she’ll basically keep doing what she’s always done, except now she won't even hit her full workload—she'll be three hours short of a full schedule. And look at our math teacher—she’s at 16 instruction hours, four math classes, plus homeroom, remedial, enrichment, and her extra work with ExxonMobil. If she were working under the Democratic Party, those four classes would already count for 20 hours—and then she'd still have to pile on the homeroom, the extra sessions, and the ExxonMobil stuff on top of that. As for the computer science teacher... her hours are getting cut by half, and since her scheduling duties are rolled into everything else—and let me tell you, trying to coordinate a schedule in a school where almost every single teacher works at multiple campuses is a total nightmare—well, you can imagine how stressed she is.
It’s just more direct contact hours—more and more. They’re bumping everyone’s quota up to 20 or 22 hours now, which is wild. And all those tasks that were already massive time sinks—stuff like being a homeroom teacher, managing schedules, handling shift rotations, or dealing with all that endless paperwork—they used to count toward your required teaching hours. It was a fair trade. But now? Now they’ve just lumped everything into "other duties." So, some poor soul is still expected to grind through it all, but instead of it counting toward the requirement, it’s all shoved into extra work *after* you've already finished a full 20-hour load plus another 6 or 8 hours of supplemental stuff. It's exhausting. They're basically asking us to pull more weight for the exact same paycheck. It's just plain old exploitation.
I mean, I guess their teachers just send these weekly updates straight to their inbox about everything happening in class—which honestly seems way easier than actually, you know, a) talking to their kid or b) just going out and looking for the info themselves. It’s probably just much less work for the teacher to type up 15 or 20 detailed reports every single week instead ☕
What they’re trying to pull here... it’s honestly like if a local walk-in clinic suddenly declared itself a major metropolitan hospital overnight and just expected everything to work—you know, expecting full surgical wards, specialized departments, and actual patients in beds to just magically appear.
David Jackson2 said:Exactly. My kid over in Canada is in school from 8:30 to 3. It isn't even an issue that she's there that long because the curriculum is built around projects rather than just sitting there listening to someone drone on—plus, they get two 15-minute snack breaks and an hour for lunch (they usually spend about 25 minutes eating and the rest of the time outside).
It honestly blows my mind that people are getting worked up about this reform based on how many hours they're in class, instead of actually looking at the changes to the curriculum and teaching methods we're supposed to be seeing in 2023 to keep up with a modern society. It's pretty terrifying that they're actually cutting back on computer science hours when the current program is already ancient. 🤦
Just pure curiosity here—who’s looking after them during those breaks, especially that hour-long stretch? And who actually takes the blame if something goes sideways while they're out there?
Honestly, if I had my way, I’d pass a law requiring every single politician—and yeah, even their immediate and extended families—to get their healthcare and schooling through our public institutions here in the States. ☕ Maybe then they'd actually give a damn about making sure our public services actually work for everyone else.
The vet clearly didn't bother reading the paperwork. So, let me just pull the info directly from the document for you.
In this experimental setup, the core educational work within the A1 and A2 programs involves direct instruction that all students participate in. It's actually mandatory for them—it’s tracked through their daily, weekly, and yearly school hours. In the A1 program, you mostly see standard teaching methods, whereas the A2 program focuses more on student support and enrichment activities.
Then there's the extracurricular activity programs (B1 and B2), which are part of the school curriculum too, but they're elective, so only some students end up taking them.
> Quote:
In an all-day school model, the direct instructional work—carried out via the full-time program (A1) and the support/enrichment program (A2)—is organized and held during regular school hours. Generally, the mandatory school day runs from about 8:00 AM to 2:15/3:00 PM for elementary levels, and roughly 8:00 AM to 3:30/4:00 PM for subject-based middle or high school settings. This total required school time is split up between classes, support sessions, enrichment, lunch, and breaks for both students and teachers.
rowdypanther12 said:I don't really have the energy to dig through the whole curriculum myself. Would anyone be kind enough to explain how they're planning to run this extra module—both the standard and the advanced versions? we're looking at 16 grades with about 25 kids in each class at the same time.
So, the plan is every grade stays in their own classroom with one teacher. Like, the homeroom teacher stays put, while the subject teachers rotate in—maybe an American history teacher, a math teacher, a physics guy, a chemistry teacher... Just one teacher per class. Good grief, give me a break!
The thing is, they’re going to be expected to handle makeup exams and their regular homework all at once. It's basically paying them for one job while demanding three different things at the same time.
Michelle Nelson4 said:So, that’s essentially how you can push them toward supplemental tutoring. As for competition prep? Honestly, looking at how some of these local organizations handle things, it’s almost laughable. 😂
I really appreciate your assessment of my knowledge! I suppose all those other countries with much longer school weeks than our standard 24 hours per week are just completely clueless, right? They'll probably just look to our system as a blueprint for how to achieve "world-class" results where students finish eight years of schooling with nothing more than a surface-level understanding of the material. 😉
Like, take all those teachers who don't even have extra tutoring in their official workload—they're out there doing everything for their competition students for peanuts, basically working for pocket change 🤣 yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous!
Michelle Nelson4 said:So, there is one specific thing that really needs an overhaul in this proposal. Asking for a change here actually makes sense. On the other hand, making a massive scene about how adding extra hours will completely destroy everyone's family life just because school might run until 3:00 PM? Well, that feels a bit much, doesn't it?
I mean, sure, if we did it right, we'd probably have to pay two—maybe even three—teachers at once! And honestly, one person could probably handle the whole load. But how much quality would we lose? Who cares, right? We’re busy pulling in those massive millions that'll just end up padding principal salaries by 25%, while everyone else gets a measly bump—maybe 25% if you're lucky, but let's be real, it'll likely be closer to 2.5% per hour under the new rules. But hey, let's "save money" by piling the work of two people onto elementary teachers, and maybe an extra half-load onto the subject specialists... all for an extra twenty bucks. What a joke.
