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Forum -> Working Women -> Teachers' Room

Public school

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amother

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 10:06 am

Hi,
I'm thinking of switching to public school teaching as the schedule is more functional for being a mom in the state I live. I've been teaching in Jewish schools for 10 years and done very well but I'm finding the emotional load and take home work and expectations of administration to be available 24/7 is too much for me. All of the Jewish schools in my area are similar in that regard.
Are there any public school teachers with advice for a first timer? Any tips for the change?
Pros and cons

amother

Midnight

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 10:10 am

following. thinking of switching too

amother

Clear

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 10:28 am

I'll be honest: I switched from ps to a Jewish school after teaching in ps many years, because the workload was insane. My workload and stress level with evaluations, paperwork, and deadlines is so much less now. (I'm still working full time, so roughly same hours to the school day.) The things I miss about working in ps are mainly the higher salary, better student behavior, more parent/teacher healthy boundaries. But my workload is so much more manageable.

amother

Clear

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 10:48 am

Also, regarding schedule (my previous post was more about the day to day), don't forget you'll be working on erev YT, Purim, chol hamoed, etc, when your kids are off. And, depending on the school dismissal time/your commute, early Fridays can be quite stressful. I don't miss the winter months when I'd walk in the door 15 minutes before candlelighting time.

amother

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:14 am

amother Clear wrote:

What state were you working in? How was the student behavior better?
Did you have time in school to do paperwork? How often were you working at night?

Smiles613

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:15 am

amother Clear wrote:

Yes how does taking days off work?
Observations? Pay etc.

amother

Clear

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:34 am

I'd rather not say what state due to identifying details, but it's a state with a fairly large Jewish (and frum community) outside the tristate area.

Observations: very big deal. As a new to the system, non tenured teacher, you'd probably have 3 or 4 formal observations. It really depends on the evaluation system used, but the one that is in vogue in lots of places for the past several years is the Charlotte Danielson's. (You can google it.) Some districts require that your student standardized test scores be a certain percentage for your overall rating at the end of the year. You will need to submit formal lesson plans with the state standards, objective, success criteria, learning targets, instructional plan etc for a pre observation conference. After the observation, there will be a post observation conference. I was always required to come with data to prove my students met the objective. After the admin writes it up and submits it (most districts use online systems), you'll get a write up with your overall rating for the lesson.
Your end of year rating with be made up of all your observation ratings, possibly your test scores as said previously, and whatever sort of rubric used to address your professional behavior and school participation, etc.

Taking off: I had a generous amount of sick days, I think I started with 10 but they were rolled over if you didn't use them so you could save from year to year. Technically, we were supposed to bring in a doctor's note for a sick day. Only one of my principals was strict about that, but if you were out for more than a few days without a doctor's note (over the course of the year), your file got "flagged" and you received a warning from HR. This happened to me as well as to other teachers I knew.

We got 3 personal business days, which you could technically use however you wanted, just not attached to a scheduled day off (like, you couldn't take off the Friday before President's Day weekend or the Tuesday after). However, I always needed to use my personal business days for YT. The district was off for the first day of RH and YK, then we were allowed two days paid religious holiday leave, then it went to your personal days, then it was leave without pay. (And there was a limit...they had it figured out exactly so that all the actual days of YT were covered but no chol hamoed etc. I figure there must have been some frum employees who took advantage at one point, because the number of days allowed for leave without pay matched a little too well to the actual days of YT. I remember a Jewish, but not frum coworker, once wanted to take off for Purim and she was shocked to have it denied....not by our principal, but by the district HR. The district must have consulted with a lawyer as to which days they were required to allow religious people to take off, and I guess Purim did not count.)

amother

Clear

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:38 am

amother OP wrote:

What state were you working in? How was the student behavior better?
Did you have time in school to do paperwork? How often were you working at night?

Student behavior--sure, there were kids with issues. But, for the most part the kids accepted teacher directions and followed them. They respected authority. Very little chutzpah like I do have in my school now.
I had 50 minutes of planning each day. This time was needed to be used for making sure my objectives were set up, organizing the classroom, making copies, responding to emails or making phone calls, grading papers etc, plus we had a grade level meeting once a week during the planning time. No way was this time I could do paperwork. Paperwork was after school or on the weekend. I used to spend the bulk of my Sunday prepping lessons and stay after school (or take home) paperwork.

amother

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 9:11 pm

Does anyone else with public school experience have any tips?

amother

Begonia

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 10:27 pm

NYC wife of public school teacher here. The stress is insane. I cannot recommend it. The only reason it's worth it for dh is that he started young so he's halfway to earning a retirement pension and not worth leaving at this point. But to be just starting out now, I don't know if I could stand it. The salary is nice but it's not megabucks. The health insurance isn't what it used to be - there are no premiums but nobody accepts it anymore. The climate is high stress and this is in a better school - we've had worse. It's lovely to have pesach and rosh Hashanah off but other than that the days off don't align with our kids. A kid pulled a gun in dh's school and the only response was to figure out which teacher could be blamed.

The pension plan is nice. But if I had to start over again today I really don't think I'd say it's worth it.

amother

Orchid

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:37 pm

I think your experience will vastly differ based on the district, grade level, and specific school with specific admin. I’m not a teacher, I’m a school counselor and never worked in a frum school. I worked in one school for 4 years and then switched to another district and have been at that school for 4 years as well and it’s like comparing apples and oranges between the 2 schools/districts. Bh I love my job and one of the differences at my current school vs former school is that I’m a 12 month employee now vs 10 month which means I get tons of vacation days bH so taking off whenever is not a problem anymore. At my former school it was soooo stressful to not have enough days to cover YT let alone anything else that popped up. My former school also had much more intense observations/evaluations compared to my laid back school I’m in now. I personally would never work in a frum school (or at least I doubt I ever will) because the pay is so much better, the health insurance and other benefits are amazing and include retirement/pension etc. I also like the separation between work and my community. I don’t how helpful this is since I’m not a teacher but I can say that teachers get basically a quarter of their day as a planning period to work on grading, lesson plans etc.

amother

Papaya

Sun, Feb 19 2023, 11:47 pm

I'm not a teacher but I do work in public school as an OT.

If you are looking for less stress and less expectations from administration, public school is not the path. I found that jobs in frum schools are way more "kushy" and flexible than public school. The rules are the rules. No flexibility. Every possibility is written out in the contract. No special situations. Either you do the job or you don't. You follow the rules or else. At least that is my experience in my current job. It could be very different depending on the district.

Some pros (for me) to working in public school:
Having vacation when my kids are in school. It gives me free days to take care of things very efficiently without little people.
Good health insurance at minimal cost (90/10 coverage, $500 deductible, $260 a month premium)
A retirement matching program (forces me to save even though I am in my 20s)
I manage to keep my work at work but I think it's more of my personality rather than the workload. (Because the work load is crazy)
And nice raises every year, with potential to make six figures if I stick with it for another bunch of years

Some cons:
Hard hours. I start early. 7:30. So I can be home for my kids in the afternoon.
Working erev YT and day after YT (you know that day when your kids are still home your house is a disaster and you are exhausted), and sometimes chol hamoed. And erev shabbos too- walking in the door at 3:40 on short Fridays.
Random administration assignments that are extremely time consuming and also unexpected.
Tons of paperwork
Tons of students with tons of intense needs.
Lots of behavior issues (and that's in a 1:1 setting!)

Smiles613

Tue, Feb 21 2023, 4:15 pm

amother Orchid wrote:

What makes you a 12 month employee vs 10 month
What does that mean?

Smiles613

Tue, Feb 21 2023, 4:18 pm

amother OP wrote:

What are some other pros?
In the area I live the Jewish schools are really tough to work for and I'm struggling so public school is my reality
Any classroom teachers that have positives to share?

Smiles613

Tue, Feb 21 2023, 4:25 pm

Smiles613 wrote:

What are some other pros?
In the area I live the Jewish schools are really tough to work for and I'm struggling so public school is my reality
Any classroom teachers that have positives to share?

What kind of paperwork do teachers have to do?

amother

Clear

Tue, Feb 21 2023, 4:59 pm

Smiles613 wrote:

What kind of paperwork do teachers have to do?

Running records for various subject areas
Some years, student portfolios
SLOs
Self evaluations a couple times a year
A lot of tracking and submitting data for various online programs.
Stuff for SSTs and IEP meetings
Various stuff each district or school
randomly comes up with, like for several years we needed to complete an excel spreadsheet to analyze data for each student's summative end of unit test, every unit. Another year we needed to meet weekly with our teams and analyze student samples, create rubrics etc (and of course, document and submit the data). Every year it was something new added on.
Fortunately, I only had to submit formal lesson plans for observations but some schools require them weekly

Also, not necessarily paperwork, but I was always required to sign up for committees. Some of them were less involved but some involved a lot of paperwork and extra time after school (like planning the school literacy night etc).

amother

Clear

Tue, Feb 21 2023, 5:01 pm

Smiles613 wrote:

What makes you a 12 month employee vs 10 month
What does that mean?

Teachers and staff who only work during the school year are 10 months employees. Others, like admin, secretaries, custodians, etc worth throughout the calendar year including the summer.

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