Substitute Meeting-
Today was the official start of the school year sub meeting for our district. Even though I've done all my paperwork and am waiting for it to go through, I attended anyway. I saw a lot of familiar faces among the subs.
We have a new Superintendent. She introduced herself to me before the meeting and seemed nice. She actually looks like a elementary school teacher, less official looking than our last one.
We have a new elementary principal, but she's not really new, just has moved up from being a teacher, to assistant, to official principal. I've known her for several years, but she's taken on a more firm look these days.
We have a new assistant Principal that will bounce between the Intermediate and Middle school buildings. He'll need to be tough there. The HS leaders have totally been re-tooled. A strong looking woman as Principal and a very timid looking man (who never spoke) as her assistant. He'll need to step up, but she looked like she had a good idea of what she was about.
All of these are just visual impressions based on a few mins. so it will be interesting to see if I'm right or wrong. Other than checking to see if the calling policies have changed (they haven't) the only other difference is that we'll be filling out forms about how our day went and the teachers will be filling our forms about what kind of job we did.
Well, to be honest, there have been days I wish I could take back and do a better job with them.
I've yet to truly understand that I sacrifice quite a bit for allowing certain kids to remain in the room. There are a few places I never want to sub again.
Iit was reassuring to know I'm not the only one with fingerprint issues. In fact, somewhere in Springfield, there's a place you can apply electronically. It costs more, but you are certain everything is right when you walk out of there. Too bad they didn't tell me about it at the beginning of this process. Those of us stuck in the middle of it are just stuck.
Of course, it does call into question just how well our police departments take fingerprints. Here we are, (hopefully) non-criminals willingly walking into their stations, sober and smiling, asking for them to take our fingerprints, just so we can prove we are safe to be around children.
I've got to wonder how they ever match up partial prints from a crime scene. I've had my prints taken before, so the FBI has mine on file, there shouldn't be any question that these match up as well as any crime scene prints.
Of course, there's always a sub that seems to get all the jobs in a building. When you are beginning, it's hard to break into the biz. Better the sub you know than the one you don't. So, Mr. G (I'll call him) was at the meeting and everyone was pleased to see him and of course, HIS paperwork is all in order because HE just happened to get the local police chief (the office that I found was closed twice) to take the prints and apparently, he knew how to do it. It's just a charmed life, the likes I don't seem to have. ( It's not nice being snotty, I know. )
There's a sub that works mainly at the HS. I met him once last year and all he could talk to me about was wanting a raise for subs. Darned if he didn't talk about that in the meeting today too. It did come up with a few interesting ideas from the Super. She wasn't aware that it's been 4 years since we had a raise. She needed to see what the other schools in the area paid. Some schools have different pay structure for different levels of subs. So much for x amount of education, x amount for less. (so, you can pay someone $65 for the day, or $75, which sub will you pick?) Oh, then she said the principals might come up with creative compensation. Let's see.... How about some lunch? Oh, nevermind.