I’m in a private day school for kids with autism and behavioral issues. We are part of a human services company that does many types of therapy and care.
They told us that our hourly employees didn’t have to work today or the rest of the week but that they would not get paid. They could take PTO if they had it. This Just didn’t sit right with me because my teaching assistants are my team and I can’t do my job without them.
When it came time to start my virtual school day, an hour before kids started logging in, I started my Microsoft teams meeting and began discussing planning for the rest of the school year. Of course, whether or not they listened didn’t matter. They were getting paid for the time that they were logged into the meeting. As long as I was doing something related to our instructional goals, they were getting paid.
The reason for this, of course, is that the Local Education Agency pays us by the student and by the day. And the company that runs the school won’t pay hourly workers for non-instructional or non-planning time. Apparently the home school district only pays workdays that align with their own workdays.
I’m not trying to brag about helping people but we had 2 kids show up for class and even then it wasn’t until after lunch. My two TAs are my lifeline and deserve to be paid more than the $19/hr they get.
Anyway, education as a whole is broken and we all need to do our part to help.