I’m sure if you want to post a link about crappy conditions for kids, we’d talk about that.

But there’s probably a link between the two. A school that won’t improve conditions for the people who can choose to leave and go elsewhere sure as heck isn’t going to improve conditions for students who have no other choice.

The school also loses the input of teachers who might be able to pressure the system to change. The lack of parking is a huge issue, I would assume, especially as the bulk of the teaching workforce is female. I’ve lived in several cities. Beyond a certain level of danger, there is no amount of money which could compensate for the daily risk a lone female, carrying papers and a purse, would run, in trying to get to her car.

Lack of bathrooms, mice, other pests, a lack of respect, are also factors, of course, but the chance of being physically harmed, or robbed, is a huge disincentive.

That’s WHY they were riding two different buses from two different locations.

But again–there is complete avoidance across the board of the issue that I was raising, which is why are we MORE concerned about the work conditions of teachers than we are about the same conditions applied to children?

The high school my kids are zoned to attend has a problem with gangs, so there’s no way I’m going to enroll them in it. It’s as simple as that. I’m not going to put them in an unsafe environment and then whine about the result.

Your work schedule makes you unable to supervise your child before school starts, and you think that the school should pick up the slack and watch your kid? It’s not your responsibility as a parent to make some other arrangements?

If you really want the school to be running down criminals and babysitting kids in the morning before school even starts, are you willing to pay extra tax so the school can hire police and babysitters to do this?

Schools are also not law enforcement agencies. Would it surprise you to know that, in fact, teachers are assaulted on a regular basis and charges are rarely filed? If you see someone brandishing weapons or drugs near or at a school, call the police. They are the law enforcement agency. What are we supposed to do? It’s not like we have weapons, badges, or the training to run down criminals.

I love teaching, but I warn people off it all the time unless they have some other means of financial support.

I don’t agree that the schools are responsible for tackling that problem.

The schools can control dead mice in their building, and they should. They can’t control alcohol and weapon use on the streets around their buildings. There’s no sense in waiting until crime is eliminated to take care of the dead mice.

I don’t see the outrage for teachers and the lack of concern for kids that you are seeing in the previous posts.

I see people evaluating whether particular job conditions make a job too unpleasant to do, especially considering that a good teacher probably has choices about where to teach, assuming she wants to keep teaching at all.

Even if one IS outraged about bad conditions for students at schools, it doesn’t mean that the issue of teacher turnover disappears. It may be perverse that teachers often have choices that the students don’t have, but it’s not ironic that we would consider those choices in evaluating the work conditions that drive teachers away.

I doubt the students would be harmed by the teachers’ having parking passes, secure locations for their personal belongings, and bathrooms and classes without mice, and they’d benefit because teachers would be more likely to continue teaching at the school. There’s really no irony in being concerned about teachers.

In my district many, although not all, bus stops are located at schools. Every one of these schools has a sign out front declaring that it is a drug free and weapon free zone. That doesn’t mean that it is. If I see evidence of drugs, weapons, tobacco or alcohol use by folks who are at or near that stop in the morning when my kids are there, I don’t think it is unreasonable to make a phone call to someone in the employ of the district for some assistance. Of course, finding out who is a problem. Transportation doesn’t want to hear it because it isn’t ON a bus. The school doesn’t want to hear it because it is happening before school starts.

In fact, one school year when my daughter was in middle school, her bus left from the nearest elementary school after the time that I had to leave to get my son to a bus stop at another elementary school and then go to work. She felt safer if I dropped her off at the school, rather than waiting until after I left and then walking. The school principal called HER principal to ask that she not get there so early because they didn’t want to be responsible “if something happened” while she was waiting on the school’s front steps for her bus. (we “solved” the problem by changing her to a bus route closer to my job with a time that allowed me to both drop my son and get to work on time).

While you recognize that it’s a no brainer that the transportation company (and in fact MOST of our district buses are district owned and the drivers are district employees) was responsible for “allowing” my son off the bus–well, they don’t agree. Their point of view is he just “got off.” They also share your point of view about “neighborhood problems that spill over into the school,” which is a really effective means of denying any role or responsibility to or for the community that schools are a part of.

But again–back to the original posting. Why is there so great an outrage that teachers have to put up with lousy conditions while kids are just expected to live in those same conditions (and their parents to run interference)? If the neighborhood is unsafe for teachers to park their cars–maybe we should be more concerned about the safety of the kids in that same neighborhood.