Substitute shortages, staff burnout lead to Seattle-area school cancellations
Source: Seattle Times
On Tuesday, officials in Seattle Public Schools and the Bellevue School District announced class cancellations for Friday because of substitute and staffing shortages. The Kent School District followed suit on Wednesday. Students and staff had no school on Thursday, which was Veterans Day, a federal holiday.
Douglas Glazer, who has three children in Seattle schools, said even though the district will tack on a day at the end of the school year, it won’t replace what students would have learned on Friday.
“No learning happens the last week of school and making the school year last one extra day doesn’t mean much,” Glazer said. “The short notice is incredibly frustrating. How did you [the school district] not see this coming?”
Read more: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/substitute-shortages-staff-burnout-lead-to-seattle-area-school-cancellations/?utm_source=marketingcloud&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TSA_111221024403+School+cancellations+in+the+Seattle+area+raise+red+flags_11_11_2021&utm_term=Former%20Subscriber
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Folks who have jobs where they have to go in such as teachers, medical, restaurants, retail, public safety, delivery and alike are all to be commended. 
They are the ones keeping the gears of our society moving. 
I think we need like a mandatory week of paid vacation for everyone in the country. Taking away some oil subsidies would pay for it!
Nobody said coming out of a global pandemic was going to be easy! 
in the early '80s, I signed up to sub here in Philly. At the time, the pay for the first "x" number of calls/days (forgot the number), was $22/day, which was about minimum wage at the time ($3.35/hr), for 6.5 hours. After that it went up to I think $50/day. Because of my degree, I was in high demand in the secondary schools for science subject matter, but because schools in certain parts of the city suffered from teacher shortages and high absenteeism, I was of course assigned to schools in the-then area of the city that had the most absenteeism and highest poverty rates. Eventually I ended up in a high school as a long term sub that spring and then was called back in the fall to do long term subbing in a different high school. By winter, I accepted a position at what became my federal job and had to leave the school system (although this happened during a time when there was a natural break for the winter holidays and a designated switch for the students to a different class that January).
It was certainly a worthwhile opportunity, and challenging given that we have a chronically under-funded school system here (where a trial about that very thing filed by multiple PA school systems, is supposed to start today - https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/11/pa-school-districts-lawsuit-over-funding-process-they-call-a-system-of-haves-and-have-nots-heads-to-trial.html). During my long-term sub experience before I left, I had a roster 125 kids in 5 classes (mix of grades 9 - 12), but unevenly divided so one class might have 40 and another 15. And because of the dire economic circumstances for many of the kids, there were some who came to class who hadn't eaten or who were actually working in the evenings/night to help their families, so would show up to class half asleep. I was grateful they even made that effort to come in and accommodated them for some extra attention as needed. I even had a few who were just a year or so younger than me (repeating a grade), and that truly gave me some perspective.`I did have a bunch eventually cut other classes to show up at mine so i considered that an honor (although obviously that was just wrong 
).
and at the time, we did form a bit of a comraderie because there wasn't much of an age difference. The neighborhood area of coverage was literally 1/3 black, 1/3rd white, and 1/3rd Hispanic but segregated by streets (and I was told by them who lived where). Believe it or not, the kids got along (at least within the school setting) with much teasing going on between those from different neighborhoods.
Of course the bigger issue was a lack of actual resources in the schools - books, supplies, etc. It's become almost standard for teachers to just bring their own stuff in (including to share with the kids).
The "digital divide", that has been talked about over 30 years, came to a head last year with the pandemic when schools went "virtual" and they discovered that probably 60% of the public school kids here had no laptop and/or internet access at home. So the district had to then go out and buy what ended up being 40,000 chromebooks for the kids needing them and then have to come up with getting wifi access to them since most had none (other than maybe those families on pre-paid cell phones with limited data access).
I know back at the last school where I was subbing, the school was due a shipment and setup of Apple IIes before school began but come to find out, they were still in the school basement waiting for the room to be secured with a caged door with padlock and the caged windows (the machines were setup in the old typing room since the desks had power outlets next to them originally used for the old electric typewriters). When all of that was done before the winter break and the setup commenced, the excitement was truly there with the kids. 
Seems like everyday these mother fuckers want to do something to DESTROY our country. (that's their plan) Anymore i don't give a shit how their stopped! 
They caused ALL this from the beginning of mask mandates, NOW cry because the teachers won't fucking babysit their kids. Hate what this fucking CULT has done to us.
