Paid for hours

they don’t work

It appears the South Kitsap School District has continued with its usual plan governing school days and unauthorized pay.

Specifically, the SKSD calendar stated that May 22 would be a regular school day, meaning teachers would spend 7.5 hours teaching the students.

In addition, as stated before, this standard school day requires one half hourbefore and after the school day (7.5 hrs.) every day for preparation time.

SKSD sent notice to parents that 22 May 2009 would be half-day meaning students are sent home at noon.

This means that students lose a half day of education that teachers are paid to teach students and they do not.

The teachers are paid to be there teaching the children for a seven-and-a-half-hour day, meaning they are in a paid-work status.

Using labor law logic, if a teacher is not in a work status, then they are either on leave or leave without pay status.

In the situation being discussed here, neither leave situation applies meaning that the teachers are in a pay status and failing to perform their assigned duties, a fraudulent situation.

In talking to district staff, SKSD gives the students a recess and feeds them a lunch before sending them home at noon, and this school time is called a full school day for that reason.

Quite simply, teachers gain money and the students lose education time.

Lastly, in talking to staff at Hidden Creek Elementary School, the half day of school is a make-up snow day.

Let me get this clear in my head — when it snows, seven and a half hours is a full school day that has to be made up.

Staff informs us that snow days are always a half-day (four and a half hours lost education time) and always made up before a holiday, in this case Memorial Day.

In this particular case, teachers were receiving taxpayer money, in a pay status, not in a leave status, non-performing, and calling three actual school hours a full day.

In my opinion, the way SKSD is operating financially they are misappropriating, abusing, fraudulently paying teachers for work that is not provided and calling it hours worked.

LARRY L. MANN

Port Orchard