By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT – Lots of teachers in the Lincoln County School District are stressed and some are talking about quitting. Administrators and classified staff are stressed too. There’s a shortage of bus drivers, cooks and substitutes.
And 20 months after the coronavirus pandemic began, many students are also stressed and more are getting in trouble after returning to more structured classroom instruction and tight protocols this fall.
All those assertions boiled over Tuesday night when the head of the Lincoln County teachers union and the district superintendent clashed over a union survey on teacher attitudes and a direct plea to the school board that the district dial back adding more work and changes onto teachers.
“We’ve been asked to do a lot more in a lot less time,” said Peter Lohonyey, president of the Lincoln County Education Association. “We want to work with the school district to correct the situation … but we need relief in certain areas.”
Some 50 minutes after the union presentation, Superintendent Karen Gray heatedly responded that she was “blindsided” by the report because she expected it at a weekly district-union meeting on Wednesday.
“I’m just really shocked to see it in front of the board … because we were working as a team,” Gray said. “I’m just a little bit miffed as though this is a shocking finding. It is not.”
Lohonyey presented the school board, meeting at Crestview Heights School in Waldport, a survey completed by 40 percent of its 294 members. The idea of the survey – similar to ones conducted by teacher unions in Eugene and Corvallis – was to gather data rather than anecdotes on teacher’s feelings, Lohonyey said.
When asked how they were feeling, the survey said the most frequently used words were “stressed, tired, overwhelmed and exhausted.”
“85 percent of respondents indicated a work-related stress level higher than previous years,” the survey concluded. “Not a single respondent indicated less stress.”
While the survey acknowledged that teachers liked being back in the classroom with students, it cited four areas of concern: extreme student behavior, an “extraordinary number” of new district programs, processes and curriculum, more tasks and less time, lack of empathy from district-level administrators, and “new and increased frequency of evaluative observations or walkthroughs.”
Lohonyey told YachatsNews later that additional changes this year include new evaluation procedures for AVID and literacy programs, a new record-keeping system, and new curriculums for math, reading and social studies.
The union said members would like the district to postpone additional classroom evaluations, make building administrators more consistently available, use professional development that addresses current, Covid-19-related issues, more “efficient and supportive communication” from district administrators, and compensation for time teachers are giving to cover staff shortages and student quarantine preparation.
Before presenting the survey, Lohonyey said in the last four days he had received calls from teachers asking “how can I resign.”
“That’s on top of the more than a dozen since the start of the year,” he said. “The people who are calling me are the people who normally don’t call, but are having a really hard time.”
Lohonyey also said teachers are struggling with more frequent disruptive behavior by more students.
“We are seeing so many behaviors we’ve never seen before because students have missed 18 months of socialization,” he said.
Superintendent response
Gray used most of her superintendent’s report later in the meeting to forcefully – and sometimes angrily – respond to the union survey.
“I want people to have fun in schools too,” she said, referring to one line in the report that said teachers want “time to have fun” with students. “But 50 percent of our kids can’t read at grade level, so where’s the fun in that? There is none.
“It’s really important that we do have an enjoyable time together. I agree with that,” Gray said. “But this business that we’re in is academic achievement so students can read, write and do math so that they can graduate and go somewhere and have a life.”
The superintendent acknowledged that all educators in Oregon are stressed but that the district was one of just a handful in the state meeting weekly with teacher union representatives to identify issues and try to come up with solutions. One of those was to close schools Friday because of substitute teacher shortages and the need for a four-day break — at a cost of $130,000. The other is to move staff development back into schools in November, December and February, she said.
“I get it. We are all working on it and we’re working together is forgetting why we are here. We’re here for kids. We’re here to make a safe environment to learn … and that’s why we do what we do.
In ending her response, Gray said that the Lincoln County School District “had problems with academics long before Covid.”
The five-member board had no questions for either Lohonyey or Gray or reaction to the survey or their comments.
In other business Tuesday night, the board:
- After hearing an appeal in executive (closed) session, approved unanimously in open session the superintendent’s recommendation to fire a classified staff member for unwillingness to follow district COVID-19 protocols;
- Unanimously approved increases in the district’s tax on new construction to help pay for school facilities. The tax would rise by 7 cents to $1.41 per square foot on new residential construction and by 1 cent to 70 cents per square foot on commercial construction;
- Heard that the district will get $1.1 million more from the state because of increases in reimbursement rates for each student;
- Was told in a written report by bus contractor First Student that it is short 17 drivers of the 73 needed to be fully staffed and not covering 21 bus routes in the district, but that its “training pipeline” is full of prospective drivers.