Texas Teacher Law

Internet Filters At School

We Trust You WIth The Children But Not the Internet, writes the blog Dangerously Irrelevant today.

Are filters now a help or a hindrance to teachers.  Certainly many schools filter out material that could be useful in the classroom, but they also filter out troublespots that the students might step into.  I am personally in favor of more access rather than less, BUT I know that when a student acts inappropriately on the internet at school, it is all too likely that the teacher in the classroom will become the scapegoat for the administration, because "someone" has to be at fault when the kids act like heathens.

What are your thoughts?

The Flu

Seasonal flu hits every year, but this year the concern over the H1N1 flu virus is prompting stronger than usual calls for people to stay home when they are sick, and to stay there until they are all the way well.  Schools, of course, are particularly vulnerable to flu outbreaks, and in fact I've had my own two kids at home this week because they were lucky enough to come down with the flu already.  Lucky me.  I'm sure I'll be in bed next week.

If you're a teacher and you get the flu, and everyone is telling you to stay home, can you do that without losing money or your job?

All public school teachers in Texas receive five days of paid leave each school year to be used for sickness or any other personal reason.  Unused days carry over to the following year, and if you change districts, your unused days go with you. 

Individual school districts can give additional sick or personal days to their teachers each year.  How many days and how they can be used is entirely up to the individual district.  Local days do not follow teachers to different districts, and whether they accumulate from year to year is also up to the local district.

TIP: check with your personnel department to find out exactly how many sick or personal days you have available this year.  If you have a low number of days, also ask for the district policy on taking unpaid sick leave.

And we thought copy machines were a problem

Okay, copy machines are a problem because they are apparently manufactured with built-in paper jamming software.  My reference, though, was to the rampant illegal copyright infringement that occurred when copy machines made it cheap and simple to make copies of articles to distribute to school students instead of purchasing originals.  Textbook publishers, journal and magazine publishers cried foul and went on a public education campaign to teach people that the ability to make copies did not equal the right to make copies. 

Much the same story ensued after the invention of videocassette recorders and their progeny.

And once again the story was revised in the wake of the digital age and the mp3 music format.  We are still writing that story.

We are also still writing the social networking story.  The admonitions to be careful what you put in your district-provided email, and to be careful what you say and post on Facebook or other sites, are being well-distributed and heard by most, if not yet heeded by all.  But the newest concern is the casual way teens and adults are using digital cameras and videos to send provocative pictures of themselves to their significant others. 

On the one hand, taking private pictures to be shared privately with an appropriate person should not be a big deal.  The problem, however, is that keeping such pictures private is extremely difficult, and unlike days past when a disgruntled ex might pass around polaroids to his or her friends, now the pictures can be instantly copied and shared with the world via the internet.  Retrieving images after they've been widely disseminated is almost impossible. 

An extra twist is that when teens engage in this activity (sometimes called "sexting"),there are potential criminal consequences falling under the child pornography laws.  These laws are extremely tough and carry severe penalties, and they do not distinguish between teens "having fun" amongst themselves and the hard-core exploitive form of child pornography, the potential for relatively minor actions to cause a young persons life to derail is huge.

Elementary Class Size Waivers

State law limits the size of all public k-4 classrooms to no more than 22 students per teacher.  So how come so many of these classrooms are larger than that? 

State law also allows the Texas Education Agency to grant waivers to districts so that they can have more than 22 students per classroom.  While there are strict rules about notifying parents, it's actually pretty easy to get a waiver.  You can take a look at the requirements and procedure for getting a waiver here - Class Size Waivers

Health Insurance

Teachers in Texas are veterans at fighting for good health insurance.  See what is going on at the federal level right now, in plain language as reported by the Washington Post.  8 Questions About Health Care Reform