St. Landry Teachers Meet with Superintendent over Workload Grievances
Teachers who protested in front of the St. Landry Parish School Board meeting on Monday said the school board and the superintendent listened to their grievances and will work towards easing their workloads.
The educators who picketed outside the central office on Creswell Lane say they school district is making them do more work than ever before without increasing their compensation or giving them adequate time to prepare their lesson plans and, in some cases, to eat their lunch. Furthermore, some of the teachers say the added workload, which includes filming their classroom lessons for virtual instruction AND presenting the same lessons to students attending school on campus, is taking away instructional time and resources from students.
The teachers had other grievances. Among them, the teachers say they want to teach their students prescriptively, and they don't want to be forced to teach from a script.
Superintendent Patrick Jenkins met with the teachers and a representative from the Louisiana Association of Educators to get a better understanding of these teachers' problems. After the meeting, one of the teachers posted on Facebook that the meeting went well and that she felt their demands were heard.
Meanwhile, the school district is looking at a way to better compensate teachers and other school employees.
The St. Landry Parish School Board will put three different property millages on the March ballot. One would fund teacher pay raises. Another would fund athletic complex improvements at each of the parish's high schools. The last would fund new school construction and renovations of existing campuses.
According the Jenkins, the school district is still working on a calculator through which residents would be able to see how their property tax rates would be affected if any or all of the propositions pass during that election.
Jenkins spoke about these proposals as well as the teacher shortage in St. Landry Parish on Monday's edition of Acadiana's Morning News. Click the icon below to hear that interview.
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