Amy Bastarache

I just read an article from CNN.com called “‘Sick-out’ closes over 50 Detroit schools.” On Wednesday, hundreds of Detroit teachers protested pay-cuts by calling in sick, causing 53 schools to close. The issue is actually more complicated than pay-cuts, and I actually feel the teachers were justified in their protests. The district had asked teachers to work 5 unpaid days to “help balance the district’s budget,” to which their union agreed, provided the money would be paid back in fiscal year beginning in July of 2007. This was not the issue the teachers were protesting on Wednesday; the district’s decision to give raises of up to 11% to certain administrators (following the teachers’ agreement to work without pay) outraged teachers all over Detroit.

I have mixed feelings about this situation. On one hand, I feel the teachers are completely justified in staging a “sick-out.” They feel taken advantage of, and I can’t blame them one bit for feeling that way;in fact they were taken advantage of. It is incredibly unfair, outrageous even, to ask teachers to work for free, then turn around and give their administrators a raise. My guess is that this was the last straw for many Detroit teachers. The district justified the raises by saying that “some principals with 10 years of experience make less than others with only two years’ experience, and the school board wanted to end the inequity.” Well, maybe they should wait until the fiscal year in 2007 to do that. I don’t understand how they could possibly, in a million years, think that giving raises to administrators while teachers are working for free would go unprotested. If anything, the administrators should be taking pay cuts as well. Teachers already don’t get paid nearly enough for the amount of work that they do, especially in Detroit, so I’m sure this was a huge slap in the face for them. If they didn’t protest, the district may just continue to take advantage of them, and the situation would only worsen. The ’sick-out’ has drawn national attention, and portrayed the Detroit school district in a very negative light. In that sense, it was a positive thing for the teachers to strike; it may actually cause the district to rethink their priorites and start respecting their teachers and treating them like the professionals that they are.

However, on the flip side, students in 53 schools in Detroit did not go to class on Wednesday because their teachers chose to call in sick and the district couldn’t compensate. This is a further disadvantange for students who are already not receiving the same quality education as their suburban peers, which makes me think that maybe the teachers should just have sucked it up and gone to work. But they would probably have been upset, and that may have affected the quality of their work, and therefore the quality of the students’ education. My guess is that this issue has not been resolved, but I hope that teachers can continue to teach, not for themselves but for the sake of their students.

Last night in my tutoring reflection I wrote about a realization I am starting to come to about the reality of being a teacher. The reality is that it’s not about me, it’s about my students, and I need to do what is best for them, regardless of how I might be inconvenienced by it. That being said, I am not at all sure how I would react if I were a teacher in Detroit right now. I’m not going into education because it pays well, but teachers need to pay bills too, and going without pay is probably not a viable option for many of them, especially with the knowledge that their administrators are getting raises while they work for free. But on the other hand, their reactions to the situation effect their students as well as themselves, and my guess is that that is why the teachers that did not call in sick chose to go to work on Wednesday. I don’t know the reality of Detroit schools, but I will be teaching there this summer, so this issue will be fresh in the minds of the teachers I am going to work with. I am very interested to hear their perspective on the situation, and how they personally handled it. At this point, I feel that if I were in their situation, I would be completely torn as to what to do.