I want my 2 dollars!

Well, I'm sorry to say that my district (or possibly my principal) has screwed up and once again, there are issues with my paycheck. Not just me, but many of the teachers at my school as well.

Back in April, teachers at my school were asked to return bonus money that had been deposited into our accounts -- even though the district payroll office had told us to "spend it in good health."

Now, we're finding that stipends and pay-for-performance bonuses, which were supposed to be included on this month's paycheck, are not on there.

So I have a few ideas for how the district can earn some money in order to pay us what they've promised us.

1) Charge bag fees.
I heard this morning that the airlines mad 2.5 billion dollars this year on bag fees alone. Just think, if every kid with a backpack is charged a quarter, every day -- we'll be rich by summer!

2) Mandatory nap time across the district: 1-2.
If all the lights are off for this one hour every day, the potential energy savings could be tremendous!

3) Selling Hot Cheetos
I don't pretend to understand it, but Hot Cheetos to my kids are equivalent to Crack Cocaine to Lindsey Lohan. We could buy bags of Hot Cheetos for 50 cents each and sell them at the apartments for $3 each. Heck, we could probably sell them for $10 each.


Whatever happens, I just hope the district gets it together and gives us the money they've promised us. I'm reminded of the final scene of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, where Clark W Griswold berates his boss with the line, "If you don't want to give out bonuses, fine! But when some of us are counting on them to make ends meet..." and the cop says, "That's pretty low, mister. If I had a rubber hose, I would beat you..."

Another rerun

Darnit, Thanksgiving Break will officially be over in just a few hours. Another workweek will begin, and there will be four more straight weeks of school before Christmas Break.

So since I have nothing original to write about tonight, AND with a disgraced and disbarred professional football player coming back into the fold, I thought I would repost a somewhat popular post from this past May.


Something occurred to me. I started thinking about athletes’ salaries. They are usually fixed when the contract is signed, but several years back, Ricky Williams -- running back out of the University of Texas -- made news by signing a very detailed agreement. He would effectively get paid by the carry, by the catch, by the touchdown, etc.

More recently, poor Ricky has made news for other things, but at the time, I thought the idea of his contract was pretty darn cool.

So let's apply it to teachers.

Sign us on at some base salary -- let's say $25,000. But we can increase our take-home by documenting events from the following list. Teachers would get paid for every occurrence of the event, not just one time.

Staff meeting .........................................................................................$200
Fire drill .................................................................................................$150
Being pulled out of class to
attend a meeting ..................................................................................$500
Receiving a new child any day
after the first day of class ....................................................................$1,000
-- if they don't speak English ..............................................................$2,500
Parent conference -- on the phone ...................................................$100
Parent conference -- in person ..........................................................$300
Parent conference – w/ irate orirrational parent ..................................................................................$750
Administering a standardized test ...................................................$250 per child
Child talking back ...............................................................................$25
Child cussing at you ............................................................................$75
Child flipping you the bird .................................................................$50
Child giving you the RING fingerand then saying, "What?!?
It's not the middle finger!
I never flipped the bird at you!!” .....................................................$49.50
Child whining, "They're skipping!”.................................................. $25
Child disrespecting your clothes ......................................................$10
Child disrespecting your hair ............................................................$15
Child disrespecting your car .............................................................$20
Child disrespecting yo momma ........................................................$150
Child threatening to harm you .........................................................$500
Child throwing and hitting you with:
an eraser .............................................................................................$100
a crayon ...............................................................................................$200
a pencil/pen ........................................................................................$500
a book ..................................................................................................$1,200
the student next to them .................................................................$7,500
Child slapping you .............................................................................$2,000
Child punching you ............................................................................$5,000
Child kicking you ...............................................................................$4,000
-- in the nads .....................................................................................$15,000

I'm sure that there are many other things they could be added to this contract. But I think that many teachers would agree to something that followed this kind of format. Heck, if I got paid $25 every time one of my kids cried, "They're skipping!" I'd be able to retire to the Caymans from this year alone!

So kudos to Ricky Williams for leading the way in performance-based contracts. Here's hoping it doesn't lead all of us teachers to smoking joints…