small hopeful step

[Zoe Girl]

or maybe 2, have a meeting today that is making me a nervous wreck.

the background of this is that I have my master's in education. My supervisor J has her degrees in management. Through the years and different conversations I have learned that my degree being in the area we work in is really not a factor in opportunities both from J and her supervisor. I applied for a promotion and got a non-interview where they said they wanted certain experience and my degree was a non-factor. the reasoning is that we are doing out of school time programs, teacher training is different. I get along much better with J and my new supervisor this year so I don't wish any bad things, but still this is a professional concern for me.

So I heard through a colleague I trust about a conversation that gives me hope. The person who got that job I applied for is awesome. If I wasn't even going to get an interview then i am glad she is the one who got it. I am on a committee with her and feel like I have someone to work with on change who understands. There are many levels and types of licensing standards for our work with children. So I hold a school age license level V based on my education and experience but I don't hold the same for early childhood. I would need 2 classes in order to start that process and then experience hours. In this conversation including J and the new supervisor and my friend it came up that my friend is qualified with early childhood (she also got a non interview), the new supervisor has early childhood and school age, and somehow J does not have any of these. The comment was that she was really qualified as an aide (lowest level). Wow, no one has called her on that before. I really like the new person. I have had to sit through countless discussions by a supervisor who has no classes in child development, plus wondered if she was qualified to sub. The big huge issue is what is going on that we do not value the education several of us have in education when making decisions around promotions and leading training and making decisions. So having a new person at this level of the organization who can recognize minimum that it may be an issue is awesome.

The other thing is that I am creating some standards around a role that I have had great compliments on my work in. It is about facilitating staff in creating full day camp programming. The ones I have done have had high praise. It is a place where I want to point out that in addition to my years of work I have earned a degree in this type of work. It matters.

[rosarugosa]

Zoe Girl: I'm glad you've had some positive things happen lately. How did your meeting go?

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you for asking. I guess it was okay. First of all my supervisor can be rather gruff at times, but that trait was great in the meeting. She started by saying they are not supporting me enough. The day before the meeting I lost it, totally broke down crying in my car. This situation has been going on all year. The core issue is that our financial department only works with our parent paid tuition schools, except for me ( I have both grant funding and parent tuition). So they don't understand things like homeless families. They gave one a 45% discount instead of the free or $10 a month. I have sent the paperwork 4 times, asked our grants manager to go directly to the financial manager and still they show a $500 bill on Dec. 1st. There is another family that is simply low functioning, they cannot spell on the scholarship application, have no heat in the home, adults swear in my program, not enough food, etc. So they have a HUGE bill and are supposed to be suspended from programming but they need our free dinner program. There are a few others, but basically the higher standard of the parent paid tuition programs are not possible for all my families and that is why I have grant funds. These admin people are not nice to me.

So we hashed it out., I tried to be as assertive as I could and I think I was fine but it is like hitting a brick wall. I have lost at least one family this year because the main office can be rude. At the end my kids were not suspended, my supervisor just said no and I can work with them. But the end of the meeting was crap, they just had to get their power in? It ended with 2 out of 3 of the admin in the meeting saying over and over, " you know ZG you have to get the scholarship application before they start" and I replied that these 2 families were the last ones I had done it backwards because they were in crisis and at risk, but they had to say it 3 times each as if I was the one making the mistakes. One person even told me that I should sit down and do the paperwork with the families, duh. All of us on grant funded do this all the time. So I just shut up and waited it out. It looks like I got helpful things in my email from them but I was too exhausted emotionally to look at it yesterday.

So I kept the kids in my program, that is the important thing. Hey I also started a 'swear jar' for the adults which is cracking me up! The one low functioning family gets a tally for the swear jar for any bad words on school property and with enough of them they clean up after one of our family nights.

[rosarugosa]

Wow, I certainly have my fair share of frustrations at work, but I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to wade through all this red tape to try to help poor at-risk kids. I admire your commitment to doing the right thing for people who clearly need it!

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you Rosa, I am realizing how draining that was. I want to say so much more to these people about how my job is to work with these kids and families. They can turn away anyone who does not meet a standard however that goes against the goal of equity in our district. Equity is having a school that is 50% free and reduced lunch and 75 % african american, and having after school programming pretty close to that, not a 75% african american school and a 75% white childcare program. It is their job to make sure I don't spend hours trying to get answers for families from my own department.