View Full Version : paperwork load and politics
I am so sick of nit picky, detailed, crappy a** paperwork!! My job is to care for kids, build an excellent program and supervise and train staff to do this. It is a big job already. We were given a lot more responsibility with a large raise about 1 1/2 years ago so I feel crappy complaining in one way, in another way I just get frustrated and overwhelmed by the paperwork side of the job. I would be a blithering idiot if I didn't have an assistant this year, so I appreciate that. I also appreciate the programs I can provide for my families at low or no cost. Each one of them I 'pay' for in paperwork however. It is not my strength area so it is hard work.
What has me thinking about this today? Snack paperwork, I really get frustrated with it. It is a federal program so we have to show accountability of course. I don't have a problem with reasonable paperwork to show that we are serving the number of kids we say we are. However the paperwork has doubled over the last 5 years to interfere with my supervision of the kids IMHO. I have several clubs that I serve snack to after school daily, and my childcare program. The details are not that interesting, basically I have 3 pieces of paperwork that are REQUIRED to be done at the SAME TIME as I am supervising these children, waiting until the end of the day to finish up one part of it means that I am denied the reimbursement of those days of snack. Out of those 3 pieces of paperwork, another 3 for dinner program and 2 back up paperwork trails I missed one today. It is my fault, I just prioritized the wrong thing.
So what has this to do with politics. Well every time someone decides money is being wasted or used badly we get more paperwork and restrictions. There has not been a 'snack-gate' incident honestly. All of our paperwork showing how many kids were in attendance is available. People had issues with welfare recipients being on drugs, and the drug testing showed that none tested positive. Some of the federal rules changed a few years ago to 'crack down' on spending in our programs so I cannot provide food for family events in high poverty areas. Pretty hard to get low income families to attend (which is the goal of our grant) when they are worried about feeding their kids dinner. I ask for donation gift cards from grocery stores now to provide simple food. Just one more thing to do in order to provide the same service I have been for 5 years.
I would just like it if we spent some time doing some checking IF there is a problem in some of these cases before launching accountability programs and restrictions. It would also probably be cheaper to spend some time on the research before investing in supporting these auditing services. In another case our district did have an issue with our purchasing cards, I have to do more paperwork but it is because someone abused the system, so there is a real cause in some cases, but not all for sure.
Ultralight
9-28-16, 7:07am
I have to do a lot of "paperwork"-like stuff. I also have a bazillion meetings. And I try to stay apolitical in office politics.
But I have found it helpful to just think that my job is basically to just do whatever dumb sh*t they tell me to do -- not to make a difference or be awesome at something or whatever.
People ask me what I do for a living. I say: "Whatever they tell me to do."
Now... obviously I am trying to move into a better job where deep cynicism is not the norm and/or not the best coping mechanism.
But... for now it is.
I am not cynical like that, in fact our supervisors seem to be very hands off this year. We are on our own, for better or worse. I just had to make a choice of which thing was not going to get done perfectly and I chose wrong,
Ultralight
9-28-16, 7:46am
Cynicism can be a powerful way to shield and protect your sanity. :)
I can see that, I do face reality. It seems that this year we are on our own, 2 supervisors are having babies, the accounting department was decimated by people leaving, and most of our sites are understaffed. I know that the interim director of our programs has a good sense of the work load of our PS position, however it is just really a huge job with more every year. I was trying to ease in my staff on the many things we need to work on, they will be working with me on 6 goals as required. So I didn't get that one paperwork piece done, I may get some backlash. However I feel the cynicism would do more harm to me than good, facing reality is a good option.
Zoe, a friend of mine does in home day care and wants to be registered. Over the years the paperwork has gotten more and more and more. There are annual and other classes she must attend, updated background checks for all in her family that help, daily records, and on and on. She listed much of it in a rant blog post. I could not believe that they treat a home daycare with 5 kids she knows well in a small town the same as a commercial day care with a hundred children.
After talking to her parents, she is dropping the registration due to the system frustrations that have grown. You don't have that choice.
Sounds like the paperwork and such are hitting all kinds of organizations. Just say "sorry, I will watch that next time." Not much else you can do.
ps: who would ever know or care that the paperwork was done at the end of the day or in the afternoon or at the time? Is it coded by machine? Does someone come over and watch you fill it out? Seems crazy to me that the "program" would mandate immediate completion and submission of data at the time of service.
Every time I hear about how this or that industry or activity is "under-regulated", I think about complaints like these.
iris lilies
9-28-16, 11:56am
Every time I hear about how this or that industry or activity is "under-regulated", I think about complaints like these.
I know, Snack Paperwork! Who knew! But OTOH the entity that is taking the feds' money, zG's employer, has to recognize that strings come with the money. There is no free rode nor should there be from the taxpayers.
Like sweetana,
I am interested in how the paperwork timing is actually carried out.
I have no problem accounting for how I spend money and knowing that it will be looked at and open to the public that pays for these things. I just don't see how it can increase so much in a couple years and that it is solving any problem. There really wasn't a problem as far as I knew. I already added a kid by kid accounting of who got snack to my record keeping after all, and keep my waste under 10% as I have for 6 years. I think part of this is I am actually pretty proud of the work I do on the paperwork, not perfect but I care that others have their accountability and I really work hard at it. So working that hard and hearing back on a regular basis that one kid signed in and they can't read it is just frustrating. I have the same rules as a child care setting in its own building, but I am located at a school. Teachers are not supposed to come and take kids for a short time even, I can't let the principal come take a kid out, I would have to 'supervise' if it is after school.
They can 'catch' me by doing 3 required inspections a year. If I had caught up previous days I would have only been dinged for one day, I just didn't get to it. Sweetana I like how you put it, and dropping some of the over-focus. Just add an hour to my week and get all of it caught up and perfect. Meanwhile the dinner records are perfect, of course that is 10 dinners compared to 75 snacks.
I know, Snack Paperwork! Who knew! But OTOH the entity that is taking the feds' money, zG's employer, has to recognize that strings come with the money. There is no free rode nor should there be from the taxpayers.
Like sweetana,
I am interested in how the paperwork timing is actually carried out.
We've already invested over a thousand hours to comply with the Affordable Care Act.
Reminds me of the TPS reports in the movie Office Space.
Our district now supplies a fruit or veggie snack to each classroom in the elementary grades as well as breakfast and lunch, then the Boys and Girls club has before school and after school care and those also have snacks. I can say, the kids hate celery day. The kitchen crew spends an extra hour washing, cutting, individually bagging, taking to the classrooms, retrieving from the classrooms and throwing away. Wish they could start composting.
You can thank ronald reagan and his BS "welfare queen" meme for this. Thanks to that jerk every republican politician constantly screeches about 'government waste' and blah blah blah, the same way they do about non-existent voter fraud because they don't want poor people and minorities to vote. The goal isn't to reduce fraud. If it was they'd figure out better, more efficient ways to provide proof that the food went to little kids instead of to lazy greedy adults. The goal is to make the task so onerous that people just give up, or like in your case, **** up. Who cares if a few kids go hungry. After all they're not voters. That, in a nutshell, is "compassionate conservatism".
Reminds me of the TPS reports in the movie Office Space.
Wish they could start composting.
We compost!! I know our district has a lot of issues, however we have more schools who are running gardens and selling produce to the kitchen, and more that are composting in the lunchroom. We had trash, recycle and compost all summer too!
I kinda hate the breakfast in the classroom program, I understand the purpose but I saw much less waste when breakfast was offered before school hours in the cafeteria. It was still free and offered to all students but they were able to cook an amount that they expected and not throw things away. Plus the amount of work I see them do to put together breakfast packages for all classrooms, refrigerated bags for the milk, counting out the fruit and delivering the right number to each classroom, then picking it all up. They can re-serve some of the items like fruit, but not everything.
Today i would have failed even more, I had 51 kids in choir, 27 in art and 8 in running. I checked them all in myself until teachers could get to the cafeteria. Everyone was signed in but I didn't do the extra snack check sheet. I am pretty impressed that I pulled it off today, choir was HUGE and the teacher is amazing, but dang. I actually needed to supervise them instead of making little check marks on an extra sheet of paper. I should have an assistant during this time but I have still been trying to hire (did I mention we are now our own hiring managers?)
ZG, I dont want this to sound harsh but have you tried to come up with a standard SYSTEM for keeping track of/completing all this paperwork? It is a daily, regular process. I know it is frustrating to have multiple sheets of paper, but if you train everyone from the beginning that kids need to sign in both their activity sign in sheet AND their snack sign in sheet, and just make it part of the routine, wouldn't it be easier on everyone? Maybe it is more complicated than we realize. If you can explain a bit more about what exactly is involved, maybe we can help you come up with a better approach that works for you, your kids/families, AND the bureaucrats.
Some of us spent many years pushing paper -- let us help ease your load!
Thanks Lhamo, I am working on a system. Previous years I was one of the sites awarded for excellent snack paperwork. I have never had more than a 10% waste in 6 years. So I know I do a good job with snack, and the inspector felt very bad. I want to be nice as well and do what works for her, I am one of 50 sites in my department however and we all are different.
So there are at least 3 different types of programs that receive snack, childcare, clubs and 4 year old club (some years also tutoring). The childcare must be signed in by us, we also record who gets a snack. We offer snack to everyone and what they have wanted for years is a tracking of which kids actually picked up and consumed the snack. They even wanted to know which kids ate one part or both parts. The clubs are run by teachers and paras who get to the cafeteria after snack is finished so I am the one signing in and recording the snack. I could use another staff to do this but it is still a huge job to just sign them in. The 4 year old program is easy, but they cannot be in my data system for my grant, so they have a different sign in sheet. When I have tutoring the kids are required to sign themselves in. What happened the day after the inspection is that I had choir starting and it was 51 kids, I had another club with 27 kids. I need more staff to help me sign in but when I asked around for help all the teachers are with their classes until past 3:45 so there is no one. I am going in this weekend to get on the server and do more hiring.
The data system I have exports rosters 2 ways and one is an excel sheet. I can manipulate that one to look like the one they gave me without doing another data entry job ( I have 200 kids attending programs so far). It lists by first and last name, grade, etc. and I can work with it. My very new staff for the childcare part will continue to do this but said it was too hard by last name so I am going to run it by first name for October. We no longer get the data system after April when the grant is finished so I am not sure what I am going to do then, I am asking the department to keep paying for the system for my site. It runs every report I need, rosters, sign in/out, medical, parent contacts, and I can see any child's schedule of clubs easily. With 200 this is so important. Honestly some of my colleagues are writing and re-writing by hand the lists, making up their own excel spreadsheets and then spending hours trying to get the data they need for reports. I work on ways to keep using the one data system and meet all the needs of everyone, I think it is horribly inefficient to have different sheets in different systems to do this job. And it affects my workload.
iris lilies
10-1-16, 10:45am
You can thank ronald reagan and his BS "welfare queen" meme for this. Thanks to that jerk every republican politician constantly screeches about 'government waste' and blah blah blah, the same way they do about non-existent voter fraud because they don't want poor people and minorities to vote. The goal isn't to reduce fraud. If it was they'd figure out better, more efficient ways to provide proof that the food went to little kids instead of to lazy greedy adults. The goal is to make the task so onerous that people just give up, or like in your case, **** up. Who cares if a few kids go hungry. After all they're not voters. That, in a nutshell, is "compassionate conservatism".
I reapeat, it seems reasonable to me to have controls and checks on taxpayer funded programs and services.
Perhaps these are unreasonable reqirements, I dont know.
Voter fraud non existant, haha. The city of St Louis just spent god knows how much money on a second election for our state House district when the first one went fraudulent. It was fun for me because I got to vote Democratic, voting one obnoxiously dirty Democrat down in favor of a new, fresh, and as yet uncorrupted Democrat. Even though they will cast votes essentially the same way in the House, the blatent corruption was stemmed, for the moment.
what they have wanted for years is a tracking of which kids actually picked up and consumed the snack.
Do they need this to be trackable to the *actual* kid? If not, why not just count the snacks you put out, and see how many are leftover?
Do they need this to be trackable to the *actual* kid? If not, why not just count the snacks you put out, and see how many are leftover?
This year they are pushing to be trackable to the actual kid. I have records of how many I got, how many were offered, and how many and which kids were in attendance. That is standard and I am fine with it. I am just struggling with being able to say which kid ate a snack and which passed other than the couple that I know have food issues.
I am finding ways around, thanks for listening.
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