As in any school, having an "all hands on deck" policy is sometimes needed when short-staffed. However, this policy can sometimes come into conflict with the duties and responsibilities outlined by certain job descriptions. Furthermore, accountability on missing employees should be taken into account when there is an "all hands on deck" situation. A prime example of this situation is lunch duty. The assistant principal did an excellent job at developing a lunch duty schedule for employees whose schedule allow it. Contrary to that, my duties and responsibilities as outlined in my job description explicitly stated that I am not required to have a lunch duty. With that being said, I have taken it upon myself to ensure that I am one of the "hands on deck." The issue I have with this is when staff members do not report to his or her duty on time, if any at all. Now because of the type person I am, I am going to report to my duty on time, as well as leave on time. However, when someone does not show up on time or not at all, I am put in a rock and a hard place. I have shared my concerns with administration staff, however, because it is primarily members of the staff, there has not be a solution to the problem.
What do you suggest?
Michael, this has been a conversation in our leadership meetings, too. According to the leaders who have been at the school for a few years, the cause of this is a perception that “our kids don’t do bad things.” This mindset leads to a larger issue of students being unsupervised, which is a professional responsibility. The solution in our school has been to have an available administrator radio to the main office to call into a teachers classroom. The teacher leaders suggested to the administration that this information be included in a teacher’s evaluation; however, the administration seems hesitant to have consistent failure to show up for lunch duty noted in the professionalism area for TKES. Although this has been an issue since the start of the school year, it has only become a point of concern now that the administrators are finding themselves alone in the cafeteria. Regardless of where it is in the building and regardless of how good our kids are, they cannot be left unsupervised; it may sound a little extreme, but I tell teachers that even if it’s one student alone in a classroom, a teacher still needs to be in there in the event that the student slips and falls or experiences some sort of medical emergency.
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