With so much written today about
”
teamwork
”
in the workplace, it surprised me to read The Dispatch’s
front-page article last Tuesday titled
”
$50 and that’s all you get.
”
It spoke about teachers at Gilroy High School having that amount
of money to stock their classrooms with basic school supplies for
not one month or two months, but the entire school year.
With so much written today about “teamwork” in the workplace, it surprised me to read The Dispatch’s front-page article last Tuesday titled “$50 and that’s all you get.” It spoke about teachers at Gilroy High School having that amount of money to stock their classrooms with basic school supplies for not one month or two months, but the entire school year. Now that is absolutely crazy, absurd and ridiculous, and needs to be fixed. And it brought to my mind the following comment:
“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I.’ And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I.’ They don’t think ‘I.’ They think ‘we’; they think ‘team.’ They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” ~ Peter Drucker
I never have believed it to be right for people (in this case GHS teachers) who are “on the firing line” to be taken advantage of by their superiors (GUSD leadership) the very people who, if like managers in the corporate world, are constantly beating the drums of teamwork to the workers in the trenches.
Talk is cheap, and it’s a sorry hypocrisy on teamwork, when just to function in the classroom, a GHS teacher has to spend their own money to buy basic supplies that the school should be supplying. Then adding insult to injury, never getting reimbursed for even a portion of what they’ve spent. Do you think teacher morale suffers when this happens on a regular basis? You bet. As a nameless teacher was quoted in the article “it’s crummy.”
And of course, the reasons/excuses for such a dilemma in this case are nothing new or unique to educational institutions, again caused by the same old budget problems. But if the well-rounded learning of students is the goal of education, then while teachers are necessary and facilities are necessary, it does not take rocket science to realize that basic supplies in adequate quantity for the classroom are just as necessary.
There are plenty of ways that illustrate this point. For example, the soldier fighting a battle without ammunition, the mechanic trying to fine-tune the car without tools, the chemist developing new fibers without chemicals. While GUSD trustee T.J. Owens indicated that this issue needs to be addressed, I’ve got two suggestions that will get results even if they are unpopular.
My first suggestion is to cut the salaries of the GUSD executives making over $100,000 per year by 7 percent. Those cuts will be designated to fund the GHS supply budget. You say that’s unreasonable, or we might loose good executives to do something like that. I say too bad. Let the leaders lead by example as Drucker said, and in this case, the personal pocketbook is a great example. Besides, there probably are plenty of qualified people to fill empty GUSD executive positions, I suspect would be happy to live in Gilroy and be paid even a reduced salary.
Additional supply budget shortfalls could be supplemented by (1) donations or supplies from parents and friends as is being done already, or (2) if still necessary, adding an across the board supply fee that would be assessed on a per-student basis for the school year, say just for sake of argument, $50.
And besides, if this supply deficit keeps going on, then GHS teacher morale will definitely take another tumble downward, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Unhappy teachers don’t make for happy, motivated students. The article was clear on this when it stated “an inadequate supply stock threatens the way teachers teach and the way students learn.”
So let’s see how and when the GUSD executives put Drucker’s words into action, and give the teaching team the supplies they need to do their jobs.
