7. The Only One

The Only One

I was creating plans for teaching the students, and I wanted to get into that classroom.  Human Resources wanted an answer, and wanted a teacher. 

I kept looping this contract back around in my head and on paper, doing the math.  I spent the day and a mostly-sleepless night crunching and re-crunching the same numbers.  I tried different options and scenarios.  I consulted with many loved ones who are teachers (including a retired high school Chem/Math teacher), and some who are business and tax advisors.      

We file taxes jointly so I am taxed in the same bracket as my executive husband which, while not in the highest brackets, is enough to take a huge bite out of the salary of this teaching job.  Not the district’s concern perhaps, but it was my reality.  So, minus federal and state taxes and FICA etc, and after subtracting fixed expenses, including those for maintaining my teaching license, this pay would be worse than the college-level adjunct jobs I had side-stepped, with longer hours and more work, on a temp contract.  Plus – and most importantly – I would have to back out of my other part-time gig due to the few days of travel in May.  That job paid better than the teaching job.   

I was so upset, and felt increasingly more sick in my stomach.  Sadly, taking this job would cost more than turning it down.    

Finally, I called HR.  I explained my position and asked if they might make an adjustment of some sort, so this could work for everyone.  Could I have the unpaid leave days?  No, no wiggle room.  Maybe we could negotiate my prior college- and graduate-school-level science teaching into an experience step-up to improve this salary, so I could afford to let other things go?  HR said no, only K-12 licensed public school teaching counts, and I hadn’t done any of that yet. 

The woman who worked with me at HR was extremely nice, but didn’t have authority to make changes.  She was only doing her job.

I declined the teaching job.  I wished them the best in hiring the right teacher for those students (my students). 

I was heartbroken.  So was the lady at HR.

That’s when she told me that I was the only Chemistry teacher who had applied.  I had been their only interview.

I hung up the phone and cried. 

The district can have as many as 50 applicants for an opening as an elementary school teacher.  They can have a rigid contract and be selective.  In this case, I was the only option.  There was no other Chemistry teacher, and these students would continue with substitutes. 

The slowness of the HR process meant the newly hired teacher wouldn’t have the chance to start the year with the students, to say nothing of the students’ chance to start the year with a teacher.  Why had it taken them two months of the school year (and all of the summer) to figure this out?  

Is HR swamped during a hiring freeze? 

By Halloween I had already committed to other work, none of it full-time and all of it flexible, which they could have accommodated, but wouldn’t. 

I had come seeking employment – the entire reason I was going back to work in the first place was to meet financial goals.  I had also come there to serve my country and its youth.  I thought teaching could do both, which is why I spent time, money and effort (intense) to get the license.  I’d seen the pay scale before I ever went to WOU.  I knew what compensation a full-time standard teaching contract would yield after taxes and expenses.  But this job offer didn’t work at all.

Should I have taken it anyway?  Is teaching a career or a charitable mission?  Should I take a job that would have no net financial yield?

They never did find a Chemistry teacher. 

They reposted the job without the Chemistry endorsement requirement, and hired someone mid-year.  Perhaps that teacher could have gained the endorsement with the Principal and taken the Chem Praxis (grueling).  However, that teacher was not re-hired for the following year.         

(So why couldn’t I be hired for a FACS job without the endorsement?)

The best solution, obviously, would have been to divide those 120 students into five classes of 24 each, the safe class size for using the Chem lab (built for 24), provide me a prep period like every other teacher in the building, and hire me in August to be their Environmental Chemistry teacher on a standard full-time contract with benefits.  Keep me for 15 - 20 years, like other high school teachers.  And maybe as a bonus, have the Principal assign me to teach a FACS class to gain the endorsement.  

It was not to be.

I guess if they could have done that, they could have kept the other Chem/Physics teacher they had lost to the RIF.  Had they kept him, the students would have had their teacher in September and October and now November.  But they let him go.

I kept the writing jobs.  Writers still teach – but don’t get to see the students’ faces. 

I grieved the loss, but there it is.  I walked away this time.

I had no idea that things would actually get worse . . . .