One Teacher's Perspective: Just in Time for Labor Day, A New Employee Handbook

One Teacher's Perspective: Just in Time for Labor Day, A New Employee Handbook:

Just in Time for Labor Day, A New Employee Handbook

A big deal to many Janesville school employees, but a sidebar note in the local paper (and just in time for Labor Day!) was the unanimous board approval of the school district’s employee handbook this past week.

As noted in my last posting, the Janesville’s teachers union is one of the last holdouts in Wisconsin to be subjected to Gov. Walker’s discriminatory Act 10 legislation, which ends most collective bargaining rights for almost all public employees. This questionably constitutional and purely partisan legislation forced districts, like mine, to shift the rules and regulations of work conditions from collectively bargained labor contracts to district-produced employee handbooks.  

Of course, this is what Wisconsin (and more commonly non-Wisconsin) neo-cons wanted. Top-down management dominates. The public educator’s perspective is devalued. Under Act 10, hierarchical bureaucracy now trumps collaboration and teamwork in many Wisconsin public schools. This is a step back from the collaboration-focused professional learning community (PLC) model I desire for all Wisconsin public schools.  

I understand teachers’ territorial attitude toward work conditions perplexes my market-world friends, who live contently under management-dictated rules and regulations. Ironically, I suspect the same thrill entrepreneurs get building a business is similar to the feeling employees get when they are directly involved in organizational decision making. School districts, however, cannot follow the corporate model. Declining and shrinking