Submitted by Megan McWhorter McCallen
Open letter to the Board of Estimate and Taxation:
First, thank you all for your commitment to our town, especially through what I know has been a challenging few months. I am grateful for the time and energy you all give to your work on behalf of Greenwich residents.
I am writing not only as one of those residents, but also as a longtime substitute teacher with Greenwich Public Schools and partner, sister, and friend to many teachers. While I am certain that you have received plenty of correspondence regarding the recent decision to decrease the proposed BOE budget, I wanted to offer some thoughts that might be unique to me – but more likely reflective of many in similar positions.
I have never written a letter to elected officials, but as I watched my partner, a high school history teacher in Bridgeport, working on his lesson plans Sunday morning, I was moved to correct some misinformation spoken specifically by Ms. Fassuliotis. I recall, without an exact transcript, that she spoke of teachers “only working 180 days a year.” It would be more accurate to say that teachers are only paid to work 180 days a year when, in fact, they work far more than that. The work of a teacher requires them to be in the past, present, and future simultaneously: teaching in real time, reading and grading completed work, and planning for upcoming lessons and assessments. Since the latter items cannot be done during active teaching, teachers are supposed to have adequate prep time during the school day to address them.
When I was a long-term substitute at Western Middle School, I taught five out of nine periods in addition to advisory base, spent two “free” periods in an assigned school responsibility like hall monitoring or test proctoring and one “free” period in a team meeting. That left me just shy of 30 minutes to do grading, lesson planning, and correspondence for almost 100 students – if I was lucky enough not to have to use that remaining “free” period covering another teacher’s classroom. I think you can see where I’m going with this.
Teachers do not “only” work 180 days out of the year. Teaching eighth grade English in Greenwich, I was lucky if I could get all of my work done to my standards in the given hours of a day and have any time left over for my son. Often I did not.
As well as not having enough time in a day to do my work and tend to my family, I did not have enough money to do so. For example, in 2023 I received $29,927.48 before taxes for seven months’ work as a long-term substitute teacher in this town. That’s $4,275.35 per month – again, before taxes. I am a single mother residing in Riverside whose rent at the time was $3,300 per month. I received no benefits as a substitute, so I also paid $847.36 per month for health insurance plus a $2,000 deductible. Rent and health insurance already exceeded my monthly paycheck without factoring in groceries, utilities, gas, or any of my son’s needs. I was more fortunate than most to have financial support from my family, but it was still not tenable. I no longer work for Greenwich Public Schools.
Some of you lamented the unfortunate absenteeism of teachers in our community. Perhaps my above illustration can help you understand the fact that many of them need to use sick days, personal days, and even vacation days to catch up on work (never mind take their sick child to the doctor or visit the DMV).
On Sunday, my partner ran late to cook for his 95 year-old mother because he was trying to finish his lesson planning. On Saturday, my brother, a middle school history teacher in Westport, had to choose between attending his daughter’s basketball game or grading his students’ research papers.
I would humbly ask that next time a BOE budget comes around, or simply next time you choose to speak of teachers’ commitment and workload with undue disdain, you consider these things. Consider that an underpaid, overworked individual with a family and rising cost of living is trying to do the best they can with what you give them. Consider that that man or woman is teaching your children, grading their papers, correcting their tests, planning their lessons, writing their assessments, modifying their behavior plans, emailing you updates, going to all manner of meetings, monitoring the halls, covering a colleague’s class, attending professional development, etc. Consider that that person might need to carve out additional time to finish an extraordinary amount of work and care for their family. Perhaps that requires them to take a day off. Perhaps they need a substitute. Perhaps that substitute cannot come in because she is a single mom who cannot afford a caretaker with the paycheck that she is receiving. She is already under water trying to buy the groceries. So, that teacher’s colleagues scramble to cover the classes, don’t have time for their own work, and the cycle continues.
I’ve often heard people celebrate teachers as superheroes. Maybe that’s true, but without diminishing the epithet, I would argue that they are people who are trying to do superheroic and superhuman work – the most important work of teaching our children – without adequate time or money.
Thank you again for your hard work and for your consideration of my letter. I look forward to seeing what we can do to best support our teachers in the future.
Sincerely,
Megan McWhorter McCallen