Pay Me

 My older brother will be acknowledging the fiftieth year of his graduation from the public school system of Boulder, Colorado. He was part of the one hundredth senior class of Boulder High School. By the time I came traipsing along four years later, the hoopla had died down considerably. Numbers with zeroes in them tend to get folks worked up. 

I say this as preface to the article he shared with me as the auspicious anniversary approaches. According to the Boulder Daily Camera, the school district in my hometown has begun handing out fifteen thousand dollars to veteran teachers to entice them into retirement. It seems that those educators at or near the top of the pay scale are causing things at the Boulder Valley School District to get a little tight financially. More than half of the district's teachers are in the top two tiers of compensation, while those at the entry-level make up only five percent. "We have a skewed distribution," says Superintendent Rob Anderson.

Two things stick out for me here: First of all, this news comes to me during the glorious fete that is Teacher Appreciation Week. Secondly, I have a very clear and distinct memory of school districts around the country working feverishly to get a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom. This was part of a little program called "No Child Left Behind." That edict is now some twenty years in the past, and we currently find ourselves shutting down the department of education in order to buy more bombs to blow up girl's schools in Iran. 

I was offered a "deal" earlier this year to show myself to the door in order to help close a gap in the eternally messed up finances of the Oakland Unified School District. My circumstances were not exactly ripe for the picking of this particular "windfall," but I couldn't quite shake the feeling of an invisible hand in the middle of my back "encouraging" me to wrap up my vaguely illustrious career as a teacher here in California. California, the state whose governor held on to nearly two billion dollars in money earmarked for education, and has proposed to keep another five billion in this coming year. 

It would seem that budgetary woes are being felt throughout this great land of ours, as the Department of Education experiences the same respect as the East Wing of the White House. Things have become so odd and desperate that the powers that be are willing to pay teachers not to teach in order to save money. 

For a ballroom.