Dear FTE Week Teacher,
FTE week is always a blast for teachers. Bubbling in those little grids for all the students who are deemed full-time equivalency is one of the true joys of teaching.
My favorite part of FTE week is when the sheets are distributed with an accompanying lecture about the desperate need for accurate record keeping and how funding is tied to each child, yada…yada…
I’m too chicken to do it, but I’ve often thought of raising my hand and saying, “Whoa! Whoa! Accurate? This is the first I’ve heard of this. I may not be the woman for the job.”
It’s not that I intentionally try to keep inaccurate records, but it’s hard when a kid was here, but not really here, but here for a little while, and then left, or maybe I just sent him out in the hall because he kept saying, “bruh”, and I hate the phrase “bruh” almost as much as “yeet,” or maybe he wasn’t here at all.
I don’t remember, so, yeah, let’s just go ahead and leave that little square blank to say he was present.
I am sure he was here in some shape, form, or fashion, then again, maybe not. Regardless, they said money was tied to it, and I can’t handle another month of no paycheck like that stunt they pulled back in October. So for my records, yeah he was here, emphatically, no question about it, present.
“What?” “You need to see my electronic gradebook to verify?” “What in the world?” “Don’t you trust me?” “Let’s not get petty here. Next you’ll want to bring the auditors into the matter.”
Listen, I am not saying the auditors aren’t real, but I am saying the proverbial auditor threat seems suspect.
Every year is an audit year, and every year our school was randomly selected, and yet, nobody has ever seen these alleged “auditors”?
It doesn’t add up, but I hesitate to say too much. Big brother is always watching, and I don’t want my blog to be next on the auditor's chopping block.
I do, however, often wonder how this auditor notion came to be. Was there a meeting at the round table, where someone laments, “Teachers are never going to fill out these FTE forms accurately. What are we going to do?”
Then someone else chimes in, “We could always tell them, it’s an audit year."
Finally, the last dude snaps his fingers and declares, “That’s good. I like that.”
I also wonder if it’s that simple if I could apply the same concept to other areas of my work life. For instance, say kids are getting lax on turning in homework, which never happens, but just suppose it did. I wonder what would happen if the teacher simply declared with certainty, “Guys, I’m gonna’ need 100% of you to turn in that plot diagram tomorrow. I am not kidding. The auditors are going to be here, and they are going to be sifting through the turn-in basket with a fine tooth comb. If you don’t have it turned in on time, well…let’s just say it’s not going to be good.”
There’s no guarantee the threat will work, but I do know a host of educated folks who are terrified of auditors. If the auditor strategy works for adults, I am guessing it would work for kids as well.
What do you have to lose, except a paycheck, of course?
-CDB