By Bob Chidester
Special to the Sparks Tribune
After teaching middle school for 20 years full-time in the S.F. Bay Area, I retired, and my wife and I moved to Sparks. The Washoe County School District (WCSD) has daily shortages of dozens of substitutes.
For the past 6 years, I have successfully substituted in a dozen WCSD middle schools.
For almost that entire period, not only did I receive no complaints, but numerous teachers asked me to fill in for them. One example of my work was a long-term subbing assignment at Vaughn Middle School. I supervised their in-school suspension program (ISS): an alternative to out-of-school suspension for students exhibiting very challenging and unacceptable behavior.
For over 8 months, I tutored the ISS students with their class work, counseled them on how to avoid future incidents in the classroom, and helped them develop a more positive attitude toward school. During that time, I worked successfully with over 100 students, as well as staff.
After 6 years and dozens of successful assignments like the ISS program, I ran into problematic principals. During the past year and a half, I was reported to the principals of two schools by a few students. I tried to meet 1-on-1 with each principal to clarify. Neither one was interested.
From my observation, I believeWCSD is an increasingly out-of-control school district, allowing student behavior to escalate to a lethal level. This has resulted in a brazen willingness by a handful of students to say and do virtually anything because they can get away with it. Major incidents are covered up and hidden from the public daily.
I love working with middle school students, and I believe the feeling was mutual. Most importantly, my students learned infinitely more than they do when WCSD covers up substitute shortages by giving students “free days”, “study-halls,” or has a custodian, cafeteria worker, or even an uncredentialed aide “teach” (aka babysit) their classes (which is thoroughly illegal).
Current management of WCSD reminds me of the expression “the inmates run the asylum.” If this is the way other substitute teachers are treated, it is no wonder WCSD has such a difficult time providing enough subs for many of the district’s schools. Perhaps they should change the meaning of WCSD to “Wasteful, Covert, Spiteful, and Disgusting.”
(If you are interested in writing an op-ed for the Sparks Tribune, please contact Sherman R. Frederick at shermfrederick@gmail.com.)
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