KIPP Columbus poaches CCS special education teachers via work email
The second workday for some Columbus special education teachers delivered much more than the predictable District professional development communications: some had an offer for a new job.
Asha Mall-Graves, the Assistant Director of Talent Acquisition for charter school conglomerate KIPP Columbus sent the following email to a select group of Columbus City Schools special education teachers on August 19:
The email was shared with me from educators across the district, but it appears not all special education teachers received it. While the rhyme or reason of the recipient list is unclear, it prompts a troubling question: how does KIPP Columbus have access to our work emails?
I won’t go as far as tipping my hat to the recruiter, but I will say I understand the strategy, and it’s not a bad one if you’re hurting for special ed teachers.
Special ed teachers in Columbus have not only some of the worst working conditions, but they’re continuously treated with a severe lack of care and basic respect from the district. If they’re lucky, special ed teachers have building leadership that actually understands their job and the needs of the children they serve, but that’s rare.
The vast majority of special ed teachers in Columbus have far more students on their caseload than legally allowed. The legal limits for caseloads are made clear in the Ohio Revised Code, but public schools cannot turn students away, as every child in the country has a right to a free public education. This is further clarified for students with disabilities in the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) section of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Education laws were made because public schools were discriminating and causing massive harm to students with disabilities, and these laws are actually why the federal Department of Education was established in 1980.
There’s nothing acceptable about being over caseload for these teachers. They serve our most vulnerable students and families, including children who need incredibly specialized care. Special education teachers are also some of the most physically assaulted: they are bitten, spit on, hit, kicked, bloody from fingernail clawing, I have even seen their hair get ripped from their scalp.
They are overworked to the extent that laws are broken, and it’s clear students are not getting the education they are legally entitled to, much less deserve. That’s not me being hyperbolic, that is what the special education teachers have been saying for years.
The district blames the teacher shortage, and there is some truth to that, but it is widely known that HR drops the ball with hiring. This isn’t surprising, considering it was recently reported that the district’s HR department just lost a casual $40 million due to sheer negligence.
Every year staff members share they know colleagues from the neighboring districts apply for our open special ed jobs and they never even receive a phone call from Columbus HR. Many Columbus special education teachers who leave the district give HR a heads up that they are thinking of leaving if the special education district leadership don’t get their act together. They don’t get their act together, and then teachers leave for the suburbs or quit the profession.
Despite HR knowing exactly why our special ed teachers leave, and then fumbling a basic interview and hiring process, they sent this email to special education staff 2 weeks before the start of school:
As if asking the most exploited and overworked employees to do HR’s job and recruit people wasn’t bad enough, they had yet to start the “involuntary transfer” process. On the other side of things, last year I knew of at least one special education teacher that got involuntarily transferred in May! The district found it appropriate to relocate a teacher, causing them to have to leave their caseload of students that they had built relationships with all year, and attempt to build new relationships and service a whole new caseload of students with four weeks of school left.
The union has tried to help in the past year, but the new efforts have amounted to less than nothing and virtually no change in working conditions.
Last year was the pilot of a joint committee between the union and the district regarding special education issues. Meetings were sparse (in my opinion, with the state of special education), and while it helped some teachers to feel heard, it only showed how little the top district officials know about special ed.
At our last union rep meeting of the school year, I asked leadership if the special education joint committee had anything in writing regarding the issues in special ed, or any kind of plan. They didn’t. They had ended the year with nothing in writing.
Union leadership started a special education caucus and encouraged members to join. The caucus communication was a large group chat which includes the union leadership. Six members have told me teachers are quickly quieted and/or reprimanded by leadership for raising special education concerns in the caucus chat.
The union caucus has not brought any issues or actions regarding their working conditions to the union’s legislative assembly.
The union also negotiated pay for special ed teachers over caseload. They are eligible to receive 8 hours of supplemental pay ($41/hr) once a semester per student on their caseload. This is pennies for that amount of work, the teachers service those students for 8 hours a day every day, not 8 hours in one semester.
I have been told by two people on the union’s governance board they feel members are ungrateful for the extra negotiated pay, but these teachers are not ungrateful. What they say over and over — at union meetings and to me privately — is that they don’t want the measly pay. They want better conditions for students with disabilities. They want legally compliant working conditions.
The pay is only an incentive for the district to keep overloading the special ed teachers. Paying them $328/student over their caseload once a semester is far cheaper than hiring a full-time, licensed special ed teacher to comply with the law.
It was smart of KIPP to recruit on the second day of school because many special education members had a) just gotten their illegal caseload numbers for the year and/or b) were in the middle of being involuntarily transferred when they could have been setting up their rooms and getting ready for students.
The odds that a recruitment email would have been the straw that broke the back of employment were high.
I myself couldn’t resist reaching out to Asha from KIPP. I sent her a quick text last week to see if the recruitment email had worked.
I didn’t show up to the 3:30 meeting and she predictably didn’t answer my last question. I checked the website and KIPP Columbus indeed has many special education positions still open, though I’m not sure how many they started with. I wonder if “reasonable” is also “lawful”.
CCS punks staff with phishing pay raise
The district tests its employee’s digital literacy skills multiple times per year with phishing tests from a raccoon named Cyber Rick. They’re generally easy to spot and are meant to look like your principal asking you to fill out a form or join a loyalty program.
It would seem Cyber Rick wants to rumble with some educators this year, as they were mocked right to their faces by their own bosses about how underpaid they are.
I can imagine a group of vastly overpaid and underworked district employees sitting around a table in the old ECOT headquarters wondering how in the world they’re going to stump employees this time.
“They’re getting good at this phishing detection. We need to really stump them.”
“What kind of carrot can we dangle in front of them that would be so tempting they would risk getting reprimanded by raccoon Cyber Rick?”
Oh, right. Money.
They pretend-scammed us with telling us we’re appreciated for our “dedication, professionalism, and commitment to our students.”
They crafted a message telling us our “dedication over the past year” was worth something to them and made it a joke.
They hedged a bet we’d click a link because we’re so underpaid.
And if you fell for it, if you believed for just one second they valued you and that you were worth anything extra, you’d get a raccoon pop-up saying “Do better next time! That was so obvious!”
You’d get to sit at your district computer for an extra minute, after contract time, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, surrounded by a crumbling infrastructure filled with:
broken furniture rigged with hair-ties, masking tape and a prayer
a Smart Board that works 40% of the time
a coverage sheet to substitute for a class on your planning period
a classroom library you purchased yourself
a list of parents you haven’t called yet
a stack of papers that need to be graded
and a lesson plan for tomorrow that’s half completed.
I didn’t get that email, but if I had, I’d’ve thrown my laptop straight through the goddamn wall.
Phenomenal read! Well done Kelsey! I can’t believe those a$$hole$ sent that “pay increment” fake phishing scam. Well, I can believe it, which is why I don’t work there anymore. This District is mostly run by glorified wannabe Wal-Mart Managers who treat workers like castaways and scum. No thank you.