For some completely unexplained reason, our district has given one woman (the "furniture nazi") complete power to dictate what furniture we need and will have in every room of our school. We teachers have had over a month to adjust to what we were given, and now our office staffs and others have gotten their furniture.
We came back from Spring Break yesterday and I headed to our staff lounge, I wanted to see what stupidity had overtaken the place--and it had taken over the place. We now have a couple bar-height tables with 10 bar-height stools, as well as a couple "normal" tables and chairs. No one likes climbing up the stools to the tall tables; one lady said she couldn't sit there with a skirt on! I surveyed everyone who haunts that particular lounge (our ranch-style campus has 3 lounges) and while one person was ambivalent, no one else liked the too-tall tables.
I knew the front office and counseling office would be disaster areas, and they even exceeded my expectations. Then there was the library:
Does that look like a high school library to you? This is less than half of the original seating in the library, and less than half of the shelving space. What you see is what you get, that's our library. How is that a library for a school with almost 2000 students? Why did some furniture purchaser get to decide that this is what a library should look like, and why did the district suits allow it?
Hey, "anonymous" commenter from my last post: librarians are in the teachers union. That union didn't do squat about this. They didn't do squat about our being compelled to accept the furniture that the furniture nazi ordered, all they did was negotiate with the district to pay us a couple hundred dollars each to pack up and unpack our classrooms for the furniture swap. How many dollars per hour do you think that came out to for our librarian, who had to box up every single book in our library? Where was your vaunted union here? The union for all the secretaries--office, attendance, counseling, finance, etc--didn't even negotiate extra pay for them. Wave your union banner high, though, "anonymous", unions are covering themselves with glory just about as much as the furniture nazi is.
I'm speechless about how uninviting, and sterile that the library looks. I guess the plan is to reduce its use and therefore limit the student's exposure to new ideas, etc.
ReplyDeleteCouldn’t say it any better. Just to be clear, the furniture nazi did not ask or want any input as to the library furniture purchase. She had her mind made up as to what “she” wanted. When pointed out that the new shelving wouldn’t be sufficient for the book collection, she said “get rid of books”.
ReplyDeleteHey "anonymous", you can make another comment on the last post but you won't address this one. You *know* there's no response that's going to make unions look good.
ReplyDeleteRun away, coward, run away.
One of our vice principals sent out an email today asking about furniture. I told her we didn't like the tables and chairs in our staff lounge (I'm told they don't like the bar-height tables in the far staff lounge, either). She apparently spoke to the furniture nazi, who whined that she tried to give a variety of furniture--round and rectangular tables, tall and normal-height tables, barstools (with backs) and normal-height chairs.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it have made more sense to ask *us* what *we* would like? Like so much else in my district, it's obvious that we teachers are not important enough to consult--union or no union.
Hey, anonymous, I thought that it was the Leftists that claim/proclaim/misuse the term "banned" about conservatives wanting to get rid of books. Now they or she has done just that, And with the very short time, not appropriate culling of older titles
ReplyDelete