Milestones: The downtrodden of Vance County


There’s this person I know who has a good job with a prominent Vance County employer. They call her a “professional,” but they don’t let her set a fee for the service she renders, even though other professionals like doctors, lawyers and architects do it routinely.

This person has a master’s degree, and it’s not from Parker Brothers, either.

She gets to work at 7:30 a.m. Some days she doesn’t leave until 6 p.m. Naturally, she is exempt from the wage and hour laws, so she’s not making any overtime.

Her break comes six hours into her workday. If she has to go to the bathroom before then, she is required to ask someone.

She eats her lunch while doing her job, if she has time.

She is surrounded by people who have just begun in her profession, and she’s required to teach them how to do their jobs while doing her own.

Her behavior is scrutinized constantly by members of the community in the form of hearsay and innuendo. Everything she says or does in the course of the day could become the subject of an inquiry that could cost her job. It only takes one mistake, one misstep or even one resentful lie told in anger against her. But, then, on the other hand, her supervisors are always threatening her living, too, reminding her constantly that she is “accountable” every step of the way.

My friend is not allowed in her place of business on the weekends without supervision, even though she’s worked there for more than 30 years. One wonders why she wants to get in at all, since the building is riddled with asbestos, a fact of which she is not necessarily reminded every year. She does not even have a key to the building, so if she needs to do work off-hours, she has to carry all of it with her. And her employer does expect her to take work home.

She’s not allowed in the supply closet, no matter what she needs or when she needs it. If she doesn’t adequately plan for her use of paper clips, it will be 24 hours before she will get a box, if she gets a box at all. If she asks for anything more expensive then a pen, a pad of paper, a file folder or a stapler, the answer will be no, so she’ll end up buying it herself anyway, just as she bought the desk at which she works and the chair in which she sits.

Yet in the course of a normal workday she’s entrusted with the lives of almost 90 children. For that she is left all by herself, no supervision at all. Still, she’s not supposed to touch the thermostat.

In case you haven’t guessed, she works for Vance County Schools. This poor, pathetic drudge’s job title is “teacher.”

Just as important as the lives she must protect are the educations for which she is responsible. She is in a position to do enormous damage as well as enormous good to her students, and she knows it, so she proceeds with caution and careful planning every step of the way. Because her work is so essential to all of our futures, naturally she’s treated like crap, just as you would treat a doctor or a lawyer who held your life or a loved one’s in his or her hands:

“Doctor, if you screw up this surgery, then little Suzie will die. So get your butt in there and don’t screw it up or it’s your ass. And by the way, we couldn’t get you the scalpels or anesthesia you asked for, so here’s my pocket knife and a ball-peen hammer. Try not to get blood on them. If Suzie lives, I might give you a little something extra, depending on the numbers.”

“Counselor, these papers of incorporation are vital to my business and my livelihood. Oh, and the deadline on them has moved from next month to tomorrow, so take them home and finish them. Don’t even think of billing me for the hours, because I’m only paying you for eight hours a day no matter how much you work. If you don’t like it, tough. There will be no discussion. I’ll just get some Lawyer for America kid to do it for me at half the price.”

Getting the picture?

Everyone is for better schools and higher teacher pay, from April 16 to April 14, year after year. On tax day, though, every civil servant in the universe is just a time-serving fossil who sucks off the paycheck of the hardworking private sector. Every year teachers go to the gruel masters in Raleigh like Oliver Twist for more and get soundly thumped for their efforts by an insulting sub-inflation-rate pittance of a raise that is more than offset by an increase in their health care costs. Of course, teachers are getting older and sicker as a group. Sane, young, healthy people leave in the first three years because the job conditions and pay are so dreadful. Cutting corners with health care is just another way of saying thanks.

You forget about the services they provide, services that would cost you more than all the taxes that you pay if you had to pay them out of pocket. You tell yourselves that if they don’t like it, they should get real jobs, forgetting that when they ask for raises, you tell them that they make enough. You pontificate endlessly about what really bad teachers are like (we’ve all had at least one) but forget the rule that states, “You get what you pay for.”

There’s also one other little item that keeps escaping your attention:

They’re your kids.