148 teachers were absent from school today in the Mount Diablo Unified School District, according to MDUSD Spokesperson Theresa Harrington.
The district cannot say how many of the absences are due to COVID-19.
Harrington said they are still compiling their student absence data and will have to wait until Monday to be sure they have the full report.
There were 58 unfilled teacher assignments today. Just like yesterday (143 absences) and the day before (175 absences), the open classes were covered by other teachers during their prep periods, some students were divided in order to go into other classrooms and some classes were covered by other credentialed staff.
The MDUSD has 29,000 students and about 1,600 teachers, according to its website.
Those students without a teacher did not have a learning day. Probably divvied out to other teachers or covered by an admin who hasn’t been in a classroom for years and is unfamiliar with the subject. Parents should ask their kids how this is working for them.
But the school still got paid.
Do to the selfishness of our teachers today our kids are missing out on a education and socializing with their peers,because they’re afraid of contracting Covid even after everyone has been vaccinated. I think they just want to stay home and try to teach by the internet. Shame on you!
Before everyone starts to pile on…
Based on the County’s website, roughly 1% of the county currently has an active case (14.5k cases in a population of 1.15 million, but they include 10 days instead of the updated 5 minimum). Add a factor of 2 for people with unreported positive home tests, and double that for people are not sick but supposed to quarantine from close contact, and you get about 4%. That’s about half of the 8% number of MDUSD teachers that have called in sick. So it’s in the ballpark of reasonable.
Anecdotally, about 10% of my office is currently COVID positive so this seems reasonable.
This is what happens when the district and especially the teacher’s union played games last year, pretending that school had to be virtual and lying about the factual threat of COVID to keep everyone afraid. Nobody gives them the benefit of the doubt when there is a reasonable shortage due to the surge in cases.
We can argue about whether we need to be testing or isolating/quarantining for omicron, but that’s not the issue at hand.
ADA is all they care about. Kids are run thru high school like cattle and they pass out the diplomas no matter how little they’ve learned.
I received an e-mail from Northgate high school this afternoon. 300 students were absent today… I do not know how many students are there exactly, but I believe there are 1500-1600?
Wow. Is this going to be a daily report? I will ask again- is Claycord asking MDUSD for this information, or is MDUSD contacting Claycord to get it out there?
Someone forgot to include how many students were absent today. Can that information be included? I find it interesting that the Day 1 report is teachers only, Day 2 is teachers and students, and Day 3 is back to teachers only.
We really need to see where it is on Monday. This was the day that teacher felt should be the start after winter break for some stupid reason. So, if it was a sick out, then most will be back on that day. Same for moronic parents that kept their healthy kids out of school because they buy intot he fear propaganda.
Interesting that by 4:30PM yesterday they could give you total for the student absences in the district for that day, but they couldn’t get that to you by the 6:30PM posting today. I think MDUSD is trying to generate a negative narrative related to their own teachers. They don’t report these numbers any other place that I can find.
@Claycord you didn’t answer my question yesterday. Did MDUSD reach out to YOU to report this? Or did you reach out to MDUSD for the numbers so you could report it? Three days in a row now…
Here is my comment from your report on Thursday:
@Claycord Reporting teacher absences two days in a row and not the rest of the site staffs feels extremely targeted. Is the district trying to pin parents even more against teachers than they already are? Is it because we are in impasse and the district wants to ensure parents are unsupportive of us? Please tell us…is the district reaching out to YOU asking for you to report these numbers daily or are you reaching out to them?
Here is my comment after your report on Wednesday:
I would like to know why the author of this article chose to specifically write about teacher absences today and not include absences from other school staff. Classified staff, cafeteria staff, custodial staff, office staff, site techs, transportation, campus supervisors, on-campus daycare staff, and others were absent as well. Morale among MDUSD school faculties are at an all time low due to being disrespected and unsupported by both the district office personnel and parents. The comments here prove that this community does not value the hard work of our educators. Some needed to call out sick due to needing to care for an ill child of their own that could not attend their own school. As a MDEA member who is always honest, I will tell you there was absolutely NO discussion of a sick-out. We all care about our students too much to do that…especially the day returning from winter break. Please show your child’s teacher a little love. We are continuing to navigate teaching in a pandemic which we were NOT trained for. This is taking a toll on our mental health, and we need our community to stay as positive as possible for us and most importantly, for our students.
Hi Mr. Teacher: Well, the subtle message for you here given the lack of response is that the world apparently does not owe you an explanation. This is not your classroom. You also complain about the lack of support for teachers. In my opinion, much of that was your choice. You did the math in your head that arrogantly shoveling political propaganda at students very much against the will of the parents was worth the cost. You are looking at the cost. Look at the BLM sign out front. Look how you deceptively posted under multiple names ironically getting you censored while you were deceptively claiming CRT is not in our schools. So, right back at you. Explain why my high school student knows all of the foundation points of CRT, but did not get it from me, nor her friends, nor Tic Tock or any other such source. You can’t. Why are garbage books like “Born a Crime” being read and actual literature deemphasized? Why does she have a deep knowledge of and been tested on the details of the Virginia Slave Laws, yet has no clue what the Vietnam war was? I could go on, but I’d rather you just throw up your hands in mock confusion pretending you don’t understand. Note, my response is addressed to you as you raised yourself as representative of the teaching profession. There are lots and lots of teachers doing good jobs, not shoveling propaganda nor even at the grade level where my points are relevant. My point is on how the schools at the end try to graduate good woke Marxists for the cause.
@to do…. 👍👍👍👍
Time for school vouchers and taking the unions and government out of the classroom.
Let’s be honest… the teachers of the MDUSD are loving this. They are hoping the school get shut down again so they can do their 4 hours of zoom from home or on vacation and make the parents do all the work. I wish someone would hold them accountable these teachers at least in Pleasant Hill are a joke. They are more worried about teaching the kids gender pronouns than the standards put in place by the state.
Questions:
1) Based on the numbers in the post – 148 absent teachers / 1600 total MDUSD teachers = 9.25% absent teachers on Friday. 90.5% of the teachers were present for school yesterday. What is the average teacher attendance on a Friday in January? Oh, during an epidemic surge. We need that more numbers in order to come to a thoughtful conclusion after reading this post.
2) 58 unfilled teacher assignments. When I was teaching, I was frequently asked to cover somebody’s class during my prep period. Or, as some would call it – during my break! With the epidemic, substitute teaching is not a job for anybody who cares for themselves!
I taught school full-time for 35 years and subbed for another 9 years. Been there.
OK, put the pitchforks away. There is nothing to see here.
Oops – 90.75%!