Happy Halloween!

I am recovering from a pretty bad fall I took Wednesday morning. My face made hard contact with my garage door and driveway when I tripped. A trip to the emergency room ruled out any broken ribs or nose, though my side still hurts. My glasses were pushed into my face, cutting the bridge of my nose causing a lot of bleeding. I suppose I will still be hurting from my wounds for a while still. I missed two days of school this week because of the injury, returning Friday to try to get my classes back on tract. It is the first time since my arm surgery in 1998 that I have missed two days of school in a row for illness.
While my injuries have been the focus of my life for the last three days, they are not my reason for writing this day. Earlier this week I was looking through my “Science Teacher” magazine and came upon a piece about teacher recruitment. The piece contended that too many teachers quit the profession, resulting in the district/school having to recruit replacements at considerable expense. The author cited a study that estimated the cost of replacing a new teacher at more than $20,000. Imagine that, your History teacher decides to resign at the end of the year, and it costs the school district $20,000+ to replace him or her! The article stated that the costs were related to administrative expenses.
Let’s assume that a school district has an opening for a teacher and they decide to interview 10 applicants. The principal and department chairman each spend 2 hours with each applicant and the superintendent an hour with each. When a candidate is decided upon someone in the central office has to fill out the paperwork required to add the teacher to the payroll, insurance,—this requires a full 8 hour day to complete. That is a total of 68 hours of time spent in the endeavor. If the cost was $20,000 each person involved must earn on average $294/ hour; in other words, each one involved must make a little more than $600,000 a year. Later in the article the author says it is imperative that the federal government come up with huge sums of cash to help school districts cover these costs. At this point it should be apparent to even the most dimwitted reader that the numbers are B.S. and are made up in an attempt to make a case for the federal government handing over more money for schools.
I have been involved in the hiring process for my department for more than 20 years and before I will believe their cost projections I would like to see a review of the books by an independent auditor.
When educators, in an attempt to get more funding, resort to fabricated numbers and costs to support their requests we all lose, and the public becomes less likely to support legitimate requests for increased spending.