Thanks, Martie. I may just have to bring this up in the class I am starting in June. It's called Teachers and the Law .
We are required to attend Open House twice a year and we are not compensated for it (which is why I get furious when I sit there for four hours to meet parents and only two parents out of the 150 students that I teach show up but that's a topic for another thread). However, two times a year is one thing; I teach a lot of Special Education students and if each parent demanded an evening meeting, it could get ridiculous. Not to mention that teachers have families and evening obligations, too.
Another issue is travel. I am lucky that I live close to my school but I know of some teachers that drive an hour to get to school. What are they supposed to do? Go home and then drive back and forth again? With gas being $3.00 a gallon?
This is an interesting question. We don't have teacher unions here in Georgia. It's against the law for public servants to belong to a union. So unions aren't the answer here.
I do think that I am going to ask my professor about this. This could even be an interesting topic for a paper. :grin: I'm glad that the parents that I have dealt with have been willing to work with the teachers at my school and meet with us during work hours. I do know that only one reg ed teacher is required to be at the IEP meeting so I'm sure that a parent that wanted to meet with more reg ed teachers than that would be better off trying to work the meeting into the normal school hours.
~Kathy
