I don't want to play

Dear administrator,

I take it back.

You can have my printer.

And my reasons for being a school based Speech Pathologist.

I really don't think I can continue to do this. Not with 70 students, 19 of whom are young students with extensive needs for Augmentative Communication, Picture Exchange, and Positive Behavior Support. Not with 4 regular education students with daily visual schedule, extensive libraries of personalized social stories, and weekly (sometimes daily) meetings with their assistants to work on behavior ideas. Not with 6 less hours of assistant time next year (reduced from 21 to 15). And certainly not if you really plan on following through with the proposed 45 minute extra recess/lunch duty that you announced on the last work day before summer. The meeting that left me in tears and nauseous (I'm still nauseous even now).

6 hours less of assistant time and 5 hours less of service time (45 minutes per day + transitions) means 11 hours less speech therapy per week. That is the equivalent of 22-88 student therapy times affected. 88!

So, something will have to give. Many somethings.

I can't reduce many of my obligations for legal reasons. I can't eliminate my 113 yearly meetings. Or my 35 evaluations and write-ups.

The first thing to go will obviously be my sanity. My lunch will be gone. Paperwork time (which is at least 1/3 of my job) will disappear. The next to go will be service times. Next my group sizes will increase substantially. So substantially that by the time I pick the students up from class and settle them down, there is little reason to even bother seeing them. They would get more out of staying in class for that half hour.

I've calculated the cost of this new duty. The tax payers will pay me almost $5000 over the next school year to referee the students at lunch at recess. If I had been providing speech therapy during that time and billing Medicaid, I could make $5400+ in revenues for the district. If families wanted to pay for private speech therapy during that lunch period, I could personally make about $650 (per WEEK).

Don't mistake my feelings about the importance of supervision at recess and the need for order and help in the cafeteria. However, I strongly feel that the district is misusing it's resources by putting the only employee who can EARN the district money, and who already is stretched way too thin on this daily, torturous duty.

Please, please reconsider. My summertime ulcer (and search for another job) will cease if and when I hear the word.

With hopeful thoughts (and a sick bag on hand),

Super Woman

PS: I promise to give up my printer in exchange for this relief