Board Speech

President Alexander, members of the board, superintendent Young, my name is Bill Yates and I stand before you today hoping you’ll give me another standing ovation because that was cool!

Thank you once again for that honor.

I fired off that email wanting to get it to you before your study session last week but also while I was just about to go in for a colonoscopy which is way too much information to share with you but you might have caught a note of hangrieness in there.

I wrote to you in uncomfortable circumstances because the use of private contractors in special education is a slippery slope. There is a lot of money to be made in the guise of serving our neediest students. We have to be careful.

I appreciated Mrs. Church pulling me aside at the job fair to share about the education code limiting such hiring of para professional subs to 60 days. I looked it up and she taught me a lot.

But I still struggle with this because there is Orthodoxy and their is Orthopraxy. Orthodoxy is right belief, and orthopraxy is right practice. In belief substitutes should be limited to 60 days, and contractors should be few. But orthopraxy isn’t happening since the hiring of Amergis I almost never see a Lodi Unified additional adult support, and I can’t even find the position on Edjoin. Amergis is not paying for people to move to our area. They already were local but the district was not successful recruiting them .

We now will pay a new company, who also will not be moving people to our area, to recruit out the exact same pool that already exists to provide substitute paras and special education teachers.

In orthodoxy substitute teachers would teach for a short time and be replaced but we have long term substitutes who have been allowed to teach in the same classroom for multiple years. Don’t blame the subs. Our students are wonderful, and teaching is incredible, especially extensive needs students. Everyone should do it and the process of becoming a teacher can be scary. And some subs might need an extra little urge by saying if you want to keep doing this teaching that you love you need to go get your credential.

Yet that isn’t happening. Now we are adding another layer of a company. A question I have not asked until now, Will it be for a short time just to let the Personnel department get aligned so they can do appropriate recruiting in this modern age or will this be another outsourcing of public funds to private companies forever?

What will be the judgement of success?

Thank you for your commitment to oversight and making sure our incredible students get all the resources they need.