Facing a deficit of up to one billion dollars, the Philadelphia School District released a new contract proposal on Wednesday that contained some radical new cost-cutting ideas. Check out the most contentious bullet points below:
- Teachers will no longer be allowed to park for free in their school's parking lot. Teachers that don't want to pay a premium for parking will be forced to drive a school bus that transports students to and from school. All teachers who do not want to pay for parking and who don't currently have the license to operate a school bus will be forced to ride tandem bikes to school. There will be a fee to lock the bikes up on school grounds.
- Teachers must spend their morning prep periods making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for students. Any teachers who are allergic to peanuts will be forced to take a 10% reduction in salary.
- Water fountains will be removed from schools. Teachers will be given buckets to collect rain water in case they get thirsty.
- Caps on class sizes will be removed. Teachers will be given a stack of wood and nails to make additional desks one week before the start of each school year.
- Teachers will be required to submit lesson plans to their administration 3 years in advance, and those lessons must be aligned to state standards. If the state standards change in the future, teachers will have had to have predicted those changes before they happened or they will be penalized.
- Hall monitors will be replaced with tape recorders that have pre-recorded messages like, "Hey you over there, no running in the hallways," or "Stop fighting and get to class."
- Every teacher must share a classroom with at least 3 other teachers. If more than one class is booked for the same room at the same time, the teachers will be given 5 minutes to combine their lessons into interdisciplinary units.
- Students will no longer be given textbooks. Each teacher will be given exactly one textbook from which they can make photocopies. Each teacher will be allotted 8 pages of photocopies per month.
- The intercom system at each school will be dismantled and sold for parts. One teacher will be given a megaphone each morning and will walk through the hallways of the school shouting the announcements for the day.
- The space where chalkboards and whiteboards used to be will now be covered with paid advertising from companies targeting the teenage demographic. Teachers will be given one 8.5x11'' piece of paper on which they can write class notes.
- Retiring teachers will have the option of having their pensions reduced to $5.00 per day or get waterboarded by an administrator of their choice and receive a pension of $6.00 per day.
- School nurses will be replaced by vending machines that will offer ice and crackers.
- Teachers will no longer have sick days. If a teacher gets sick, they will be given a face mask so their germs don't spread. The cost of the face mask will be deducted from their bi-weekly pay.
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