Best School Districts....to Work for! (San Diego, Vista: house, university, legally)

[Snort]

Parents want to know where their kids will get the best education possible, but for those who work in the school system, it would be great to hear what everyone thinks about their current or past job conditions.

[mewzikguy]

I teach music in SDUSD and I enjoy it a lot. In any big city school system in the U.S., you have issues that you don't have out in the 'burbs: English learners, classrooms where there are 7 or 8 different languages spoken, higher poverty levels, etc. You must spend more time lesson planning, after school help sessions, and more parent contact. In the wealthy suburbs, the kids will learn regardless. .parents read to the kids, take them to plays, museums, other countries. . . advantages that cannot be duplicated in the cities. If you want to teach where kids will excel in the arts, science, math, reading, sports and it's a given they will attend a good 4 year university, wealthy suburbs anywhere are for you. If you like the challenge of working with kids that NEED you there every day, where you will see some heart-breaking failures as well as amazing success stories, you most likely will need to be bilingual, and you will be completely exhausted every day, then the big city school systems are for you. Good Luck

[mathcat]

San Diego Unified is a dysfunctional district. The teachers are abused. The schools are often low performing. Just look at their CAT scores and you can see for yourself how bad SDUSD is.

I taught at Hoover. What a piece of junk school that is. Even their star school, Preuss that SDUSD brags about is a piece of junk where teachers are bullied and forced to change grades and participate in grade inflation. The entire district should be dismantled. Horrible place to work. The district is secretive, unfair, full of red tape, and has no respect for teachers.

[LoneStarJerry]

I've worked with several of the districts in the county. And there are some good one's, but one I have not worked at that I've heard very good things about is the Poway Unified School District. I worked with SDUSD also and I have to say it was not my favorite either, there is no such thing as a perfect district, but I don't feel they treated their employees as well as they could have, certificated or classified.

[mathcat]

I have also always heard good things about Poway. I have never heard anyone say anything bad about Poway School District. I knew one of their principals and he was one of the finest human beings I have ever known and somebody that anyone could be proud and happy to work for. He was actually one of my teachers in college. Just the fact that they were smart enough to hire him showed me how on the ball Poway is.

I also substitute taught at a school that rejected him. I'll call that school X. School X rejected him and then hired someone else. Since I subbed at School X I was able to see a lot of insider things there. The principal that was hired at School X instead of the wonderful ex-teacher of mine was such a loser who never supported his teachers and the school was absolutely a zoo with disrespectful students who could get away with actually throwing things at the teacher and such. And the teacher would be asked to apologize to the student who threw things at them and such because according to this principal 'Both people are always wrong in every situation.' What a joke. What John Dewey progressive student-centered garbage. So if a repeat offender rapist/robber breaks into a woman's house and violently rapes her and beats her to within an inch of her life...well, two people are always equally accountable in every situation so she should not expect any apology? Ridiculous.

Anyway, the incredible principal I knew that was rejected by School X interviewed at Poway after this and was hired. But that is the difference probably between Poway and a lot of other districts in and around San Diego. Poway seems to be a well-run school district that seems to make reasonable decisions as opposed to these dysfunctional districts that are run as though a bunch of morons or lunatics are running things.

I have some knowledge of Grossmont District and I would say that they are better than San Diego Unified but not as well run as Poway.

Sweetwater is poorly run. I was in an interview in Sweetwater. They did the interview as a group interview with 6 people being interviewed simultaneously. 3 out of the 6 people were uncredentialed and had not even passed the subject matter competency tests yet to become credentialed. I found this out after the interview by talking to the other interviewees. I was shocked that a school district would interview uncredentialed people for a teaching position (it is illegal to hire them to teach) when credentialed people were available. I can guarantee you that neither Poway nor Grossmont would ever interview or hire uncredentialed teachers. However, Sweetwater is well known to routinely hire uncredentialed teachers. I don't know how they legally get away with it. I think they hire them as long-term subs and then work them for 30 days, give them a day off, work them another 30 and so on. I have heard a lot through the grape vine that there are a lot of uncredentialed teachers at Sweetwater and that interview convinced me that it probably was the case.

If school districts are apples, there are a lot of rotten apples in San Diego.

[moved]

I'm a former SDUSD employee, and I'm really glad that I'm gone. I had so many schools that I didn't want to go back and sub at, that the places where I would work were diminishing. And I absoutely refused to work in the EdCtr or any other administrative office. I preferred to work in the elementary schools, but couldn't always get one, or even a sub job.

[iskray917]

Originally Posted by mathcat

I have some knowledge of Grossmont District and I would say that they are better than San Diego Unified but not as well run as Poway.

The Grossmont School Board is a joke but there are some decent schools in the district.

[moved]

Grossmont tends to treat their employees bettrer than SDUSD. I have a friend who substitute taught with SDUSD and Grossmont for 25 years, and was never able to get a contract, even though she had principals that wanted to hire her. SDUSD terminated her for no reason, so she just works for Grossmont now. She said that the pay is lower, but she's treated much better.

[Snort]

I had forgotten that I made this post a couple of years ago. Well, as a public service announcement (and I've said it before in at least one other thread), Vista Unified is overrun by the biggest scumbags I've ever met on this planet. The administration, in my humble opinion, pushes the envelope for new lows in corruption. I'm waiting for the headline news on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune.