Christin Williams

Education 650

Standard Activity 1.5C

Negotiating/Consensus Building

A current issue that is being faced at East Bank Middle school is how lunch coverage is

handled. We have three time slots for lunch, one for each grade, each being 43 minutes long.

Lunch is supervised by teachers on the Related Arts team, every day. On top of this, students in

In-School-Suspension are not permitted to attend lunch with everyone else, so they stay in the

classroom with the same Academic Transition/ISS facilitator (AT/IF) all day. This creates a

separate area to be monitored by a Related Arts teacher during one of the three lunches so that

the Academic Transition teacher/ISS facilitator can have a lunch break.

This issue has created tension throughout the school for many reasons. The Related Arts

teachers feel that it is unfair that they have to work two lunches, while other teachers do not.

Some Related Arts teachers do not show up on time for their coverage, or sometimes do not

report at all. Core classroom teachers feel that it is a fair trade off because Related Arts teachers

do not have home base classes in the morning and do not have to take a turn at bus duty. This

was not as big of an issue until we received funding for the Academic Transition teacher, due to

the Related Arts teachers often having to give up their off lunch period to cover this position.

After having discussions and meetings with other teachers and the administration there

have been several resolutions to this high tension situation proposed. Related Arts teachers do

see the trade off as to not having to cover mornings and bus duty, so that issue of fairness has

been resolved.
 1. Being that we have three administrators they can rotate covering lunch for the AT/IF

teacher so that there is less stress to the Related Arts teachers. This can be done weekly or

daily at their convenience.

2. Grade level teachers can rotate turns covering for the AT/IF teacher. There are 6 teachers

on each grade level team. This would be 18 teachers covering during their lunch period,

which could also be rotated based on a general consensus schedule, agreed upon by the

majority of teachers. Related Arts teachers could also be part of the rotation if they

choose to.

3. Other teachers in the building can volunteer to cover breakfast/lunch duties. There are 8

positions that are paid contracts at $400 for the school year. This would need to be

discussed with an administrator.

All in all, I feel that the best solution would be option 1 or 2. Many core classroom teachers in

the building also see it as unfair for the Related Arts teachers to have to give up their time, every

time. Personally, I feel that the second option will be the one to go with due to the fact that it will

require teachers as a whole to give up less of their planning/lunch time being that there would be

so many in the rotation.