Grant money distributed by DCYF for teacher and administrator bonuses this December did not have the intended positive outcome. Due to a technicality in the grant application and instructions that were not included in the first round and not understood in the second round, many EE programs received partial grants for only a limited number of their teaching staff.
Giving bonuses to four out of ten teachers would generate ill feelings and poor work culture. Teachers were counting on this money. Now Directors have a dismal choice: provide bonuses to a couple of teachers and leave others with no bonuses or scrounge the difference from their own strapped budgets. They would need $700/teacher out of their budgets, and many programs have over ten teachers whom DCYF mistakenly deemed ineligible.
Program Directors have endured a stressful two weeks. They came together many times to work through possible solutions to this devastating situation. With an end-of-December payout deadline approaching, WFIS suggests that the agency acknowledge shared accountability and work to find a solution, ideally one that fulfills the initial grant intent: to broadly support an over-exhausted and under-supported workforce essential to our community.
