School Administrators Travel 300 Miles to Check on Teachers on Their Day Off. The North County Times reports: Two school district administrators traveled almost 300 miles and crossed state lines to catch teachers they mistakenly believed were using sick days to take a three-day weekend in Nevada, according to teachers who call the incident 'creepy' and 'Orwellian.'"
The incident involved six teachers at Elsinore High School in Riverside County who took the day off on April 11 to go to Laughlin, Nevada. The teachers say the time they took off was in exchange for extra work they had done over the year. (Teachers earn comp days for substitute teaching during their break periods, for example.) While having breakfast at their hotel, they were approached by the high school's principal and the school district's assistant superintendent. The teachers said they believed the administrators intended to take photos of them playing golf during school hours to prove they weren't sick.
The administrators would not discuss the "personnel issues" with the newspaper, but the paper reviewed credit card charges and found that one of the men had charged $21.53 for lunch at the Aquarius Casino and Resort on the same day the teachers were at that establishment. The newspaper did not report how much the taxpayers paid for the two administrators' travel costs.
While it appeared that the administrators' investigation was part of a well-intended effort to save tax dollars by cracking down on abuse of sick time, one teacher noted that the administrators knew about the trip in advance, and could have talked to the teachers before they left to ensure that time was being reported properly. "Instead of coming and telling us about it and trying to stop it, they spent extra money by sending two district administrators to catch us," the teacher said. (Source: North County Times, May 2.)
Cal-Taxletter May 9, 2008
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