Not what I expected... - Anonymous employee Center City PCS Employee Review

Please note that not all of the campuses are the same. My review is for one of the worst schools that is part of Center City. -In the middle school you teach three different grade levels with a little over an hour of prep time per week. It is impossible to plan for all of your classes without working extremely long hours throughout the week and weekends. -Students are not disciplined equally. One student could get expelled for an offense that would only result in a suspension for another student. -Professional development is not useful and teachers rarely are provided with time to work in their classrooms. -There are so many changes in routines in structure that are never presented to the teachers. There is no teacher input taken into consideration and teachers are expected to be able to implement changes without being provided with the information. -You are promised with biweekly observations and feedback, but I never experienced that to be the case. They do a great job of saying they will help you grow into the teacher you want to be, but the support simply isn't there. -A co-teacher model is used to allow for special education students to remain in the classroom. The expectation is for both teachers to play an active role with the entire class, but co-teachers are often lazy and incompetent. This results in the general education teacher doing most of the work and being held accountable for the faults of the co-teacher even though the opposite is not true. If your co-teacher doesn't show up to class, doesn't know the content or doesn't know how to do proper modifications, the general education teacher is expected to do the work and roll with the punches. -The class sizes are too large with all having started with over 30 students at the beginning of the year. -Administrator and teacher turnover is extremely high! -Administration fears certain parents and thus some poorly behaved students do not receive appropriate consequences. -Students get into fights and do no receive consequences. Teachers are encouraged to not write referrals for fear that OSSE will audit the school due to a high suspension rate. -There is no consistency with the handbook. There are rules in place, but it's as if they don't exist since no one is held accountable.