when do you know it's time to quit? am i being a baby?
If you were in my situation, what would you do? As a parent, how would you feel about your child's teachers working in these conditions?
I've worked at this center since I was 22, I'm now 27 and things have just gotten progressively worse over time. The first few years were great and organized until we got bought by some company, and they started to implement a lot of changes.
They started cutting down on labor hours, they started enrolling more children, it became harder for staff to be disciplined, and harder to get classroom resources.
I have had to report coworkers to my director, only for them to just be given a retraining or a warning, without being fired. I don't want to get into specifics but they involved aggressive behavior towards children and substance use. All of these things I reported eventually led to someone getting fired only after there was an incident because of the safety issues I mentioned. I have had to call DCF on a coworker before because of one of these incidents where a student had to go to the hospital. Luckily, I have not had to do this in over a year, but frankly I am out sick a lot and usually very busy so I am not always able to witness what goes on. I know children have been left outside or out in the hallway repeatedly leading to terminations.
At the moment we are understaffed and repeatedly have issues with ratio-- where either we are not in ratio, or we are constantly scrambling to stay in ratio. This environment is starting to really impact my stress levels because there can't be support when everyone is busy.
I also have medical conditions that I've been trying to get acommodations for that have been increasingly in the way. We have staffing issues at the moment so it is hard to step out when I have a flare, they tried to enact a policy that would make me have to lock up life saving medicine away from my person and I had to throw a bit of a fit so I could have a med bag to keep on me. The only real accomodation I get is getting sent home, which is not ideal. I want to be able to actually go in and do work.
I am on immunosuppressant drugs and I have asked to be placed in one room a day which was not accomodated which results in excessive absences when I inevitably catch what the kids have and end up very ill. I am tired of not being healthy. I know that we do not use our Zono machines when they should and I know that the toys are not properly sanitized in all of the classrooms. I have asked my director to enforce our policy about perfumes because they trigger me but she said there's nothing she can do to enforce it. Children are not sent home when they are visibly ill unless they have specifically a 100.4 degree f*ver.
The real kicker is that at another center, an employee unfortunately molested children and got away with it for a while. I know that it is due to the conditions they have us under, where nobody is looking at the cameras or reporting anybody because everyone is pushed to the max and half the staff don't demonstrate adequate understanding of what being a mandated reporter means. The company instead keeps enacting more and more stupid policies that don't help instead of increasing labor hours, hiring more floaters, pausing enrollment so everybody can properly safeguard and keep an eye on each other.
They want to take our phones to put in phone lockers which is ridiculous. What if I'm outside with the kids and I have an asthma attack (which has happened before) or need to use my epi-pen and I have no way to contact 911? There have been multiple instances in the past couple years where I have had to call 911 because of my condition (luckily not at work). Nobody uses the walkies properly. It would be one thing if I really felt I could trust my coworkers to help in that situation, but I just don't. Nobody is at the front half the time and the walkies are often turned off. Why should I have to be treated like a child and put myself at risk in an emergency because they won't fix the root issues as to how this happened? I don't understand why I can't just keep it in my med bag.
I feel like I've just reached the end of my patience with this place. I feel like things are just going to get worse and worse. One of the centers is getting shut down because of what happened and I feel like that's just going to be their solution to everything, just let issues run on until we have to get shut down. I guess I just want some advice as to what to do, what you would do in my situation or have done, and what you would count as a good breaking point.
I keep gaslighting myself into thinking I just need to be tougher and that I need to stay around to support the team but I'm really reaching my wits end. I'm tired of making compromises on what I know is right or what I need but I'm too scared to do anything about it.