And this is only the beginning

For 6 years I was a teacher in the Oakland public schools. I swear, there is no bureaucracy thicker than that of a bankrupt school district which has been taken over by a state administrator. In the last year, I managed to overcome a lot of guilt about leaving the east Oakland families I knew and loved so well, and take a job in the Berkeley public schools.

I was offered my new job in April.
I wasn't offered a contract to sign until late June.
I then found out in July that I needed many things in order to be hired in Berkeley which I currently didn't have:
* a social security card
* fingerprints
* a negative TB test from the past 6 months
* a letter from Oakland verifying my years of service
* a letter from Oakland certifying that I had resigned from their district.

Despite 10-15 unanswered phone calls to the OUSD bureaucrats, a visit to the district office, and several more phone calls (all, thankfully, answered) to the BUSD offices, I now have a meeting tomorrow to sign my Berkeley contract.

Oakland, though, hasn't come up with the certified resignation letter (even though I have sent 2 letters of resignation letters to Oakland in the past 2 months).

AND, although I haven't worked for the Oakland schools since June 2005, I found out last week that they still pay my health insurance (remember, they went bankrput a few years back). Resigning seems to be really, really hard!

So, I don't think I'll actually be hired by Berkeley tomorrow.

You'd think there were people lined up to teach urban middle school math. But there ain't...