I am making an inquiry about the duties and responsibilities of any Fine Arts Department Heads/Chairs here. The responses could come from those directly in that position, or if you know the person well who serves you in that position for you.
Could any/all so employed give a list of your responsibilities as FA DC/H? I would like to compare what is being required of the position at my school. In particular as it relates to a planning/work period dedicated to the position, and the responsibility for splitting classes amongst the other FA teachers when one is out, but no sub is assigned.
Thank you for all your replies!
Re: FA DC/H
Posted by SouthEast Central on 5/6/2025, 9:38 am, in reply to "FA DC/H"
Regarding coverage:
If you have an extra planning period in excess of the legally required 450 minutes per two week period, then yes, they can "take away" that time to ask you to cover classes. You're still getting your legally mandated time.
Splitting classes is happening everywhere. If you have a solution to the statewide lack of subs, every ISD in the state would be happy to hear it. (Although we KNOW the solution is simply "pay the subs a living wage" and that's not acceptable for whatever reason) The kids can't just be left unaccompanied.
In many elementary campuses, classes with no sub are split among the grade level team as common practice. Just because you teach band doesn't make you immune from needing to do what's best for the students, not just your program. I've also heard of many campuses that regularly pull the assistant director to cover an ELA class when that teacher is out because "they don't need two band directors" and so one person has to teach sixty beginners.
In fact, at my wife's last campus, during Covid, they rotated who covers a class - they had a list of every teacher off during every period, and if your name was next up on the list, you got stuck in a class. No more than twice a week, you couldn't get out of it, but at least they paid you $50. They could do 2x a week because they were block scheduled and they had a daily off period, again, the law is 450 minutes per two weeks, not 45 mins every day.
When I was a FA Department chair, I got no extra conference/planning time, was asked to do meetings 2-3 extra hours a week, got no stipend, and had to come to school two weeks early over the summer to plan campus PD in August. I was responsible for leading department PLC, communicating expectations from the campus leadership team, ensuring lesson plans had been turned in, and because I wasn't a "core" class, I was asked to create the entire campus duty rotation since core classes were required to do extra work on top of their normal class assignments regularly.
Oh, and did I mention that tested subjects got two conference periods, while non-tested subjects only got one?
