dilemmas

If someone paid you to quit your job, would you do it?

Of course, the easy answer is a resounding "hell yeah!" Who doesn't want to get money to not have a job? But then again, that money only lasts so long, and after it runs out, it starts looking better and better to have had a job all along, right?

I ask because my school district, in what I imagine is an attempt to avoid having to fire teachers in yet another year of budget shortfall, recently offered a cash incentive to employees who wanted to "sever their relationship" with the district. You'd get a certain amount of money to leave, forfeiting any right to be recalled to your job when (and if) there is more money.

Clearly, the district's powers that be are hoping that teachers who already make a fair amount of money--people much higher on the pay scale than me--will take this incentive. That way, the amount they have to pay for the incentive is just a small percentage of what they'd have to pay to keep that employee employed. Of course, the problem is that if you already make a fair amount of money teaching and have been teaching long enough to have worked your way that far up the pay scale, it seems much less likely that you'd willingly quit your job and strike out anew. Especially since you're not likely to find another comparable job right now.

I hope my logic there is right, anyway. I hope that other people don't want to quit, because I want the district to let me do it. This could be grounds for a whole other post, of course, but I feel ready to try something new, and I can't imagine a better way to start off than by being paid to not have a job for a while.