I went to my school coordinator at the end of January and said "its the end of the month, do you have my check?". His response was "we don't have any money", to which I replied "oh, wait, are you joking?".
No, he was not joking. Like many other schools who are working through the same program, my school has not received money from the government to pay me. This is the chain of events: schools in Andalucía send a request to the government (Junta de Andalucía) to become a bilingual school and therefore receive an English assistant, me, to help. The government pays me a monthly stipend. They send all of the money I am supposed to receive for the year to my school in October (the first month that I am working), and the school pays me my stipend at the end of each month.
Since my school never received the money in October they had been paying me with money they received from book sales to the students. I just found out that this book sales money was not theirs. A local book store called Goya sold the books to the students. The school then collected the money for the books from the students on Goya's behalf but had yet to pay them back (it is 5 months later). Yesterday the Goya store owner came to the school to get the money, which they gave to me and I have already spent.
We are working to fix the problem, calling the government and trying to get them to rush the money that should have already been here. I need the money for obvious reasons, its my income, I have to pay my rent, electricity bill, groceries, etc. And luckily the school is in a bind too (since they owe money to the book store) so they have an incentive to help me get paid.
To be honest I wasn't that surprised that this happened. It is pretty awful that the government has taken over 5 months to get the money to my school, but what can I say, this is Spain. At some point, probably after the bathroom incident, I realized that this is the way life works here. I'm just going with it.
No, he was not joking. Like many other schools who are working through the same program, my school has not received money from the government to pay me. This is the chain of events: schools in Andalucía send a request to the government (Junta de Andalucía) to become a bilingual school and therefore receive an English assistant, me, to help. The government pays me a monthly stipend. They send all of the money I am supposed to receive for the year to my school in October (the first month that I am working), and the school pays me my stipend at the end of each month.
Since my school never received the money in October they had been paying me with money they received from book sales to the students. I just found out that this book sales money was not theirs. A local book store called Goya sold the books to the students. The school then collected the money for the books from the students on Goya's behalf but had yet to pay them back (it is 5 months later). Yesterday the Goya store owner came to the school to get the money, which they gave to me and I have already spent.
We are working to fix the problem, calling the government and trying to get them to rush the money that should have already been here. I need the money for obvious reasons, its my income, I have to pay my rent, electricity bill, groceries, etc. And luckily the school is in a bind too (since they owe money to the book store) so they have an incentive to help me get paid.
To be honest I wasn't that surprised that this happened. It is pretty awful that the government has taken over 5 months to get the money to my school, but what can I say, this is Spain. At some point, probably after the bathroom incident, I realized that this is the way life works here. I'm just going with it.
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