@ attacks on education August

[pugz]

Aug 2, 2022 15:08:42 GMT -5 lilac05 said:

pugz, I love that new public comment portion of the meeting. It’s a chance for the community to voice concerns to the board, not make a scene for the whole community. Is the comment time open for all public to attend in person, just not watch online? (Feel free to PM me with more info to keep from further side-tracking.) I am going to mention this to our board President, but would like more info first.

Yes anyone can attend and see it!

[wawa]

Aug 2, 2022 20:12:00 GMT -5 cherryvalance said:

Aug 2, 2022 15:43:55 GMT -5 wawa said:

Is there anything I can read about what teachers are actually worth?  Like what is the pay gap for teachers vs. comparable professions?  And I know it varies a lot around the country, but I've wondered what this mean.  Are the higher paid states doing ok in terms of paying something reasonable, or are we still low? 

(eta I'm aware I can google this.  But I'm assuming that your unions maybe have studies they cite or there's some go-to resource for this info)
 

I see that you've found some sources already, but one thing that makes comparisons difficult in the highest paid states is our benefits package.

Now I can only speak to NJ, but I could imagine similar issues are looming in other higher paid states. Our pensions are supposed to be deferred compensation. However, we're being required to contribute more and more to our pensions (due to the state constantly raiding the pension system to pay for other stuff) and health benefits (the highest salaried teachers are usually paying about 35% of the premium for their health insurance).

So what ends up happening is most of us have been frozen financially for the past 8-10 years. As our salaries increase on paper, we're usually walking backwards or staying frozen due to increased contributions.

That's where you'll see a lot of pushback against teachers in highly paid states. It's very obvious that, say, North Carolina pay is shit. It's less obvious when you see a teacher in NNJ is being paid $100K, but still has to contend with moving backwards in pay, no COL increase, and dealing with HCOL in general. It's why I make $80K but can't afford to even rent closer to my job; I have an hour long commute.

What makes it even more dire is that now districts are RIFing non-tenured staff as regular practice. Hiring districts do not need to recognize years of service. So teachers are constantly starting at step 1 or 2 (so like $50K), being pushed into the worst benefits plan, with no hope of climbing the salary guide (plus no real, long-term development of their teaching practice). They're setting us up to be one of those low-paid states in 15-25 years as tenured teachers start retiring.

Now, I'm not pretending I'm impoverished, by any means. But it's easy to think, wow, they make good money in these states and they get great benefits, when we've had a reduction in benefits and compared to similarly educated/credentialed professions, it's not great.

Sorry for the novel lol.

this is really interesting. I came very close to leaving engineering to get a math teaching cert 10+ years ago and I still think a lot about where I'd be now if id done that. At that time it would have been a pretty lateral move salary wise. The payscales for my county indicate I wouldn't be SUPER far behind where I am now if id stuck with teaching but that assumes that I actually got to move along in that scale, and I've heard before that it's FAR from straightforward. (As you're saying)

I think civil engineering generally is a pretty good comparison baseline for teaching. You need a bachelor's degree at a bare minimum, a lot of people have more degrees or accumulate them over time, you have to get and maintain a professional license, there's a continuing education component, and the government directly employs a ton of us. Government pay is a lot closer to what teachers in my county make, but again...I'm in a state that's a lot closer to a reasonable payscale on paper. (And I think mostly in practice given that I know a lot of the teachers at our school do actually live nearby?) Looking at payscales in other areas they aren't even close and it's immediately obvious that teachers aren't getting paid like educated professionals.

[erbear]

Aug 2, 2022 17:49:17 GMT -5 wawa said:

Aug 2, 2022 17:37:02 GMT -5 erbear said:

I have 2 masters degrees and 22 years of teaching experience, and I make less than double what I made when I started teaching in 2000. If I wasn’t married to someone who had a well paying job, I could not afford my mortgage.

There seems to be a fairly prevalent thought process that teachers don’t work “full time” (false — I work a 9-10 hour day + some time in the evenings and weekends) or we have “three months off” (again, most teachers I know work in the summer bc we aren’t paid over the summer). Many young teachers I know work a second job on weekends just to pay their bills. That is problematic in a job that society deems (at least in words) as “essential”.

I’m about to get on a plane, which is probably good because I’m not really in the mood to argue my worth as a professional

Dude... I understand you being defensive on this topic but I was in no way questioning your worth. I was literally just wondering if this has been quantified. Are we like 15% low? 25% 40%? How bad is alabama compared to Connecticut? I like numbers, I was wondering if there was some citable number we're aiming for.

well, I mean, your question was literally “is there a place where I can see what teachers are actually worth?”

That said, I wasn’t really talking about you — I just know how this conversation always goes. I’ve had it about a million times with people who are looking to “get” teachers (vs actually looking for information or trying to understand why I get sick of having to justify why my job is important and should be better respected in this country). It’s not personal.

Like others have said, it’s regionally dependent. If I stayed in my first job, I’d be making over $100k (northern VA, so very HCOL). I have a friend my level in Mississippi who makes $35k. That doesn’t seem to be properly compensating her for what she does.

[wawa]

Aug 2, 2022 22:19:00 GMT -5 erbear said:

Aug 2, 2022 17:49:17 GMT -5 wawa said:

Dude... I understand you being defensive on this topic but I was in no way questioning your worth. I was literally just wondering if this has been quantified. Are we like 15% low? 25% 40%? How bad is alabama compared to Connecticut? I like numbers, I was wondering if there was some citable number we're aiming for.

well, I mean, your question was literally “is there a place where I can see what teachers are actually worth?”

That said, I wasn’t really talking about you — I just know how this conversation always goes. I’ve had it about a million times with people who are looking to “get” teachers (vs actually looking for information or trying to understand why I get sick of having to justify why my job is important and should be better respected in this country). It’s not personal.

Like others have said, it’s regionally dependent. If I stayed in my first job, I’d be making over $100k (northern VA, so very HCOL). I have a friend my level in Mississippi who makes $35k. That doesn’t seem to be properly compensating her for what she does.

Ok. I was asking HOW bad it is. I know it's bad. Just asking like, if my county exec candidate rolls out with that he wants to raise teacher pay by 10% across the board is that a drop in the bucket or does it come close?* You didn't have to justify anything. But like I said, I get why this is a defensive topic for any teacher and I'm sorry I made you feel like I was trying to spring a gotcha on you.

*Answer as per the link I posted...in my county that seems like it would come close. In other places (like Mississippi, holy fuck) thatd be laughably inadequate.

[Jalapeñomel]

Aug 2, 2022 21:29:41 GMT -5 wawa said:

Aug 2, 2022 20:12:00 GMT -5 cherryvalance said:

I see that you've found some sources already, but one thing that makes comparisons difficult in the highest paid states is our benefits package.

Now I can only speak to NJ, but I could imagine similar issues are looming in other higher paid states. Our pensions are supposed to be deferred compensation. However, we're being required to contribute more and more to our pensions (due to the state constantly raiding the pension system to pay for other stuff) and health benefits (the highest salaried teachers are usually paying about 35% of the premium for their health insurance).

So what ends up happening is most of us have been frozen financially for the past 8-10 years. As our salaries increase on paper, we're usually walking backwards or staying frozen due to increased contributions.

That's where you'll see a lot of pushback against teachers in highly paid states. It's very obvious that, say, North Carolina pay is shit. It's less obvious when you see a teacher in NNJ is being paid $100K, but still has to contend with moving backwards in pay, no COL increase, and dealing with HCOL in general. It's why I make $80K but can't afford to even rent closer to my job; I have an hour long commute.

What makes it even more dire is that now districts are RIFing non-tenured staff as regular practice. Hiring districts do not need to recognize years of service. So teachers are constantly starting at step 1 or 2 (so like $50K), being pushed into the worst benefits plan, with no hope of climbing the salary guide (plus no real, long-term development of their teaching practice). They're setting us up to be one of those low-paid states in 15-25 years as tenured teachers start retiring.

Now, I'm not pretending I'm impoverished, by any means. But it's easy to think, wow, they make good money in these states and they get great benefits, when we've had a reduction in benefits and compared to similarly educated/credentialed professions, it's not great.

Sorry for the novel lol.

this is really interesting. I came very close to leaving engineering to get a math teaching cert 10+ years ago and I still think a lot about where I'd be now if id done that. At that time it would have been a pretty lateral move salary wise. The payscales for my county indicate I wouldn't be SUPER far behind where I am now if id stuck with teaching but that assumes that I actually got to move along in that scale, and I've heard before that it's FAR from straightforward. (As you're saying)

I think civil engineering generally is a pretty good comparison baseline for teaching. You need a bachelor's degree at a bare minimum, a lot of people have more degrees or accumulate them over time, you have to get and maintain a professional license, there's a continuing education component, and the government directly employs a ton of us. Government pay is a lot closer to what teachers in my county make, but again...I'm in a state that's a lot closer to a reasonable payscale on paper. (And I think mostly in practice given that I know a lot of the teachers at our school do actually live nearby?) Looking at payscales in other areas they aren't even close and it's immediately obvious that teachers aren't getting paid like educated professionals.

. The physics teacher at my school was a chemical engineer before getting her teaching cert about 10 years ago. She will end up making more in teaching than she would’ve in her previous position.

[fortnightlily]

Aug 2, 2022 22:19:00 GMT -5 erbear said:

I have a friend my level in Mississippi who makes $35k. That doesn’t seem to be properly compensating her for what she does.

Understatement. If you literally just paid someone $1 per hour per kid to babysit 30 kids in a room for 6 hours a day M-F for 9 months out of the year that'd come out to $36k.

[NewOrleans]

Conservatives defunded their own public library over that book Gender Queer. Library expected to close in fall 2023.

www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/upset-over-lgbtq-books-michigan-town-defunds-its-library-tax-vote

[waverly]

I'm late to this discussion. I don't think the teaching requirements were too high initially. But the problem was that I moved from one state to another, so I jumped through the loop holes to change my license to the other state. Then, I moved back to my home state, so I transferred it all again. Then I moved to an adjacent state, and by that time I hadn't been teaching for 6 years, so even though I tried to keep my license up I was not able to move it to the next state. So therefore, I am no longer able to go back into teaching if I wanted to (which for all the reasons listed in this thread, I don't want to). But it would be nice to have in case lets say I got let go at my current job. I even have a masters degree but that didn't qualify for my continuing ed even though it should because it is education adjacent.

The reason I stopped teaching or never really started had to do with the way the NYC schools were run, bureaucracy, and teacher union. I may have done OK in a different/ smaller district, but I will never know because I can never go back to teaching now.

I also make more at my current position than I would teaching, and make more than I would make at a college as well. So there is no incentive for me to work at a school.

So anyway, I don't regret the education classes that I took.  They were useful, but it would be helpful for licensing to understand that people may leave teaching and come back, and they just act like everything I did (that was just 6 years ago when I asked about it) didn't matter.  None of it mattered to them, they were like nope bye bye.  

[livinitup]

Aug 4, 2022 12:39:08 GMT -5 NewOrleans said:

Conservatives defunded their own public library over that book Gender Queer. Library expected to close in fall 2023.

www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/upset-over-lgbtq-books-michigan-town-defunds-its-library-tax-vote

Of course they did.

When the library closes, the room that was used to vote for the closure will no longer be available. How’s that for irony?

[lea]

Aug 4, 2022 12:39:08 GMT -5 NewOrleans said:

Conservatives defunded their own public library over that book Gender Queer. Library expected to close in fall 2023.

www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/upset-over-lgbtq-books-michigan-town-defunds-its-library-tax-vote

For God’s sake. Shutting down an entire library over this bullshit. People are fucking stupid.

[Velar Fricative]

Aug 4, 2022 15:26:39 GMT -5 lea said:

Aug 4, 2022 12:39:08 GMT -5 NewOrleans said:

Conservatives defunded their own public library over that book Gender Queer. Library expected to close in fall 2023.

www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/upset-over-lgbtq-books-michigan-town-defunds-its-library-tax-vote

For God’s sake. Shutting down an entire library over this bullshit. People are fucking stupid.

Because they think libraries don't have any current or useful books. 

I give it 3 years tops after closure before people in the town are like "Hey, what happened to our library??? Can we open one up??" This happened in a small NJ town I worked with (not for the same reasons though). When residents' property values went down because there was no library, they ended up opening a new one after voting to shut down the previous one a handful of years earlier. Not to mention that so little of property tax money even finds its way to libraries.