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Just curious. Are you sure they didn't contribute to their pensions? In my state, many people thought we didn't pay into our pensions. But we paid into both the state and local pensions. It was no free ride.
Well, I'm not positive; I haven't seen their paychecks. But I'm pretty sure.
Some districts will say they can't pay more in salary because they're having to to the "PERS pickup" - the contribution on the employees' behalf. So they're paying for it in a way... if we assume that they'd get that in their salary (which I don't).
Until the actual underlying issues are acknowledged and discussed, nothing concrete will be done.
The reality is that we are throwing more and more money at education, paying teachers less and less, and getting worse results.
The question we should be asking, as taxpayers, is: Where is all that money going, if it's not to teachers, textbooks, materials, and facilities?
When the answer is that it's going to DC, then filtered through government entity after government entity, all taking their huge percentage, to finally get trickled down to the kids and teachers, it's time to stop that nonsense. Unfortunately, the ones that benefit from that money are the very ones that are desperately trying to stop the question from being asked.
Having been on the budget management side now and then, the answer to your question is:
HEALTH INSURANCE
That has been eating up budget share faster than anything else in the last 20 years & it only grows, never diminishes.There are some districts that are bloated at the top in terms of quantity and amount of salaries, but not all of them by a long shot. A lot of districts are pretty lean in terms of administration.
To a lesser, but still significant extent, the cost of technology. More computers mean more subscriptions to various online services, more IT people needed on staff, etc... But that pales in comparison to the health insurance problem.
MONEY MONEY MONEY....When there's a levy of referendum that gets voted down we always here that we must hate kids or don't care about our kids education but when a teacher holds our kids hostage for more money it's ok
That's just your excuse for not wanting to pay more taxes.
Regarding the price tag the public sees for public education, it seems to be ever-increasing in inflation-adjusted dollars:
There seems to be a BIG disconnect between what we as taxpayers pay for education and what teachers receive in terms of cash compensation:
Clearly, teachers are not getting rich. Even when you add in the value of teachers' public sector pensions & health care (in many cases, worth several million dollars per teacher), no teacher is on easy street. It is a tough job.
The ratio of students to teachers hasn't materially changed -- and certainly not enough to explain the explosion in the cost of a public education.
So where the heck is all the money going? It seems the answer is in administration. The ratio of administrators to teachers has skyrocketed. It is administrative bloat.
I'm told a fair bit of the administrative bloat stems from unfunded mandates coming down to the school district from the federal and state level.
If we collectively eliminated, say, 20% of all administrators (and the unfunded mandates that gave birth to their hiring in the first place) that saved money could go a long way to raise teacher compensation.
But here's the thorny question: if we pay existing teachers more, will they do a better job???
It should be illegal for teachers to strike during the school year. Let them wait until summer vacation to protest. These strikes are sending the wrong message to the students. Next thing you know, the students will go on strike demanding shorter school days, or whatever. Student walkouts have already happened in OK over teacher firings. I think teachers are opening up a can of worms.
Oh yeah. Striking when you're not working. That's definitely an effective tool.
Regarding the price tag the public sees for public education, it seems to be ever-increasing in inflation-adjusted dollars:
There seems to be a BIG disconnect between what we as taxpayers pay for education and what teachers receive in terms of cash compensation:
Clearly, teachers are not getting rich. Even when you add in the value of teachers' public sector pensions & health care (in many cases, worth several million dollars per teacher), no teacher is on easy street. It is a tough job.
The ratio of students to teachers hasn't materially changed -- and certainly not enough to explain the explosion in the cost of a public education.
So where the heck is all the money going? It seems the answer is in administration. The ratio of administrators to teachers has skyrocketed. It is administrative bloat.
I'm told a fair bit of the administrative bloat stems from unfunded mandates coming down to the school district from the federal and state level.
If we collectively eliminated, say, 20% of all administrators (and the unfunded mandates that gave birth to their hiring in the first place) that saved money could go a long way to raise teacher compensation.
But here's the thorny question: if we pay existing teachers more, will they do a better job???
So you slap some data up that you like.
Then you pick the 20% number out of the air.
There's no consistency to your thinking.
Regarding the price tag the public sees for public education, it seems to be ever-increasing in inflation-adjusted dollars:
There seems to be a BIG disconnect between what we as taxpayers pay for education and what teachers receive in terms of cash compensation:
Clearly, teachers are not getting rich. Even when you add in the value of teachers' public sector pensions & health care (in many cases, worth several million dollars per teacher), no teacher is on easy street. It is a tough job.
The ratio of students to teachers hasn't materially changed -- and certainly not enough to explain the explosion in the cost of a public education.
So where the heck is all the money going? It seems the answer is in administration. The ratio of administrators to teachers has skyrocketed. It is administrative bloat.
I'm told a fair bit of the administrative bloat stems from unfunded mandates coming down to the school district from the federal and state level.
If we collectively eliminated, say, 20% of all administrators (and the unfunded mandates that gave birth to their hiring in the first place) that saved money could go a long way to raise teacher compensation.
But here's the thorny question: if we pay existing teachers more, will they do a better job???
You ask a good question at the end. Will current teachers do a better job? Maybe. But I can tell you that it would increase the quality of those from here on out.
I am someone who would love to be a teacher, but am unwilling to go back to school to make peanuts. I won't do it to myself.
Until the actual underlying issues are acknowledged and discussed, nothing concrete will be done.
The reality is that we are throwing more and more money at education, paying teachers less and less, and getting worse results.
The question we should be asking, as taxpayers, is: Where is all that money going, if it's not to teachers, textbooks, materials, and facilities?
When the answer is that it's going to DC, then filtered through government entity after government entity, all taking their huge percentage, to finally get trickled down to the kids and teachers, it's time to stop that nonsense. Unfortunately, the ones that benefit from that money are the very ones that are desperately trying to stop the question from being asked.
Do you have a source for that statement? Everything I have seen shows that adjusted for inflation, per pupil spending in OK has dropped 28% in the last decade.
In my opinion, low teacher salaries results in lesser quality teachers. That doesn't mean all teachers are unfit. No, of course not. But it means that people that could do the job and could do it well may opt to do something else since the pay is so little in some states.
When my wife and I moved to SC from NY, she was going to look into teaching because she always wanted to do it, but being a teacher in NY was a bit more about "who you know." However, even up in NY, if you had a STEM background, there were all sorts of incentives to be a teacher (full reimbursement for the degree, fast path to being accredited, etc).
SC offered similar incentives - hell, they were in such need down here for teachers that they'd take her on immediately while she gets her education degree... but the pay started at something like 32k and capped at 40k.
She made double that with zero experience in a different job.
In other words, it is hard to bring in people to do the job when the pay is so poor.
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