Are Long Island teachers overpaid? (New York, York: credit, student loans, hoa)

[I have a voice]

Personally I do not believe so. These jobs require masters degrees and influence our children drastically. I want the best of the best educating my children and I am certain we have that on Long Island.

The reason for creating this thread is because in the police compensation thread, the resident cops keep pointing to the teachers. In order to stay on topic in that thread, I've decided to create a thread about teachers. Now we have 2 seperate and distinct threads and there's no need to bash 1 profession in the other thread.

Thanks, and thank you to the great men and women who shape the lives of our most precious loved ones. Despite what other civil servants say, most people I know generally appreciate everything you do for us and we are certain we get our money's worth and some - thank you again.

[PizzaPedro]

Of course they are. Not in the sense that they are overpaid for the service they provide. As you accurately point out, teachers perform one of the most important tasks in society.

The problem is with basic economics, supply and demand. The supply of people who want to be teachers and are qualified to be teachers on Long Island vastly is much larger than the number of available positions. So their salaries should be lower, in effect driving out people who are doing it for financial reasons as opposed to a true calling in the position.

How important a job teachers do is irrelevant. The issue is that are the teachers making $100,000 "better" than the teachers you could get for $50,000? I don't know that to be true. The whole tenure system and lack of accountability is an enormous problem.

The biggest issue is that once upon a time teachers WERE underpaid but they received better benefits (particularly pensions) than the rest of society to make up for it. But now they (at least on Long Island) get 21st century salaries with 1950s type benefits.

So it has nothing to do with how important their jobs are. Water is more important than diamonds but it will never cost as much. It's about supply and demand, and it's about getting what you've paid for. In that regard teachers on Long Island are extremely overpaid. (Caveat: my wife is a teacher, so I hope this continues for at least another decade!)

[AlexisT]

If we push salaries down, we won't push out bad teachers. We'll push out good ones who can make more money elsewhere--and will need to because the cost of living is so high here. Teachers can't really afford to make less. I object to the entire idea that we should ask teachers (or any other public servant) to make less than they're worth because they're supposed to be doing it for a selfless reason. Nonsense. Very few people are truly selfless and most people are mercenary.

In fact, the supply of good teachers in some subjects is actually low, but it's politically impossible to pay physics and math teachers twice what a kindergarten teacher gets.

[Modification Specialist]

My wife is a teacher.

She as 120+ kids to look after. Working late nights preparing/planning her courses. Sundays are reserved for grading homework. She is currently teaching summer school.

For 9 years she worked day and night to get her Masters degree plus 90 credits in Mathematics. She gave up many weekends studying.

You ask are teachers paid to much? No believe my wife deserves more.

Shes racked up $60k in student loans, I hear everyday about her problems with the kids (a direct reflection on the kids parents), with our schedules we only have a few hours one day a week to be together with our 13yr old son as a family. She has worked very hard to get to where she is now - for what?

Is this the ideal picture of a happy family?

My wife teaches algebra/trigonometry/calculus to 11th and 12th graders, whose 1st language is not English. This is a subject in high demand, aside teaching to bilingual students.

Frankly to is getting to expensive to live here, and we have plans to leave New York in a few years. When I see/hear people complaining about others making to much, those people need to ask themselves what have they have given up to get them to where they are in life????....

[Rachael84]

^^ But she'll be making far less in any other state. She would be starting at base. You would struggle financially too if you move, since she'd be making a lot less.

My fiance and I are both teachers. It's nice having the same schedule, as well as summers off, so we get a lot of time together.

[PizzaPedro]

Originally Posted by Modification Specialist

My wife is a teacher.

She as 120+ kids to look after. Working late nights preparing/planning her courses. Sundays are reserved for grading homework. She is currently teaching summer school.

For 9 years she worked day and night to get her Masters degree plus 90 credits in Mathematics. She gave up many weekends studying.

You ask are teachers paid to much? No believe my wife deserves more.

Shes racked up $60k in student loans, I hear everyday about her problems with the kids (a direct reflection on the kids parents), with our schedules we only have a few hours one day a week to be together with our 13yr old son as a family. She has worked very hard to get to where she is now - for what?

Is this the ideal picture of a happy family?

My wife teaches algebra/trigonometry/calculus to 11th and 12th graders, whose 1st language is not English. This is a subject in high demand, aside teaching to bilingual students.

Frankly to is getting to expensive to live here, and we have plans to leave New York in a few years. When I see/hear people complaining about others making to much, those people need to ask themselves what have they have given up to get them to where they are in life????....

Your wife sounds like a great teacher, a credit to her profession. With that said, your entire post is completely irrelevant. In a free society, goods and services are not valued by how "important" they are, rather by supply and demand. And the fact is, for most teaching positions supply far outpaces demand. Thus teachers are overpaid.

teachers are not paid based on merit, they are not paid based on the amount of student loans they have or the amount of time they spend doing paperwork outside of school. They are paid based on tenure and other factors that don't always correlate with how effective they are as teachers.

Yes, the average 1st grade teacher performs a "more important" task than Alex Rodriguez. But that doesn't mean they should make $20 million a year, that's not how the world works.

Is a teacher who makes $100,000 "better" than a teacher making $50,000? How do we know this to be true? And why should teachers have benefits and pensions that are far superior to the general public?

The fact is, teachers are way overpaid because you aren't going to get elected to any kind of office on Long Island if you're seen as "anti-education." And none of this is the fault of the individual teachers, as I said, my wife is a teacher and I'm not telling her to give any money back. But you are insulting everyone's intelligence when you say that teachers should be paid so much based on their "importance." Not that they aren't important, but there are a lot of people qualified and able to do the job and would be willing to do so for less than many teachers are being paid.

[PizzaPedro]

Originally Posted by pdcnret

I'm assuming from your post that the best education for your children is more important the safety of your family. You don't believe that the quality of your police department influences the quality of your life? You're ready to throw accolades and money at the teachers, but let's take away some of what the cops make. And you keep coming back to the educational requirements. Do you begrudge a plumber or an electrician with a high school diploma the 100+ grand he may make for having a tradesman's skills? Probably not. I think you just have a problem with cops. Have fun with this thread.

The difference with the plummer or electrician is that they are not paid by the tax payers and their salaries arent forced upon us. If a plummer can make $200,000 good for him. But if he quotes me too high a price, I can get out the phone book and call a different plummer. It is a relatively efficient market. Not so with teachers and police.

[pdcnret]

Originally Posted by PizzaPedro

The difference with the plummer or electrician is that they are not paid by the tax payers and their salaries arent forced upon us. If a plummer can make $200,000 good for him. But if he quotes me too high a price, I can get out the phone book and call a different plummer. It is a relatively efficient market. Not so with teachers and police.

Whether private or public, it impacts all of our wallets. It seems a little ridiculous to me that you have no problem with a plumber making 200,000 but you get crazy when a cop makes 100,000. If that's the going rate for plumbers, then the going rate for cops is going to be high, too. It's all relative. You can't single out a profession and criticize its compensation without looking at the other professions in the same area. That's especially true in Long Island.

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by Modification Specialist

My wife is a teacher.

She as 120+ kids to look after. Working late nights preparing/planning her courses. Sundays are reserved for grading homework. She is currently teaching summer school.

For 9 years she worked day and night to get her Masters degree plus 90 credits in Mathematics. She gave up many weekends studying.

You ask are teachers paid to much? No believe my wife deserves more.

Shes racked up $60k in student loans, I hear everyday about her problems with the kids (a direct reflection on the kids parents), with our schedules we only have a few hours one day a week to be together with our 13yr old son as a family. She has worked very hard to get to where she is now - for what?

Is this the ideal picture of a happy family?

My wife teaches algebra/trigonometry/calculus to 11th and 12th graders, whose 1st language is not English. This is a subject in high demand, aside teaching to bilingual students.

Frankly to is getting to expensive to live here, and we have plans to leave New York in a few years. When I see/hear people complaining about others making to much, those people need to ask themselves what have they have given up to get them to where they are in life????....

Your wife may be one of the few who actually has her heart in her profession. I hope her students truly appreciate her.

(BTW I am writing this not to point fingers, or accuse anyone of anything. This is from a non teacher on the outside, trying to look in.)

How long does she intend to teach? 20, 30 years? That 60K initial outlay averages to about 2 or 3K per year of employment. She'll receive contractual raises which will meet or beat the COL, have the majority of her health insurance paid for by the taxpayers (which is a sweet deal -- I wish I were so lucky!) as well as many other perks.

The 60K she spent on her education is an investment in her future, not money thrown away. She realizes an annual return (her salary, raises and bennies) on that investment. If we all put $60K into investments today, regardless of what our professions, we would see that money grow over 20-30 years.

Many people have worked very hard to get where they are. Many people have sacrificed. I'm sorry, but a teacher's 'sacrifice' hardly stands up to the cop's (my friend was assassinated LOD while working a midnight), a nurse's (treating all manner of patients in the hospital at all hours of the day), a fireman's (risking their lives all year round in raging fires.) And yet many of them are paid substantially less. Our PD is a blip on the tax bill, our FD are volunteers but when we look at the school budgets and at the salary, benefits and retirement lines --- WHOA NELLY!

I have had some good teachers, some mediocre teachers and some awful teachers who were biding their time waiting to collect a bigger pension check. They were all snug in their positions, protected by tenure.

I knew plenty of teachers who spent summers traveling. Summers. Two whole months. I have to admit -- it's nice when a teacher has some time in and is making a good salary. It's also nice for the younger teachers to go out and work PT for the summer to make a little extra cash.

Our school district calendar has 184 classroom days on it. And there are 365 days in a year. Granted there is the occasional development day here, conference there. So that brings our teachers to something like 190-195 days. That's 170 days off less 104 for Sats & Suns = 66 days off.

A generic non teacher:
365 less 104 for Sats & Suns = 261
261 less 5 major holidays = 256
256 less 10 days (2 weeks) paid vacation = 246

Teacher work days = 195
Non teacher work days = 246

Teachers work 51 business days less than a generic non teacher. You can understand the dismay people feel when they hear of $100K teachers or when teachers complain that they bring home work at night, or have to stay late. Many of us take home work at night and stay late, yet we don't have the advantage of 51 more days off to compensate for it.

By no means am I jealous -- teachers get a lot of credit in my book as I know I, for one, could never do the job they do.

When our teachers were planning to strike, I heard those in my district whine that they weren't making what the teachers in another district made. We've witnessed teachers from our districts traveling to others to protest with those who are picketing. They have to keep up with their teacher Joneses, and others follow suit. It's a domino effect. Salaries and perks escalate and with them, taxes and the taxpayer's ire.

[KarenBo]

There are lots of professions paid by taxpayers money yet cops and teachers are the ones most often discussed, as if its these salaries alone that make taxes so high. Go ahead and lower the salaries and then see what happens to property values when public safety and school districts are affected.

On tenure, once again, all tenure does is protect teachers from being fired without cause - you can still fire teachers WITH CAUSE such as incompetence. It just has to be documented.