More first-year teachers get $50K (insurance, vacation, salary)

[ATLater]

Originally Posted by CuCullin

Oh, I see. So then... low income areas, means lower pay for teachers, which implies a bad school?

Hmm... I guess I don't understand how some Newark schools have a higher literacy rate than say... Somerset County. But I supposed I'm just chock full of... knowledge that way.

Obviously his knowledge doesn't include the meaning of sarcasm or he wouldn't have replied to that

[ATLater]

Originally Posted by tahiti

i also know a lot of teachers who WORK during the summer.

I might be senile but most of my teacher pals complain about being off for the summer and they have to bid for summer school jobs.

[CuCullin]

Originally Posted by ATLater

Obviously his knowledge doesn't include the meaning of sarcasm or he wouldn't have replied to that

Ah - an internet-based pot shot, because the rest of someone's statements just doesn't line up with tax-payer reality. Oh heavens forbid I point out inaccurate, misleading, or downright incorrect facts - I should be lashed. 40 times with a wet noodle.

No.... wait....

100 times!

Jerseyman, you're exactly right. Its not about specific teachers, specific paychecks, etc. Its about bad spending practices, wasting tax dollars, and continuing the mistakes as opposed to working to correct them.

Starting salaries for the FD (I don't know the PD numbers as well) is $21000 to $37000 throughout the state. $21000 is a giant, piddling, nothing for someone being silly enough to go into the burning building everyone else is running out of (note: I was silly enough to do this for free for several years; the paid guys put up with a load more crap than I ever had to).

The PD wages, unless I'm mistaken, are similarly low starting salaries. Yet, the officers carry guns. They are responsible for lives in the strictest sense (not the "how my child grows up" sense, but the "I was being attacked and the cop saved me" sense). Officers and FF's have to go through very regular trainings (I think more would be better, personally), new equipment to carry (like a basic defib), and more. And..... we're going to start teachers at double the lowest level, and about 20% higher than the upper level, to read from a book that costs 6 billion times too much because there was a new sentence since the previous year?

Talk about misappropriating money.

[natalayjones]

Originally Posted by CuCullin

Ah - an internet-based pot shot, because the rest of someone's statements just doesn't line up with tax-payer reality. Oh heavens forbid I point out inaccurate, misleading, or downright incorrect facts - I should be lashed. 40 times with a wet noodle.

All I said was you were taking sarcastic comments and twisting them around, I don't see how you can say I was providing misleading, inaccurate facts - I never said I was stating any facts. I was giving my opinion.

Originally Posted by CuCullin

Oh, I see. So then... low income areas, means lower pay for teachers, which implies a bad school?

I never said "every bad neighborhood is a result of bad schools". Had I known I was going to need to provide research documentation before posting I would have went to the lib.

[Badfish740]

What the hell, I'll jump into this developing flame war There are serious problems with the methods we use for funding education in this state, but teacher salaries are not the problem. Superintendent's salaries, administrative corruption and waste, and lack of consolidation are the problem.

My fiancee teaches in North Jersey and makes $43K. She taught for one year at a Catholic school in Union, which she loved, but the salary ($29K) was a joke. After student loans, gas, groceries, etc...there was nothing left over. The health benefits were nothing to write home about either. So she left and was hired at a public school. I work for the federal government and make less than she does ($35K) and have the same expenses. As a result, we have had a heck of a time finding a place to live in this state (as many of you have read) as even though we are both reviled public servants whose salaries consist of tax dollars, we still have to pay the same home prices and property taxes as the rest of you.

Now before someone counters with "well you didn't have to go to college or become a teacher..." yes, we're aware. I DID go to school to become a teacher and absolutely hated it. I wouldn't teach for $100K a year (no, I don't think teachers need to make that much) and pursued government work after completing my student teaching internship and graduating. My fiancee however loves her work even though it takes everything she has. I really don't want to get into a "who works harder" argument, but she does grade papers/homework/tests, works on lesson plans for the coming weeks, etc...for a few hours practically every night. The job does not end at 3:00. Right now she works during the summer but probably won't always do so. She would like to eventually become a stay at home mom once we have children, but it's not easy to ensure that since we're both making sub $50K salaries. Again, we're not complaining, we're both doing what we love, we just want to be able to live in a home of our own and not live paycheck to paycheck.

I'm also not going to make the argument against accountability for schools, but I know that there's no easy answer to the problem. Children are not widgets. What I mean is that if you have a factory worker producing widgets, you can easily gauge his productivity by looking at his widgets. If they are clean and shiny and he makes a lot of them, you give him a raise/promotion, bonus, or raise. Children are living breathing beings with minds of their own and homelives that you are not privvy to and cannot do anything about. Case in point, if you are teaching in Camden or Newark and teach children who didn't have breakfast, are wearing the same dirty clothes from the day before, and are going home to a filthy rat trap of a home with maybe one drug addicted or absentee parent, is it fair to be judged by the same criteria as a teacher from Princeton? A teacher with students who want for nothing and have parents constantly hounding them about grades, sending them to SAT prep classes, and prodding them to aim high with regards to college choice? Obviously the kids from Princeton are going to score higher on standardized tests, have a higher graduation rate, etc... How much is teacher effort and how much is outside forces beyond the teacher's control? On paper a hardworking teacher in Camden looks like a failure while a slug of a teacher in Princeton looks like a top performer.

Finally, all personal reasons aside, I support higher starting salaries for teachers simply because as the cost of living continues to rise, our best and brightest will begin to pass on teaching in even greater numbers. If you're proficient at math and science why study education for four years when you can study engineering or a related field for four years and make almost twice as much upon graduating?

[CuCullin]

Originally Posted by natalayjones

I don't see how you can say I was providing misleading, inaccurate facts - I never said I was stating any facts. I was giving my opinion.

Oh, I see. So then, in your opinion, taxes pay for a privately owned parking complexes and sports players salaries. I hadn't realized something like that could be considered a view or opinion.

[CuCullin]

Originally Posted by Badfish740

Finally, all personal reasons aside, I support higher starting salaries for teachers simply because as the cost of living continues to rise, our best and brightest will begin to pass on teaching in even greater numbers. If you're proficient at math and science why study education for four years when you can study engineering or a related field for four years and make almost twice as much upon graduating?

And then, with that higher initial salary in your engineering field, pay a significant amount of your medical, not get dental (so you get that on your own), have an IRA (which you pay into, which isn't guaranteed, unlike pension), not qualify for specialized mortgage programs, and actually have to continue to perform after a set number of years at the risk of your job.

I know the salary itself is low, especially for those who are actually doing what the jobs require, but (and maybe its because you haven't dealt with it) your benefits are bar-none, incomparable, and by far surpassing anything in the private sector! I'm not even exaggerating in the slightest, you get ASTOUNDING benefits. Which, btw, a number of laws have meant to make a bit more fair and relative to the public sector, then raising salaries, but that all got shot down by the unions. Repeatedly. Then theres a strike, and salaries get bumped by big numbers, and with the benefits being the same.

Though, definitely, the administration is the *worst* of all.

(PS: Hows the land down by Trenton going for you?)

[JERSEY MAN]

CuCullon, Well thank you I was beginning to be a loner here. I'm NOT saying that the police should be paid more than teachers, or teachers more than police and firemen. What I'm trying to convey is what your saying fiscal responsibility. I looked at my tax bill before for the sake of this good but heated argument. $7,612 for schools portion. So if half of that goes to the schools and half to the teachers thats $ 3,806 to teachers salaries. So I think I have the right to make comments about this. And I'm not BASHING teachers. Some posters don't care about how much they and the police and fireman make. Good for them if they can afford the ever rising, out of control tax bills. Some may call this whining, some will say its complaining, I say its a valid argument. If you work for IBM and do a bad job you get fired. Not in the teaching profession and the police profession. See I lump myself in with them as we are government workers and I don't sound bias against teachers.

[natalayjones]

Originally Posted by Badfish740

Again, we're not complaining, we're both doing what we love, we just want to be able to live in a home of our own and not live paycheck to paycheck.

I think at the end of the day thats what everybody wants. Good post!

Originally Posted by CuCullin

Oh, I see. So then, in your opinion, taxes pay for a privately owned parking complexes and sports players salaries. I hadn't realized something like that could be considered a view or opinion.

Yeah it is my opinion that my taxes are paying for a parking garage. And if you care to go back up I never said taxes paid for sports players salaries, I said no one ever complains about how much they make. To which, you quickly corrected me in saying "the govt does not pay sports players salaries".

I could probably write a book on what you haven't realized but since there is not purpose in arguing with someone whom I'll never see, I guess I'll just let you believe whatever you want to belive about whatever I chose to post on this post and ignore your comments from here on out.

One of the beautiful things about the internet is you can always lose someone you don't particulary care for in cyberspace.

[fischfan13]

I personally don't need good schools as I have no children.

Well then wait until you have children before you complain about teachers.
You, yes you, were given the opportunity for an education. Whatever you did with it is up to you. You seem to have it in for teachers. Like it was said, repeatedly by many, a teacher can walk out the door at 3pm, or they can choose to stay until 4pm, or 5pm, or even later...and there is no extra pay. A teacher can choose a job in a school system that is K-4, or a teacher can choose a school system with metal detectors and its share of violence.
Damn, I better not tell you what job I was paid to do for 20 years.