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Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WhoaNo
Teachers in the New Jersey enjoy high pay, gold-plated health care benefits, and a contractually guaranteed retirement plan that can never be taken away from them or reduced. While the private sector and federal employees get the crumbs off their plates, state employees, teachers, and their goon unions are fighting a wage freeze? Give me a break.
There are plenty of unemployed people out here with a wealth of knowledge and experience who would 1) be qualified to teach after certification, 2) might actually be better teachers than many of the warm bodies passing as educators at Timberlane Middle school right now, and 3) would be GRATEFUL for the opportunity to work for a salary of $50,000 with 13 weeks off every year. These teachers don't even grade homework any more, they just have the kids grade THEIR OWN HOMEWORK. Are you kidding me with this?
I had to pay $4,000 for dental work in January that my dentist told me would have been FREE if I'd been a teacher in New Jersey, and I'm a federal employee who supposedly has good benefits. That $4,000 represents an indirect transfer of wealth from my daughter to some overpaid hack who could never make it out here in the real world, where the rest of us are allowed to evidently exist for the sole purpose of subsidizing their cushy benefits and pensions. I picked my daughter up from school one day at dismissal time for a doctor's appointment and witnessed the majority of teachers leaping into their cars and peeling away from her school parking lot at 2:40. Meanwhile, I'm stuck at work until 7 or 8 p.m., for the privilege of making their lives easier? Wrong on So. Many. Levels.
The median teacher's salary in my district is somewhere in the neighborhood of $65,000. The mean salary is not published anywhere I can find because it's undoubtedly a lot higher than the median and, if published, would only serve to further inflame people's outrage. I've heard it's roughly $85,000/yr, which is $102,000 when normalized to the 10-month period that they actually work. On what planet can you justify paying a public school teacher more than most PhDs in Princeton earn? These teachers are out of control. They are taking away from the students and they are soaking the taxpayers of New Jersey.
Enough is enough. Fire every teacher and allow them to earn the right to get their jobs back if they can show that they are effective in the classroom, agree to have their pay at least partially indexed to student's performance on standardized tests, are willing to pay for some of their benefits like the rest of us, and agree to pension reductions. Many professionals like myself will flee the state if this train wreck is allowed to continue, and with a progressively shrinking tax base, I'm guessing that those teachers will be begging for janitorial duty at the schools they now teach in sometime within the next 5 years.
My sister has been teaching in a South Jersey district for 35 years. She pays 4% for her healthcare & her district told the teachers that the governor wants them to pay 1.5% more. She spends several hours every night doing prep work. Oh, yeah, & most years she gets to pay for most of her class room supplies & frequently has to furnish supplies to students whose parents don't feel like buying them.
So, considering that my sister's district pays an obscene amount to their superintendant & his assistants, have you considered what they actually do for their salaries.
We need to conolidate into 21 school districts, period.
This would eliminate the patronage, cronyism, and nepotism...and most of the unecessary high paying positions at the top.
We need to find a different way to fund education that is more equitable, or at least do away with the "unfair" Abbott funding.
Governor Christie indicated that his administration is looking ahead to consolidation of the 600+ school districts into 21 county districts. He will also have the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court Judges, which hopefully can resolve the "Abbott" debacle.
I know I am not the first to mention these two cost saving measures, and while I believe the Teachers could accept a wage freeze and pay 1.5% of their salary towards health care to help the State. The wage and health benefit savings would pale in comparison to the savings that would be passed along to the taxpayers by consolidating the districts and abolioshing the Abbott funding.
While good teachers facilitate learning, I don't think curriculum standards are the main factor as to why New Jersey's students test so well nationally. You have a very educated base of parents and both ends of our state that include high-income suburbs of two of the biggest cities in the country with high paying jobs in each.
So the fact that NJ has some of the highest qualified secondary teachers in the nation is a coincidence?
Especially since the top four performing state (VT, MA, CT and NJ) all have the highest standard for teachers?
We need to conolidate into 21 school districts, period.
This would eliminate the patronage, cronyism, and nepotism...and most of the unecessary high paying positions at the top.
We need to find a different way to fund education that is more equitable, or at least do away with the "unfair" Abbott funding.
Governor Christie indicated that his administration is looking ahead to consolidation of the 600+ school districts into 21 county districts. He will also have the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court Judges, which hopefully can resolve the "Abbott" debacle.
I know I am not the first to mention these two cost saving measures, and while I believe the Teachers could accept a wage freeze and pay 1.5% of their salary towards health care to help the State. The wage and health benefit savings would pale in comparison to the savings that would be passed along to the taxpayers by consolidating the districts and abolioshing the Abbott funding.
I agree with consolidation 100% but the problem with getting rid of Abbott funding entirely is that more than half of the Abbott districts are in just 4 counties (and 5 are in Hudson alone!!) which would make the tax levies in those areas skyrocket despite any savings from shared services.
Abbott could surely be substantially decreased significantly by consolidation, and likely many of those abbott students would be better served if they attended high school with more affluent neighboring students. If we got rid of funding completely it would also be a tax break for the wealthiest people in NJ since the three wealthiest counties have only 1 abbot district between them. The difference in funding for those districts would have to absorbed by the middle class in the towns that just happen to be in the same county.
Would anyone be able to inform me how I can find the Salary Guide for Caldwell/West Caldwell Teachers. Many thanks in advance.
Some districts have it on their web site. If not call the Board of Ed office and ask the business administrator for a copy. Chances are he or she will e-mail it over to you or something. If they give you any trouble, fill out an Open Public Records Act request and they'll be legally compelled to turn it over.
The DataUniverse site is excellent, though. You can get the salary for every individual public employee, right down to each classroom teacher.
I love the barrage of shallow, insipid ads by the NJEA to the effect that: "Tell Trenton to stop hurting our children" etc. Who do they think will be manipulated by such transparently self-serving tripe? They are actually paying money for advertising that galvanizes their opposition.
I agree 100%. All the people I spoke with say the same thing. They are killing any support for teachers from local taxpayers. They make things worse every time one of the commercials air.
so a tax CUT for those who make over $400K that happens to equal the cuts made by the Gov CC can not be set aside so that our kids don't fall behind and lose important programs?
Too bad that BMW dealers and custom shirt shops would suffer. I guess that's more important then our kids keeping up with other states and international competition for college placement and jobs.
so a tax CUT for those who make over $400K that happens to equal the cuts made by the Gov CC can not be set aside so that our kids don't fall behind and lose important programs?
Too bad that BMW dealers and custom shirt shops would suffer. I guess that's more important then our kids keeping up with other states and international competition for college placement and jobs.
The kids will do just fine. Honors students come from Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth and go on to become doctors and lawyers and researchers and whatever. If the parents are taking care of business the right way, so will the kids. Regardless of a few less programs and luxuries.
We need much lower taxes now or we won't even have a state worth living in. That comes first, even before education.
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