Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
California is messed up; I couldn't afford to buy a home there and I would never want to rent there under Prop 13. (I can't afford Los Altos and don't want Alviso )
A lot of people might be surprised, but even upper 5% communities have low-income people hiding in the woodwork. That's because the barrier to living there is the cost of housing, and not the cost of groceries or widgets. Many people acquire housing without having high incomes (e.g. inheritance), and once acquired and the mortgage is retired, most homes don't require high incomes to maintain. Property taxes are a major obstacle to affordability in many areas, but many states have provisions to protect various classes of homeowners. So most people who inherit homes in California enjoy the property tax protections related to Prop 13 and its sequelae, and therefore will not be taxed out of their homes if their income falls short of their neighbors'.
SOME upper-income communities are considering ways to make or create housing affordable to their public workers. On the East Coast, property taxes are astronomical, but public workers are paid well.
I'm not surprised, since you aren't telling me anything I don't already know. I've lived in the Bay Area for almost 30 years, from a very nice neighborhood (San Mateo Park) to the poorest of neighborhoods (East Palo Alto & Hunter's Point). So I'm aware not EVERY resident in the upper-income towns is loaded, but if the majority weren't they would not qualify as being "richest in the nation." I don't want to say where I work exactly, but trust me, the poor are few & far between here. My income is above the poverty line, and I couldn't afford even a studio apartment within 15-20 miles of that town.
"So teachers should work for crumbs? etc., etc., etc.
WHERE did ANYONE suggest such an ignorant proposal. On one teacher-bashing thread after another on CD.
This one of the main reasons why people can't get together and discuss issues. Every one of your responses on this thread are hostile and demeaning. Is this an example of how people should "get together and discuss issues"?
People like you exaggerate to the nth degree. Calm down...try to unwad your panties...sober up maybe?
You don't have anything of value to say so you make these ignorant statements.
OK, a few minor facts about the reality of public education spending, and we'll use my garden variety suburb as a barometer, since my school district is one of the top in the state, and as a property owner, I have seen 8 successful levies in the last 10 years, all "for the schools."
The operating budget is $60 million. That funds 4 elementary K-5 schools, one 6-8 middle school, and one 9-12 high school.
We have 3,600 students and a 14:1 pupil:teacher ratio across all schools. That means we have 258 teachers.
But our school system "employs 754 professionals." So we have roughly 2 non-teaching "professionals" for every 1 teacher in our school system, that btw has pay-to-play sports, parents funding community supplies with the beginning of the year list of "extras" to buy, like kleenex, bandaids, paper, pencils, etc for the kids who cannot supply their own, and parents also have to pay a textbook fee depending on grade, etc etc.
254 teachers
496 non-teachers apparently "supporting the mission"
Anyone care to take a guess where the problem might lie other than "teachers demand too much money" or some other bumper sticker? On a per school basis, that's 82 people in non-teaching capacity versus 42 teachers.
WTF is up with all that admin overhead? WTF does a 2:1 administrator:teacher ratio have to do with educating kids? Perhaps, and this is just me going out on a limb here, you could still educate children really well, even with a very low 14:1 student:teacher ratio, without all those freaking admin personnel, and with the money you have left over could...I don't know...PAY THE TEACHERS MORE WITHOUT A FREAKING LEVY EVERY FREAKING YEAR!!!!!
I invite everyone on this forum to examine your own school district. Check the student:teacher ratio, then check the admin:teacher ratio, and see how yours stacks up. You may end up quite surprised to see just how much money gets wasted on costs that have NOTHING TO DO WITH EDUCATING, and lot on "for the kids" racketeering and fleecing of the taxpayers.
EDIT - When I was in high school, the total non-teaching staff of our school was like 1/3, maybe 1/2 the number of teachers, and most of the teachers covered various fluff admin. Granted, this was 30 years ago and my memory might be hazy but I know in my high school of ~20:1 student:teacher ratio (1400 students, about 75 teachers iirc), we did not have 150 admin personnel total, including all the cafeteria, transportation, custodial etc. No way we had 150 non-teaching adults running around that school. NFW. And I went to one of the top 20 public schools (and has been consistently for the last 30 years) in the entire country, where we had bags of money to spend on frivolous junk.
Those 496 extra people are not just administrators. It includes lunch ladies, bus drivers, bus monitors, teacher aides, library aides, secretaries, janitors, coaches, test monitors, printing office personnel, bookkeepers, and the list goes on and on.
Just to give you an example - one of my old schools had 554 middle school students and we had the following non-teachers:
1- principal
1- assistant principal
2- counselors
1- attendance clerk
1- receptionist
1- records clerk
1- office manager/bookkeeper
1- nursing clerk
1- nurse (shared with 2 other schools)
1- library assistant
1- special education clerk
1- head janitor
3 - night janitors (1 part-time)
2- ESL assistants
4 - special education assistants
3- one-on-one aides
1- sign language interpreter
1- occupational therapist (shared with another school)
1- school psychologist (shared with another school)
2- speech therapist (1 shared with another school)
14 - lunch ladies
29- bus drivers
8- bus monitors
1- computer technician (shared with 4 other schools)
16 - coaches (all part time and seasonal)
That is 78 non-teachers for one school with 525 students and I didn't even include the college students that they hire as extra testing monitors or as tutors the month before testing. Please note that only 4 (principal, assistant principal, and 2 counselors) are administrators. This is for a school with 21 regular classroom teachers, 7 special area teachers, 11 special education teachers, and 1 librarian. So at that school with 554 students the administrator:teacher:support personnel ratio is 4:40:78 (or 1:10:19.5). Officially our student:teacher ratio was slightly less than 14:1 but in reality class sizes averages were 24-29 depending on the grade and the mix of kids.
ETA: The ones you probably didn't have 30 years ago were:
1- special education clerk
2- ESL assistants
1- nurse
4 - special education assistants
3- one-on-one aides
1- sign language interpreter
1- occupational therapist (shared with another school)
1- school psychologist (shared with another school)
2- speech therapist (1 shared with another school)
1- computer technician (shared with 4 other schools)
The rest you probably did but were blind to them. You also probably didn't have 11 special education teachers.
Was everyone a walker? Did everyone bring their lunch? When was this?
We were walkers, we took the subway, we took buses, a few drove to school. NYC driving age was 18 (17 with driver ed) so most of us didn't drive to school. There was an express bus three blocks from my house that had two more pickup stops then went straight to school. NYC transit is awesome. Some of us brought our lunch but most bought hot lunch in the cafeteria.
Those 496 extra people are not just administrators. It includes lunch ladies, bus drivers, bus monitors, teacher aides, library aides, secretaries, janitors, coaches, test monitors, printing office personnel, bookkeepers, and the list goes on and on.
Just to give you an example - one of my old schools had 554 middle school students and we had the following non-teachers:
1- principal
1- assistant principal
2- counselors
1- attendance clerk
1- receptionist
1- records clerk
1- office manager/bookkeeper
1- nursing clerk
1- nurse (shared with 2 other schools)
1- library assistant
1- special education clerk
1- head janitor
3 - night janitors (1 part-time)
2- ESL assistants
4 - special education assistants
3- one-on-one aides
1- sign language interpreter
1- occupational therapist (shared with another school)
1- school psychologist (shared with another school)
2- speech therapist (1 shared with another school)
14 - lunch ladies
29- bus drivers
8- bus monitors
1- computer technician (shared with 4 other schools)
16 - coaches (all part time and seasonal)
That is 78 non-teachers for one school with 525 students and I didn't even include the college students that they hire as extra testing monitors or as tutors the month before testing. Please note that only 4 (principal, assistant principal, and 2 counselors) are administrators. This is for a school with 21 regular classroom teachers, 7 special area teachers, 11 special education teachers, and 1 librarian. So at that school with 554 students the administrator:teacher:support personnel ratio is 4:40:78 (or 1:10:19.5). Officially our student:teacher ratio was slightly less than 14:1 but in reality class sizes averages were 24-29 depending on the grade and the mix of kids.
ETA: The ones you probably didn't have 30 years ago were:
1- special education clerk
2- ESL assistants
1- nurse
4 - special education assistants
3- one-on-one aides
1- sign language interpreter
1- occupational therapist (shared with another school)
1- school psychologist (shared with another school)
2- speech therapist (1 shared with another school)
1- computer technician (shared with 4 other schools)
The rest you probably did but were blind to them. You also probably didn't have 11 special education teachers.
My point being, very few of the folks listed have anything to do with education, and are cogs that keep the bloated machine running. And by bloated, I mean lots of unnecessary parts that aren't even needed to keep the machine running.
For example, the average school bus holds 54 passengers. Your school had 29 bus drivers. Dividing the first population of 554 by 29 drivers, your school busses averaged 19 kids per bus, which is operating at 35% capacity, and that is assuming every last student rode the bus. Any percentage that walked or biked to school drops that operational efficiency even lower. But at max possible capacity your busses are at 35% capacity. Yep..BLOAT.
8 bus monitors? To do what besides suck money from the operating budget? Oh that's right, to play sheep dog to unruly herds because miscreants and hoodlums can no longer be tossed off riding the bus, forcing both student and parents to accept responsibility for the student's actions.
16 coaches...for middle school? Really? My high school of 1400 didn't have 16 coaches for all of our teams, and every coach was also a teacher. They got a bonus of like $1-2k per year for coaching. But honestly, a middle school with 16 coaches that are separate from teaching? Unbelievable. MOAR BLOAT!!
Etc etc.
Run down the list, and do the math like you're a CEO/COO who balances personnel against mission statement and organizational goals. You'd find in a hurry that your labor costs are bloated with a lot of unnecessary employees.
My point being, very few of the folks listed have anything to do with education, and are cogs that keep the bloated machine running. And by bloated, I mean lots of unnecessary parts that aren't even needed to keep the machine running.
For example, the average school bus holds 54 passengers. Your school had 29 bus drivers. Dividing the first population of 554 by 29 drivers, your school busses averaged 19 kids per bus, which is operating at 35% capacity, and that is assuming every last student rode the bus. Any percentage that walked or biked to school drops that operational efficiency even lower. But at max possible capacity your busses are at 35% capacity. Yep..BLOAT.
8 bus monitors? To do what besides suck money from the operating budget? Oh that's right, to play sheep dog to unruly herds because miscreants and hoodlums can no longer be tossed off riding the bus, forcing both student and parents to accept responsibility for the student's actions.
16 coaches...for middle school? Really? My high school of 1400 didn't have 16 coaches for all of our teams, and every coach was also a teacher. They got a bonus of like $1-2k per year for coaching. But honestly, a middle school with 16 coaches that are separate from teaching? Unbelievable. MOAR BLOAT!!
Etc etc.
Run down the list, and do the math like you're a CEO/COO who balances personnel against mission statement and organizational goals. You'd find in a hurry that your labor costs are bloated with a lot of unnecessary employees.
I agree absolutely. Anyone who thinks that the school system can't 'trim some fat' so to speak, needs to take a good look at all the personnel.
I agree absolutely. Anyone who thinks that the school system can't 'trim some fat' so to speak, needs to take a good look at all the personnel.
I am posting all this in defense of both teacher and taxpayer.
The teacher wants more money for being the rainmakers of a school. That makes sense, as they are the product, the bottom line. Rainmakers demanding more for making it rain is common throughout the business world. A teacher is to a school what a doctor is to hospital and a lawyer is to a law firm, i.e. the reason the business has customers.
The taxpayer is the consumer, and wants the best product for the lowest possible price. Again, this is perfectly natural and expected.
Where both are getting screwed is administrative bloat that has nothing to do with the actual product of the business, making both groups unhappy. Imagine your local grocery store that you have shopped at for years. Every year, they raise prices by 5% with no change whatsoever in the quality or quantity of available grocery items, service, throughput, whatever. You inquire one day, and the store manager explains that prices keep going up because every year the store hires a bunch of web designers, gardners, auto mechanics, and airport baggage handlers. You would ask "what do any of them have to do with the retail sales of groceries?" The answer would be "not a freaking thing" and you would begin reevaluating your choice of grocers. Now imagine at this same store, the cashiers, stock boys, butchers, bakers, etc are all saying hey, we make it rain, and we haven't had a raise in a while? And the manager tells them the same story about unnecessary people they simply must employ for the sake of employing more people. At some point, the people actually involved in the mission of the organization's bottom line will ponder why they are there.
It is this bloat of wildly unnecessary cost that puts downward pressure on the teacher as rainmaker, and puts upward pressure on the taxpayer as consumer. And it is protected by government making sure competition cannot rear its ugly head by squashing things like vouchers, charter/magnate schools, homeschooling, etc. The government and school board admins say they are protecting the children and the teachers, but what they are protecting is a racket of budget bloat that in some way rewards a few of political aristocracy.
I am no fan of teacher's unions, or any public employee union for that matter, but they are not the main reason that public education costs have gone through the roof with no corresponding improvement in the quality of the public education product. Bloated admins and politicians/admins finding ways to funnel taxpayer cash into their own pockets somehow...there's your culprit.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
)
