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The benefits package is crappy and costs a lot of money... and the retirement is a required percentage
I don't disagree with many of your points, but the benefits package is actually quite generous if you're single. $25 a month for a 70/30 plan, while not that great, is only costing you $300 a year. Now if you have to add your family to that then yes, it gets quite expensive ($600+ for a 70/30 plan per month)
The pension is actually quite good too. Although they need to put in 6% of their salary per month, they get 54.6% percent of the average of their annual highest 4-year period of salary if they retire at 30 years. Add an extra 1.82% per year over 30 years service.
A teacher making $60k a year for the 4 years before retirement and retires with 30 years of state service receives $2,730 a month. That combined with social security gives them essentially the exact same pay they were making at retirement, for the rest of their lives. If they also decide to put some away in a 403b or IRA then all the better.
It's not a golden parachute, but they won't be living in poverty either.
Interesting conversation. In full disclosure, I've only put our child in public school for one year, and put him back into private school after that, lots of reasons for that that are not relevant to the conversation.
I actually think teachers are by in large under-paid, and under-appreciated, especially for the crappy parents they have to deal with on a day to day basis. You can easily make $100k a year currently in construction in the Raleigh area, why would you want to make $40k a year teaching.
However, my biggest fundamental objection to teacher pay, is that they appear to determine pay based mostly upon years of experience. We have all met all star teachers in the late 20s, and horrible (should have been fired decades ago) teachers in the 50s. I could never work in an industry, where effort and ability were not rewarded. The awesome teacher working 60 hour weeks, makes the same amount as one doing the absolute bare minimum to get by.
Hardly seems like a system set-up to reward effort and innovation.
Unless they are retirees, in which case I agree that benefits for retirees are nice. If you don't mind making low wages all your career to get them.
Health benefits in the private sector suck. As I mentioned above, we pay over 1k/mo for a family plan with I believe a 1500/person deductible. Yes there are companies that do much better than that, but it's certainly not the norm, and becoming more and more rare.
Up until 10 years ago or so, I never had a health insurance deductible. I don't remember it ever being a thing. A lot has changed on that front - but that's not relevant here.
And that doesn't even include the full benefit package. Nobody, I mean NOBODY in the private sector gets a pension anymore. .
I get a pension (ducks and runs).
In all seriousness a pension of any amount is nothing to sneeze at. A couple thousand a month just for waking up every day is pretty nice. My dad's is about $3000 a month, that's MORE than enough for them to live off of, and he socked it away in his 401K too. As with any profession, you either plan for your retirement or you don't it's up to you. And that includes your own saving, whether you own a house and choose to pay it off or use it as an ATM and so on. But the pension is nice.
I don't disagree with many of your points, but the benefits package is actually quite generous if you're single. $25 a month for a 70/30 plan, while not that great, is only costing you $300 a year. Now if you have to add your family to that then yes, it gets quite expensive ($600+ for a 70/30 plan per month)
The pension is actually quite good too. Although they need to put in 6% of their salary per month, they get 54.6% percent of the average of their annual highest 4-year period of salary if they retire at 30 years. Add an extra 1.82% per year over 30 years service.
A teacher making $60k a year for the 4 years before retirement and retires with 30 years of state service receives $2,730 a month. That combined with social security gives them essentially the exact same pay they were making at retirement, for the rest of their lives. If they also decide to put some away in a 403b or IRA then all the better.
It's not a golden parachute, but they won't be living in poverty either.
Most teachers don't stay single for all their lives. Many love kids and have families. It's not a good package for a family and pretty much requires that a spouse have a better job and better benefits.
So, I agree that it's good for retirees, but not for anyone else unless they're young, unmarried, and living with roommates or at home with their parents while they pay off school loans or what have you.
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Interesting conversation. In full disclosure, I've only put our child in public school for one year, and put him back into private school after that, lots of reasons for that that are not relevant to the conversation.
I actually think teachers are by in large under-paid, and under-appreciated, especially for the crappy parents they have to deal with on a day to day basis. You can easily make $100k a year currently in construction in the Raleigh area, why would you want to make $40k a year teaching.
However, my biggest fundamental objection to teacher pay, is that they appear to determine pay based mostly upon years of experience. We have all met all star teachers in the late 20s, and horrible (should have been fired decades ago) teachers in the 50s. I could never work in an industry, where effort and ability were not rewarded. The awesome teacher working 60 hour weeks, makes the same amount as one doing the absolute bare minimum to get by.
Hardly seems like a system set-up to reward effort and innovation.
I think it is hard to measure teacher pay by performance unless you are measuring growth and not test scores.
I could totally get behind a mix of longevity and pay for performance if it was based on growth and not test scores.
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Health benefits in the private sector suck. As I mentioned above, we pay over 1k/mo for a family plan with I believe a 1500/person deductible. Yes there are companies that do much better than that, but it's certainly not the norm, and becoming more and more rare.
Up until 10 years ago or so, I never had a health insurance deductible. I don't remember it ever being a thing. A lot has changed on that front - but that's not relevant here.
That is true for some private sector health benefits, absolutely. But, not all. So, if a person wants better benefits, they can shop elsewhere for a job with a company that has them. Public school teachers have to move to get better.
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In all seriousness a pension of any amount is nothing to sneeze at. A couple thousand a month just for waking up every day is pretty nice. My dad's is about $3000 a month, that's MORE than enough for them to live off of, and he socked it away in his 401K too. As with any profession, you either plan for your retirement or you don't it's up to you. And that includes your own saving, whether you own a house and choose to pay it off or use it as an ATM and so on. But the pension is nice.
I have had a private sector job that had a pension, too.
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