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I have been a special ed. teacher in no. ca. for 20 years. I have all the necessary credentials....including a masters.
I want to move to new york state to be with my daughter. In order to do this...will I have to
take a bunch of tests to indicate I am a professional teacher? Would it be easier for me to be a substitute teacher?
I was hoping it would be an easy transition...but I am definitely concerned. Thank you.
This page tells you what SPED licenses are available in New York, and this page details what you can teach with each license. On this page, you can see the specific license levels for California teachers.
I can tell you that if you are moving to Long Island, don't even think about becoming licensed. You'll be wasting your time. Here on the Island teachers are being laid off, no new jobs are opening up and yet the colleges are still cranking out teaching degrees by the droves, and everyone who isn't employed by a school district - well, we're all furious we have to pay out-of-sight real estate taxes to pay for the bloated teacher salaries as well as their off-the-charts pensions. Teachers here drive Mercedes, Audis, etc., while the rest of us drive Saturns that are 12 years old.
We're all caught in this pyramid scheme set up by the NY teachers union by the union bosses back in the 80's when the teacher salaries began to increase by leaps and bounds. Teachers here on Long Island make double the money what private sector employees make working a 50-hour work week, while the teachers teach literally 20 hours/week for 36 weeks a year, with 7% increases every year based on the past year's salary. The salaries increase arithmetically. Long Island private sector employees simply can't keep up financially. People are angry about being taxed out of their houses. I know people who have had to sell their houses and move out of state. People moving with their kids = less students, which is why teachers are being let go. My real estate tax bill for this year is $13,646. Roughly $10,000 of my tax bill goes to the teacher salaries and pensions. That's money we'll need for our own retirement, not theirs - but now I'm getting off topic. Sorry.
How do I know all this? Well, for one things it's all on the internet. Teachers' names and their salaries and retired teachers' pensions. I have many friends who are currently teachers and some who are retired.
Because of the exhorbitant salaries and benefits plus job security (my music teacher friends who are currently employed are making over $130,000/year until next year when their salary will go up to something like $138,000/year - actually it's not a year at all but part of a year), everyone wants a public school teaching job. Ah, the cushy life with 14 weeks off and a part time job + oodles of money and a job guaranteed. Extremely hard to come by these days. Meanwhile the rest of us are hanging on to our jobs by a thread without having a raise in 3 years - something the teacher bubble just doesn't want to even acknowledge let alone understand.
The public school system is the largest employer on Long Island - not the private sector. Which explains why it's breaking the financial backs of the rest of us.
I have a friend who moved here from Sacramento in 2008. She too is a special ed. teacher. Carolyn went ahead and took all the tests, did what she had to do to get certified, got certified, interviewed in a few places that actually had jobs in 2009 and never got anywhere. It was disappointing and frustrating for her. Now she works for an exterminating company and puts on bug shows to drum up business. She'll be leaving this company pretty fast after being there for around 2 years making pocket money.
Best bet is to go look for a job in upstate NY. Perhaps things are sunnier up there public school-wise. At least up there they don't have these awful real estate taxes, so you won't have to deal with the us against them mentality that is so pervasive on the Island - but rightly so.
I can tell you that if you are moving to Long Island, don't even think about becoming licensed. You'll be wasting your time. Here on the Island teachers are being laid off, no new jobs are opening up and yet the colleges are still cranking out teaching degrees by the droves, and everyone who isn't employed by a school district - well, we're all furious we have to pay out-of-sight real estate taxes to pay for the bloated teacher salaries as well as their off the charts pensions.
I was curious so I googled Long Island Teacher's Salaries and got this:
The lowest average salary was in New Soffock at $42,000 and the highest in Fire Island at $96,000. That is not that over the top when you figure the education level required.
That being said, I did find another site that had employee compensation at much higher, but compensation, I'm sure, means salary, health insurance, retirement, unemployment, etc.
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Teachers here drive Mercedes, Audis, etc., while the rest of us drive Saturns that are 12 years old.
What kind of work do you do? Do you have six years of post secondary education?
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We're all caught in this pyramid scheme set up by the NY teachers union by the union bosses back in the 80's when the teacher salaries began to increase by leaps and bounds. Teachers here on Long Island make double the money what private sector employees make working a 50-hour work week, while the teachers teach literally 20 hours/week for 36 weeks a year,
C'mon? 20 hours a week? Students are only in front of a teacher 4 hours a day? And you don't think teachers work 50 or more hours a week? Really? (Maybe PE teachers *shrug*)
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My real estate tax bill for this year is $13,646. Roughly $10,000 of my tax bill goes to the teacher salaries and pensions. That's money we'll need for our own retirement, not theirs - but now I'm getting off topic. Sorry.
That is awfully high and Long Island does have a reputation for high taxes. You may want to look at waste in the district. That kind of tax is disproportionate with the teachers' salaries compared to my state.
I have been a special ed. teacher in no. ca. for 20 years. I have all the necessary credentials....including a masters.
I want to move to new york state to be with my daughter. In order to do this...will I have to
take a bunch of tests to indicate I am a professional teacher? Would it be easier for me to be a substitute teacher?
I was hoping it would be an easy transition...but I am definitely concerned. Thank you.
Let's keep this conversation about teaching in NY state please. If the OP wants info on LI teaching, she can go to that forum
Oh, I guess the poster means "upstate NY." My mistake. I assumed Salvadore was moving to New York State in general, in which case, if he was moving to LI, he'd be in for a bit of a jolt.
And by the way, those average salaries that Everdeen found are just that - the averages of each school district on Long Island which include starting salaries. If you dig a little deeper on the internet you'll see that a teacher who's been teaching around 15 years or so is making WAY over $100K for 36 weeks of work that I can guarantee you is not a 50-hour week. My neighbor's daughter-in-law makes $96K this year and she's in her 5th year of teaching elementary school. I have 2 music teacher friends at the high school level (Comsowogue and Three Village) who teach choral music for 3.5 and 4 hours/day and are making over $130K/year. They've been teaching around 18 years. No exaggeration. No homework to correct. Nothing else extra. No clubs. Nothing.
One retired teacher friend of mine who retired back in 1998 receives approximately $55K/year for her pension. That's not much when you look at last year's retirees. Unfortunately for her she was at the beginning of the skyrocketing pension structure.
And yes, in the primary schools, the teachers are in front of the class for 4 hours/day. That's it. The other 2 hours equals lunch (1 hour) and planning (1 hour). Some teachers at the secondary level teach only 3 hours/day. My old neighbor who was head of English at Ward Melville HS taught just that - he left his house at 8 AM. Came home at 10:30 AM to let the dog out and hang out, then would return to the HIS at 11:30 AM and would be home like clockwork at 2:25 PM. Every day. He bragged to me he was making over $100/year not including all the benefits (including an eye care package - he was very proud of that one) and "what a good deal" he had on everyone's dime. That was 26 years ago. So $100K was a small fortune back then. If you care to extrapolate the numbers, God only knows what he'd be making today for his cushy job.
Compensation means salary. Just salary. I wish all the benefits were included. We'd have less of a tax burden then. All of the other benefits are extras - teachers are currently getting a minimum of $16,000 worth of health insurance, not included in their salaries, eye care packages on top of that - some districts, not all - and the worst of it is their pensions. Everdeen, take a look at LI teacher pensions and see the way they're structured. It will blow you away. Which is why we're all going broke here. The teacher union bosses have set up a Ponzi scheme. It's literally unsustainable. After you see the over-the-top pension numbers, you too will want to move here and get a teaching job.
I find it interesting that students, and I am taking your word for it, are in front of a teacher for so few hours a day as the test scores for students are higher back east than they are here where I am and the students are in front of a teacher for at least 6 hours a day with a 30 minute lunch and no recess. Maybe the Finnish are on to something? They score higher than any other country in the world while having shorter school days and strong teacher's unions.
I find it interesting that students, and I am taking your word for it, are in front of a teacher for so few hours a day as the test scores for students are higher back east than they are here where I am and the students are in front of a teacher for at least 6 hours a day with a 30 minute lunch and no recess. Maybe the Finnish are on to something? They score higher than any other country in the world while having shorter school days and strong teacher's unions.
You do realize, don't you, that one poster does not represent anyone else except one person in one school, right?
I find it interesting that students, and I am taking your word for it, are in front of a teacher for so few hours a day as the test scores for students are higher back east than they are here where I am and the students are in front of a teacher for at least 6 hours a day with a 30 minute lunch and no recess. Maybe the Finnish are on to something? They score higher than any other country in the world while having shorter school days and strong teacher's unions.
It definitely varies. Does your 6 hours include art, music, pe, etc? My students are in with a classroom teacher for 3 hours and 15 minutes on Mondays (that's not counting time in music class). The rest of the week they are in class for a maximum of 5 hours and 15 minutes (when I take out recess, music/pe, and lunch) and a minimum of 4 hours and 45 minutes (that's on a day when they are in art for an hour).
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