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Historic budget cuts hammer districts
Written by Nancy Mitchell on Apr 27th, 2010. | Copyright © EdNewsColorado.org
When?! When is the real answer finally going to come to the surface? CUT THE TEACHER’S SALARIES AND BENEFITS! Teachers make an average of 50k a year (this includes 30 year and 1st year) plus benefits, plus pension. They get three months off a year, plus school breaks. When is some reality going to hit? This is insane. I have to pay extra for my child to ride a school bus while their teacher drives an Infiniti? Check out the teacher parking lots in Cherry Creek, its obvious that cutting salaries is the solution to these budget problems. Don’t cut janitors, charge $15 for a field trip, up school lunches to $3 a day. Cut the salaries across the board 20%. Problem solved.
Damn those teachers for making only 50k a year! They have to marry doctors and lawyers who make three times that much just so they can afford to drive an Infiniti to school. What’s seems so obvious to some is actually ignorance of the real problem: the faltering economy and the housing market. Let’s not make teachers suffer because overpaid Wallstreet bankers are really to blame. Is every person in the state taking a 20% pay cut? Is the price of goods and services going down? If you can read this, thank a teacher. Yes, even the one that makes 50 k a year.
The majority of our teachers do NOT make 50k per year — it’s more like we’re top-heavy in admin. That’s where you cut pay. We’ve got a brand new superintendent coming in at over $250,000 per year — as far as I’m concerned, that’s excessive. Put the money where it’s needed most – to the education of our students.
And, what ever happened to TABOR. It is illegal for the schools in the State of Colorado to charge fees to public school students for education. They can charge for extracurricular events, but not for education.
To quote Dale Hanks:
“Teachers make an average of 50k a year (this includes 30 year and 1st year) plus benefits, plus pension.”
What planet are you living on? I started my teaching career in 1994, at the height of the Clinton era, when the economy was booming. My first contract was for $18500.00/year and I remember working 8 hours at school and moving to a second job where I would work another 8 hours a day. When are people going to realize that teachers have to plan every day for what they are delivering to our most precious resource…our children. Why is it that education is compared to business and really that would be like comparing an Infiniti to a Yugo. Children are not a tangible object like black and white on paper. Every period a teacher is in front of a class of students all of their planning may have been for nothing…as the situation may dictate flexibility to the previously planned lessons.
Lastly, I so love it when people state that teachers get 3+ months off a year, but what they dont realize is that educators have to continually return for graduate credits, which is money out of their own pockets to the tune of around $300-$500 per credit hour. My thoughts to the “educator bashers” is….if you dont like what you see, become part of the solution and TEACH! I am sure you will quickly realize that the grass is certainly NOT always greener on this side of the fence.
Peace!
In the words of my students, “Wow!” $50,000 a year and driving an Infiniti? Who taught the person who made this correlation math? Where does the teacher live if they pay for an Infiniti on a salary of $50,000 a year? I seriously doubt they are living in Cherry Creek without a second income helping them afford that Infiniti and a home.
If I am at school from 7 am until 3 pm, then I am working 7.5 hours per day. My planning time is when I am SUPPOSED to plan for my classes, but I only get my planning time once a week, since I have to attend staff meetings the other four days. This leaves me with a half an hour to plan for my 5 days of 6 classes per day. Sadly, on average it takes me more an hour to plan for each class for the week, rather than the 5 minutes (that is 30 minutes divided by 6 classes) I still have remaining in my “paid” hours. Oh, and what about time for grading? That is what I spend one weekend day completing.
As for the 3 months off each year, the is when teachers must find second jobs to supplement their income, in order to afford their homes and luxuries, such as clothing, extra school supplies for the children whose parents cannot afford to buy them paper and pencils, and instruction materials not provided by districts because of budget cuts. This year, as a classroom teacher, I was given $150 as my budget to buy any supplies I needed for my classroom. The only supply given to me by the district was an allotment of copies for classroom instruction. My $150 had to buy all the paper clips, staples, staplers, tape, dry-erase markers, paper, pens, pencils, transparencies (yes, my school is so old they do not have projectors or smart boards), and more that I needed for my classroom. Because of the lack of funding for my district, I have spent more than $1500 of my own money to supplement the supplies I have needed to operate my classroom at the level I feel is necessary. Considering the fact that I am a first year teacher, my income is less than $35,000, which leaves me spending nearly 5% of my own income to supplement my students’ learning experience, NOT to purchase an Infiniti. I invite you to come and look at the parking lots in the school districts located in the northeast quadrant of the Denver metro area, where you will find Chevies, Fords, Hondas, Hyundais, Toyotas, and Kias that are more than 5 or 10 years old, along with the occasional Cadillac or Lexus. If you come into the classroom, you will find teachers who put children first, before their own need for luxuries.
Well stated Kris! Bravo!
The budget issue has as much to do with union rules that protect the ‘status quo’ as it does with declines in funding. Management is bloated, “due process” translates into “jobs for life” and the generous benefit package is unsupportable outside government institutions.
When I attended high school, there was one principal, one vice principal and a clerical staff that supported those foilks. A generation later, when my children attended the same school, there were 4 assistant principals and a full-time “counseling staff” of 6 that produced little real world impact. The student body was approximately the same size during both time frames.
At last report, DPS has 80 teachers on direct placement with no assignments but still receiving full compensation. Many of these teachers could take assignments in “tougher’ schools but choose not to. The annual cost to the District is over $4M.
The comments here related to salaries is only taking a small portion of the total compensation package into account. The entire compensation package is actually quite lucrative over one’s career. The retirement benefits are easily worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on ‘net present value’ basis (if you’re unsure how that is calculated, seek out someone in the math department). The value of this benenfit cannot be reasonably excluded from the discussion. Retirement benefits like this do not exist in the outside world primarily because they are exoribanlty expensive to provide.
Excellent teachers, principals and administrative staff should be paid well. Compensation to the best is directly impacted by those that are not pulling their weight. As a Teacher, Administrator or Staff member, you have a direct stake in the “team” at your school and in your district. Take ownership of your system and find a way to add value. Cull the weak players. Reduce bloated management. Deliver excellence. Not only do the children depend upon it, but the taxpayers expect it.
…just thoughts from the West Side.
I have to agree that some districts are “top-heavy” in staff that do not directly affect instruction in the classroom. DPS, Douglas County, and Jefferson County compare to the northeast school districts as apples compare to oranges – some similarities and some differences.
Excellent benefits definitely add to a teacher’s average income. I do not think teachers are under-paid, neither are they over-paid, as suggested in the earliest post. Unions have a negative side, just as they have a positive side, such as keeping benefits packages when most American companies are cutting them.
I hope unions can keep teachers’ salaries at an average level, which should keep quality teachers in classrooms.
[...] School districts in Colorado are shedding hundreds of jobs, pulling millions of dollars from reserves and piling on student fees as they face the biggest budget cuts in memory. In Douglas County, 380 jobs are slated for elimination for the 2010-11 school year. In the Adams 12 Five Star school district, that figure is 188. In Cherry Creek, it’s 155. In Jefferson County, it’s 137. In Littleton, it’s 98. Story. [...]
Cutting Teachers salaries is not the answer. These folks are the foundation to the future of nation! We are already so far behind other nations as far as Education. Kids in Asia and Europe are light years in front of our kids; it is because we value sports more than education. We think our kids will be the next John Elway, Todd Helton or Labron James. How about the next Robert Oppenheimer or next Vascular heart surgeon? Never hear about great middle, high school scholars, but we hear about that touchdown or No hitter!
Teachers we know are college graduates, a lot are working on their Masters and for the most part are very well rounded and educated.
I am blessed to have a kid at Fox Ridge and Cherekee Hs in the Cherry Creek school system. The Staff at those schools really care about the kids. I will pay an extra $100.00 a kids to keep our school bus!
Do not cut my kids teachers salary.
[...] as they face the biggest budget cuts in memory." the rest of the article can be found here: Historic budget cuts hammer districts | EdNewsColorado Also look at COSFP which says, "Colorado spends $1,919 less per pupil than the national [...]