105 replies to this topic

[justnzane]

wow my god. I love how in the time it took me to work today there was an attack on me and teachers in general. First off, I stated that I am a sub teacher, as in substitute. I work when I can get it and that is $85/day. I coach 3 seasons a year and I was working on coaching duties tonite until 8pm. So I put in ~14 hours today. The pay for a season as a first year coach is $2500, which is roughly $33 per day. So I worked 14 hours for $108 bucks today, which is $7.71 an hour.

Now compound this with $80,000 in student loans (I was thrown out of house by parents and got max. aid by uncle sam while in SUNY schools) and the fact that the job market is incredibly tight for certified personnel, and you must recognize that it is not easy by any stretch. I am making ends meet by working a 3rd job at a local fast food operation on Weekends and nights in order to pay off bills as the $11k a year from working in education/coaching is not sufficient. Mind you because I work in schools, I cannot collect unemployment over the summer, even as I look for work. I also am not offered any health care, nor am I guaranteed a certain amount of days of work. To boot even though I am a varsity head coach for two sports and assistant for a third, if a member of this school district wants my job for the next year, they are guaranteed it over me, regardless of my performance and the teams performance.

This is the reality. NYS is making it harder on younger teachers to make a decent living as many of the boomers had great earnings which are a great portion of what the taxpayers are paying now. At the district I work predominantly at, they gave incentives to older teachers that were making $100k while teachers with 10-15 years experience are making ~$55k and some of them are facing the axe as they are next least experienced in their positions.

NYS put a cap on how much a district can raise its taxes from year to year and then proceeded to cut funding to the districts . The fact of the matter is that our education system is being starved and facing the burden of many unfunded govt mandates that lead to a reduction in the quality of the kids learning experiences.

The only thing I will be in agreement with is that the Buffalo teachers should not have breast implants, and unnecessary cosmetic surgery covered in their benefits.

Gordio, I hope you really re-evaluate your statements as you really have no idea what the hell is going on in education and your simplistic views are very dangerous, especially since you live in a district that is desperate for state aid. If you want LHS to have less resources, their teachers buying supplies for their kids, higher class sizes, higher suspension rates, and less extra-curriculars, then you should keep complaining about your taxes rising up, instead of complaining about the state and feds siphoning away money from education. Furthermore, way to demonize me for making $11 grand last year. Thanks

[vincec]

Big Papi, on 09 May 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

I agree that corporate folks have just as many bad people who abuse their positions but I do disagree that the money saved wouldn't go into american's pockets. In lots of cases the money has to come out of our pockets in the first place to pay for the projects.  Also, bad unions do cause local problems and drive development away.  Corporations and businesses in general, corporate or not, like to invest capital to make money. Lack of a union wouldn't make people get paid more but it would probably make two projects possible where there is only 1 now which puts twice as many people back to work and creates investment and renewal twice as quickly.  Would you rather have 1 carpenter working at $80 an hour or 2 at $35? Would you rather have one derelict building revitalized and put back on the tax rolls or would you rather have 2? union domination in Philly has led to real issues including a pay-to-play culture that pervades government at all levels here and can be enforced by union bullies as it is the in the case of the developer I cited earlier at Phillybully.com

In my experience, non-unionized workers do not make enough money to treat their work as a long term profession.  This hurts the quality of the labor pool.  Here in NC for example, the joke is that if you can swing a hammer you can be a construction worker and if you have a tool belt you are a foreman.  By contrast, when I was working in NYC, the electricians were 3rd generation electricians, knew everything about electrical construction and did immaculate work.  Also, consider that if a worker makes a little more money, then they can spend it on other people's products.  If they barely make enough to scape by then they don't (or go into debt).  The idea is to pay a fair living wage to workers not the minimum that you can.

Big Papi, on 09 May 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

Just for perspective, 500 million is a lot of money, but the Philadelphia City School District budget is 2.5 BILLION alone. The Commonwealth of PA spends about 25 BILLION combined on education annually.  Philly spends 10% of the total by itself, the 500 other districts spend the rest for an average district budget of about 4.7 million dollars annually.

I'll take you word for this, but the total projected 2013 budget shortfall for NC is $2 billion dollars.  Education is only a portion of that.  In my county there was a reduction in school spending of $100 million dollars to address the shortfall.  That's a lot of jobs at the county level.  A couple of F-22s would solve a lot of problems.

[justnzane]

Big Papi, on 09 May 2012 - 07:34 PM, said:

This is false.  In actual dollars per pupil we're 4th.  As a percentage of GDP we're 21st.  We spend more than the rest of the G-8 though.  Although keep in mind we spend a WHOLE lot of money educating everyone (special ed).  Most of the rest of the world is pretty ok with excluding kids that don't fit the system and/or have a very rigid tracking system like Japan's where your life path is basically decided before you get to high school.

Actually, my master's thesis is on tracking WRT Japan, Germany, and the US. In Japan, the students take a high stakes exam in 9th grade that decides their final 3 years of "high school" education. It is rigid, but not quite before high school in our eyes. Germany actually tracks kids going into 4th grade but has some mobility in their system. The US varies depending on state and locality.

[DJasper Probincrux III]

justnzane, on 09 May 2012 - 08:44 PM, said:

Gordio, I hope you really re-evaluate your statements as you really have no idea what the hell is going on in education and your simplistic views are very dangerous, especially since you live in a district that is desperate for state aid. If you want LHS to have less resources, their teachers buying supplies for their kids, higher class sizes, higher suspension rates, and less extra-curriculars, then you should keep complaining about your taxes rising up, instead of complaining about the state and feds siphoning away money from education. Furthermore, way to demonize me for making $11 grand last year. Thanks

Stay strong brother.  I've been in your boat too.

I empathize with people paying 11k in property taxes, I really do.  Ask yourself, why are your property taxes more than double mine?  I'm in suburban Philly, not exactly the 3rd world and not exactly a spendthrift area for education. What else are you paying for with your 11k?  PA has a really bad public pension system too.  It also has labor union issues, bloated government (the largest legislature in the country), incredibly fractured local government with a million little municipalities, an aging and shrinking population, declining industrial base and corporate flight.

I looked it up - Grand Island School District (where I used to be from) spends about $13k/pupil annually. The District I live in now in PA spends $12.5k/pupil annually.  I looked up a house with a similar assessed value to mine. The annual property taxes are 10.5k.  My property taxes were almost exactly 5k.  Blaming spending on education for that difference is clearly fruitless.  Where else are your dollars going? Schools and teachers are the easy targets because you have direct control of them.  Demand the rest of WNY government to slim down. PA isn't exactly svelte with government, imagine how truly bloated WNY must be to require that tax load.

[Just Jack]

This has gone way off topic.

[Gordio]

I would like to apologize to the board & the moderators for starting a sh*t storm in the TO discussion.  That was not my intent & anything like that should be taken to off wall.  Lessoned learned.  

Everybody made good points.  I had one issue with what bkinpete said when he said "they get to watch kids that are parented by people like Gordio."  My guess is this poster is not a parent.  Because if he knew how tough & how much time people put in as being parents & how much parents love their kids & would do anything for them he would never say something like that to a person he really does not even know.  Bkinpete you ought to be ashamed of yourself.