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You can always blame the teachers and the unions, but to be more correct, blame the spineless politicians that were comfortably placed in the union's pocket. Good luck trying to change it all, but most BOE's realize that such a radical change would be a disaster.
Not if the 3,000,000 get louder than the 50,000.
05-13-2010, 09:42 PM
grant516
n/a posts
I don't think any of these posters are teachers, nor am I being paid by anyones tax dollars to do what I do.
Your post is on 'why' isn't this done. It isn't done because the only people who can control these salaries are the Elected School Board which is generally led in decisions through the Superintendents of Schools & Business / Personnel.
If you personally believe all Long Island teachers (somehow collectively as one group) need to be paid at 50% their current salary- you'd need to influence all those boards to negotiate with the Teachers Unions (and perhaps administrators, clerical, custodial, etc.) to lower their salaries by 50%.
That's challenge number ONE.
Then, even if that was the suggestion of the board, the Union would have to agree on this, or create an Impasse, which would get the state involved.
That's challenge number TWO.
Educational Salaries are in a way what shape Long Island, rather than 'save' it.
05-13-2010, 09:45 PM
grant516
n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by HelpSaveLongIsland
Not if the 3,000,000 get louder than the 50,000.
The 3,000,000 have a voice once a year- it comes next Tuesday and guess what, the majority of those people in 90% of the districts seem to be fine with the rates they're paying for the quality education their students recieve.
"The 3,000,000 have a voice once a year- it comes next Tuesday and guess what, the majority of those people in 90% of the districts seem to be fine with the rates they're paying for the quality education their students recieve."
If the majority of Long Island is happy with the taxes they're paying then I'll shut up.
I highly doubt that is the case though.
"If you personally believe all Long Island teachers (somehow collectively as one group) need to be paid at 50% their current salary"
50% is a number I just threw out there. I want them to be paid what the market calls for. If that's 200% of what they're making, then so be it. Again, supply and demand.
The way it can be done, HelpSaveLongIsland, is that each school district should lay off all their administrators and all their faculty, sell all the school buildings and give each student in the district money to attend a school district, public or private, of their choice. That would reduce the annual school property tax bill for sure.
After laying off all the administrators and all the teachers and selling all the school buildings and most other school district property, the school district would no longer be an operating school district and would simply be a mechanism for collecting (reduced) property taxes and passing these funds as vouchers to the students in the district to use at a private school or at another still existing gov't school in districts that did not lay off their teachers and sell their buildings.
Newly formed private schools will bid for many of the school buildings that the school district will be liquidating and they will interview and hire many of the teachers laid off by the school district, but at a much more rational salary and benefits package.
What's a reasonable salary for a teacher on Long Island? 30k? 50k? 100k?* If you make it too low, you'll have too few applicants when the job market rebounds.* Likewise if you make teaching have the same job insecurity as the private sector.* For example, let’s say some kid graduates with a chemistry degree.* With a chem degree, I would expect to make around 55k/year for my first job.* Teachers start around 42k I think?* So a chem teacher is taking about a 13k/year cut just to teach.* You can argue they have the summers off, but I don't believe it’s the unions that are limiting the length of the school year.* As a teacher on Long Island, you can reasonably expect to top out at a $115k/yr after 30 or so years which is in line or slightly lower than what the private sector gets, plus as a teacher you have to get your masters.* The real perks kick in terms of benefits.* If you want to make a real dent in the cost, you need to bump up contributions significantly towards the pension fund(or 401k) and contribute more towards medical. This is exactly what is being done with the new Tier 5(contribute for your entire working career) and new contracts.* However, as someone who benefited greatly from their LI education and in particular their math and science teachers, I feel you need to have salaries in the ballpark of private sector salaries despite the benefits as you can't job hop in the teaching world as you would in the private sector.
No tenure, half pay? I still doubt there would be enough takers. I get the problems with tenure- but without it, most of us are one crazy parent away from losing our jobs.
Don't forget- teachers live here too, and have mortgages. I don't have stats but when I was in school lots of teachers were married to other teachers. Foreclosures would increase a lot, I bet. And the younger generation- high school/college age kids, would not choose teaching as a profession because they will see it getting less respect than ever, which means that the people who ended up as teachers may not be the ones you want teaching. Again, many of these are lessons from the city- when I started in the mid-90s they hired anyone with a pulse. As salaries went up they have been able to attract better quality people.
No tenure, half pay? I still doubt there would be enough takers. I get the problems with tenure- but without it, most of us are one crazy parent away from losing our jobs.
Don't forget- teachers live here too, and have mortgages. I don't have stats but when I was in school lots of teachers were married to other teachers. Foreclosures would increase a lot, I bet. And the younger generation- high school/college age kids, would not choose teaching as a profession because they will see it getting less respect than ever, which means that the people who ended up as teachers may not be the ones you want teaching. Again, many of these are lessons from the city- when I started in the mid-90s they hired anyone with a pulse. As salaries went up they have been able to attract better quality people.
There is a legitimate way to control expenses and it does not involve the introduction of a Tier V...Tier X or Tier XX type of plan. The real problem is the legislature lacks the guts to do the right thing. You want to control expenses NOW?.....easy you freeze benefits as of TODAY!!!! That means if Joe Teacher has twenty years on the job, his pension is frozen at twenty years times the level of benefits accrued. Starting tomorrow, Joe Teacher begins making contributions at some level to his retirement plan plus contributions for medical/dental. Simple, there is no discrimination since all classes in the party would be subject to the same rules. Again, the legislature doesn't have the balls to do it!!!
For example, let’s say some kid graduates with a chemistry degree.* With a chem degree, I would expect to make around 55k/year for my first job.* Teachers start around 42k I think?* So a chem teacher is taking about a 13k/year cut just to teach.*
If that teacher could actually qualify for the higher paying chemistry job, rather than the lower paying teaching jog, then that teacher would have taken the higher paying chemistry job.
Bear in mind, as a general rule, teachers come from the bottom-third of their high school graduating class and then attend teaching colleges, so when they graduate from a teaching college and come back to teach at a gov't high school, they are less smart than the kids they are teaching.
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