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Teaching is a part time job. 8am to 4 pm with 1.5 hrs off for lunch & recess x 200d/y = 1300 hr/y...Don't give us the BS about "home-work." Many jobs require off the clock preps.
OTOH- I still want to know how Dennis Hassert, a recent Speaker of the House, who started out as a teacher in downstate IL, a poor district paying only ~ $15000/yr became a millionaire after only a couple yrs in DC with an offical salary of $174,000/yr?
Why take one example and use it as if it is standard and applies to all? It’s a small point in the large scheme, but I’ve never had recess (30 minutes) off. Lunch has always been a duty-free 30 minutes on paper. I think that’s a much more common example.
Most people buying SFHs are in relationships of some sort. While I was able to afford a condo and townhome on my own earlier in my career, neither my wife or I could afford a SFH in most of the Denver Metro area on our own. With the equity I built over two home purchases, we used our combined household income to finally purchase a SFH a few years back. That was during a time when the median home value was north of half a million dollars. Both our parents live in lower COL areas and their houses' combined value probably comes out to what our one house is worth.
My point is, the housing market has probably priced quite a few single people out at this point, not just teachers. Even the rental market is ruthless. I think most 1BR/1BA units are going for around $1500/mo or more plus utilities. That's quite a bit more than my half of the mortgage payment. That's about three times what I paid for my first apartment nearly 13 years ago.
Certainly. Teachers are a pretty good proxy for "normal" income for a given community. Generally by mid-career they tend to make in a year in the ballpark of what median family imcome is in a region. Again, for "normal" jobs, not techbro yuppie jobs or whetever fashionable thing makes a ton at the moment.
The problem is that houses made more money than people for the past several years. Also, education costs are insane. There's no ROI for going to school to become a teacher. It's a similar boat for a wide variety of jobs in tbe medium skill, medium income range thst require degrees.
Nurses seem to be having a very similar problem. I had a meeting once with local institutional and business leaders and the nurses, police/fire, and hospitality professionals said the same thing the school district was saying - e.g. hotels need managers, the breweries need brewmasters, logistics managers, chemists, etc... and all these jobs require a degree and pay in the 50-75k range.
They all expressed the same frustration that just 5 years ago, it was easy to recruit these professionals for say 60k/yr. Now impossible. But they can't just offer 100k for a 60k job unless they blow up ALL labor costs by the same 80% in the process, which puts their entire enterprise at risk. Most of them had experimented in lowering their standards, ie: taking away the degree requirement, but experienced disastrous results.
I'm not sure how this resolves. But yeah, people won't take 60k jobs when a middle class salary needed to live like a middle class person ballooned from 60k to 90k in just 3 years. Either pay more or find cheaper housing for them.
Last edited by redguard57; 12-22-2022 at 01:22 PM..
Certainly. Teachers are a pretty good proxy for "normal" income for a given oimmunity. Generally by mid-career they tend to make in a year in the ballpark of what median family imcome is in a region. Again, for "normal" jobs, not techbro yuppie jobs or whetever thing makes a ton at the moment.
The problem is that houses made more money than people for the past several years. Also, education costs are insane. There's no ROI for going to school to become a teacher. It's a similar boat for a wide variety of jobs in tbe medium skill, medium income range. Nurses seem to be having a very similar problem.
Would that not imply that there is no shortage of teachers? Or that if there is a shortage, it's a leading indicator that teacher pay will have to start going up to entice more people into the field? Perhaps let the market work itself out?
I just want to quote this again, to make sure the poster Oldhag was responding to sees it.
As for the rest, I pay thousands of dollars a year into my pension, it’s actually a higher percentage than I would be paying into SS, if I actually qualified for SS. And free healthcare with no premiums is usually reserved for administration, but even that is pretty rare. When I came to my current public school job, I paid $700 a month for my benefits… and I was single, childless, and healthy. Some people REALLY need to check their sources before spewing about all the freebies they think PS teachers get.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldhag1
Chicago Public Schools right now has 789 teacher vacancies despite being in your opinion too well compensated. If you think it is so awesome, apply yourself. They could certainly use your warm body. Bet you have no interest in that, just like most people who complain about how overpaid and underworked teachers are. This gets so old. Great pay and light working schedules are not generally associated with an inability to fill vacant jobs.
You are incorrect about the retirement. I plugged your 14 years of teaching at age 36 into the official pension calculator and got the following response:
By the way, that 5 years of service after age 62 turns to 10 if the teacher was hired after 2011. What is more Chicago teachers are NOT eligible for Social Security. There are 15 states where that happens. Illinois is one of my four Social Security non-eligible states I worked in, a factor no one wants to consider when discussing teacher pensions and unfortunately something teachers themselves don’t think about enough when young.
The bold in your quote is not okay if that rule is under any circumstances, particularly if it holds true when a school loses enrollment to the point that classroom sizes throughout the school falls below 20-22 students per class. It should never be true within a school. However, if it’s to prevent vindictive transfers that have nothing to do with declining enrollment, which was a common practice at one time in large school systems, that is now common policy in most states, as it should be.
I just want to quote this again, to make sure the poster Oldhag was responding to sees it.
As for the rest, I pay thousands of dollars a year into my pension, it’s actually a higher percentage than I would be paying into SS, if I actually qualified for SS. And free healthcare with no premiums is usually reserved for administration, but even that is pretty rare. When I came to my current public school job, I paid $700 a month for my benefits… and I was single, childless, and healthy. Some people REALLY need to check their sources before spewing about all the freebies they think PS teachers get.
I always paid into both state pension systems and social security. Never even got a free month! And now, of course, those pensions are now taxed since I am on the receiving end. Same for health care, both regular and dental.
Would that not imply that there is no shortage of teachers? Or that if there is a shortage, it's a leading indicator that teacher pay will have to start going up to entice more people into the field? Perhaps let the market work itself out?
I don’t think the problem is enticing people into the field so much as getting them to stay in for more than a handful of years. The common solution to the problem is that they should raise starting teacher pay.
Even when I was starting two decades ago, they raised starting pay in my home district but every teacher new to the district was required to start with the same pay regardless of whether they had 0 years of experience or 30. You could technically start as high as step 7, but the pay for steps 1-7 were all the same. I still hear this same complaint today. If you want to move districts, you may be able to start at step 5, but who wants to start at step 5 20 years into a teaching career? That is likely a significant pay cut. A teacher who is tired of a particular district may have the choice of moving to a district with a huge pay cut or leaving teaching entirely for a job that likely pays comparably to the current position. Given that option, a lot of people end up selecting the latter. Still a third group just remains in the same school district demoralized and basically phoning it in until they can retire.
Another issue that is common is that large-scale moves are often difficult as some districts require you get a master’s degree to keep a job but don’t want to pay the master’s degree add-on to anyone new to the district. That isn’t the case everywhere, but I have met enough former teachers in the past who have said they moved to X state and couldn’t get a teaching job because they had a graduate degree.
School districts need to do more to entice and keep experienced and talented teachers.
Would that not imply that there is no shortage of teachers? Or that if there is a shortage, it's a leading indicator that teacher pay will have to start going up to entice more people into the field? Perhaps let the market work itself out?
Yes. I don't think this is anything that 30% raises wouldn't fix. The pools will probably never be as robust as in the 2008-13 period when teaching was seen as a safe haven from the recession. But what most candidate rejectors told me to my face is that they need 10-20k more to afford to live in the area. Simple as that. We'd have candidates to choose from if we were paying 75k instead of 55k. 55k was reasonable money as late as 5-6 years ago but we've had massive housing inflation since then.
Another salient but less intense problem is the cost of college & certification. Especially the 1 year practicum year student teachers have to do. They have to *pay* tuition AND work for free for a year, so their student loans balloon that final year. I suspect that paradigm will have to stop. The school of education deans I talk to tell me their enrollment has cratered, and the issue of paying to work for free is a big culprit.
I do think that districts will wrap their heads around this, but the public sector will be the last to resolve it. It'll take years. The meantime it's going to be years of shortages.
From the history I can find from the 70s and 80s, this could take 10+ years to sort out.
This is a recent editorial. Keep in mind that until very recently Pennsylvania colleges graduated twice as many teachers as could be absorbed by the 501 public school districts or the countless private schools in the state. Now they're poaching from other states.
Yes. I don't think this is anything that 30% raises wouldn't fix. The pools will probably never be as robust as in the 2008-13 period when teaching was seen as a safe haven from the recession. But what most candidate rejectors told me to my face is that they need 10-20k more to afford to live in the area. Simple as that. We'd have candidates to choose from if we were paying 75k instead of 55k. 55k was reasonable money as late as 5-6 years ago but we've had massive housing inflation since then.
Another salient but less intense problem is the cost of college & certification. Especially the 1 year practicum year student teachers have to do. They have to *pay* tuition AND work for free for a year, so their student loans balloon that final year. I suspect that paradigm will have to stop. The school of education deans I talk to tell me their enrollment has cratered, and the issue of paying to work for free is a big culprit.
I do think that districts will wrap their heads around this, but the public sector will be the last to resolve it. It'll take years. The meantime it's going to be years of shortages.
From the history I can find from the 70s and 80s, this could take 10+ years to sort out.
Similar to what we're seeing. My corporate counterpart who sat just a few feet from me was pulling in $50K more. In 2008 we were paid decent if not outstanding. 13 years of 0% and 1% increases put that way behind. We're still offering recent graduates around $50K and they can easily pull anywhere from $70 to $120 in the private sector.
You mention 2008. What's funny is go over the Work forum and you see guys who turned down public sector jobs a couple years ago because they didn't pay enough now talking about how wonderful those same jobs are, now that they don't have them and the economy is shifting.
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And now, of course, those pensions are now taxed since I am on the receiving end. Same for health care, both regular and dental.