Liberals prattle about higher pay “attracting better teachers” but even if they tripled the pay, that money would simply go to the teachers they have now who aren’t leaving if they get a raise, and aren’t made “better” teachers by virtue of a pay raise, and aren’t being shown the door in favor of better teachers because the union protects the bad ones from being fired!
This has always been about much higher pay for the teachers in place now. Besides, the Democrats will lose their voter base if education actually teaches kids to read and think.
A few years ago, a principle and a teacher were going door to door in my neighborhood soliciting support for a ballot initiative to raise property taxes for local schools. They wanted me to vote to have my property taxes raised from $1,900 per year to over $3,000 dollars per year. I was polite at first as I had just lost my job. The money was to go toward teacher benefits and BONUSES with a little bit toward busses. They kept saying, “It’s for the kids.” At first, they didn’t know I had the list of salaries for the local teachers and administrators that had been leaked by an insider. I went and retrieved it and showed them. The sheet showed teachers how the tax initiative would affect their compensation and benefits. It was no wander they had teachers volunteer to go door to door. The principle tried to explain, “The Bonuses column is deceiving because that is really just the added contribution to health insurance.” ... to the tune of an additional $18,000 dollars FOR HER alone. She was making $90K at the time and the “bonus” shown was for $18K. She got the obligatory eye-roll from me. They were offended that I referred to them (politely of course) as “government workers.” In fact they objected to that title. But they couldn’t refute it.
After a lengthy and mostly polite debate on why I wouldn’t support their pay raise when I couldn’t go to my neighbors asking them for money to compensate my job loss, I finally asked, “Do you believe that more money has ever made one child smarter?” “Why, after all these years of tripling and quadrupling education budgets and spending, have our kids been on a constant decline; why are they getting stupider with each passing year?” No Response, conversation over.