What you do to get to that point is simply divide all public school operating costs in Milwaukee by the number of teachers in the system.
That does not mean the employees GET THAT MONEY.
For example, they pay Social Security. The school system also pays an amount about equal to that to Social Security. The employees never see the money, yet it is a cost to the system.
In reality actual salaries PAID to the employees appear to be more nearly in the $41,000 range, but to get that you need a Masters Degree and have worked in an inner city school for a requisite period of time in your career.
The medical package is claimed to cost $23,000 per annum. Even Congressmen don't get that! In fact, it's awfully tough in the United States to find a medical package in that category that's available from anyone!
Obviously people can play games with numbers ~ and in this case it looks like they did. However, they were not so careful with the terms "cost" and "pay" that I couldn't see what they were doing.
WE do not need to do that to properly portray out of control school system costs, nor do we need to claim that somehow the school principal's salary is part of the school teacher's benefit unless he or she packs a gun while patrolling the halls!
Here's a deal for Milwaukee ~ cut public school costs through the simple expedient of canning a good 3/4 of the supernumeraries and authorizing the teacher's to carry.
Things should work out in the long run, and that'll bring that average cost per teacher WAY WAY DOWN.
Oh, yeah, and get a 16 foot tall chain link fence around the parking lot so they are safe while going to their cars.
Muawiyah,
Almost none of us get the Money. I bill by the hour, and I still have the standard deductions. We all know that we have to make comparisons against non-paycheck benefits.
You have to figure in the equivalent that a real pension program would be. How much in savings out of a paycheck each year would it take to have the millions to fund a really nice retirement from around age 55 to 75? That’s real money - I don’t have any pension program and I often think about how much better off I would be with a teacher’s pension and job security.
I disagree about the health care costs too. I was with a global software company and didn’t really think that much about our “cafeteria program” - cause we didn’t see the real cost. And the benefits were great. But then I learned that it was costing 18 thousand per year. And it was easy for politicians to give on these nebulous benefits so I don’t doubt that they have the high-end Cadillac plan because these were easy for the politicians to give in negotiations.
And then factor in the weeks off at holiday time, the summers off. If you had job security, how much would you give for that kind of time freedom.
Then, as a Cheesehead let me also say that my school district has had back to back 9 percent tax increases. And the District Executive says that in no way brings them to a sustainable level. Its crazy talk.
Unemployment, employees giving back wages. I find the figures quite believable and I would like the teachers to express gratitude for the great income and benefits that they receive.
And now lets talk about Milwaukee’s ‘worst in the nation’ school performance...
That sounds about right to me. At my company we pay 50% of the cost of the plan. Family coverage runs about $1,000 a month or so to the employee so that would make a total cost of between 23 and 24K per year.
L
Frankly the answer is to disband public schools and privatize education.