“Although Republicans now control both chambers of the statehouse, the tax cuts that squeezed the state budget were a bipartisan undertaking. Then-Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who’s now one of the state’s two senators in Washington, had urged legislators to pursue the tax cuts in 2006, arguing that West Virginia needed to slash taxes on corporations in order to be competitive with other states.”
So in WV the median pay is $45K and the median teacher pay is $47K. Then there’s the added insurance and pension, which can’t be redeemed in the form of cash for the former, and won’t be touched for 40 years in the case of the latter. If you want teachers with at least a bachelors degree from college in their subject matter, which I think you do, then an extra $2K per year over average is a lot for that? I doubt many WV-ians even have a college degree, yet the median pay is just $2k less than a teacher who does have one. Even if the med benes are of the cadillac variety, it’s only insurance—never used if one doesn’t need it. Do WV get benes 100% free, or do they have a defined contribution level like 10%-20%-30%-40%-even 50% or more like other states do? Are the teachers’ pensions just too expensive, or did the politicians just not set aside enough money along the way and now are coming-up-short on their pay-as-you-go scheme, as other states are? I think we all know the answers here, but it’s just too fun to bash the public servants who teach our children, because, well, once back in the day you got a detention that you feel you didn’t deserve, or worse, just because teachers, who are quite passive in nature anyway, are easy targets to lash out against in anger, greed, resentment, and jealousy.