Posted on 04/02/2018 7:56:23 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Oklahoma teachers walked off the job on Monday, closing schools statewide as they demanded salary rises for some of the lowest-paid educators in the United States and more funds for a school system reeling from a decade of budget cuts.
“We’re walking because our students deserve more,” the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest union for educators with about 40,000 members, said over the weekend.
Oklahoma’s Republican-controlled legislature last week approved the state’s first major tax increase in a quarter century to help fund pay raises for teachers, hoping to avert a strike with a $450 million revenue package.
The funding would raise by $5,000 the pay of teachers beginning their career, and provide a raise of nearly $8,000 for those with 25 years’ experience, lawmakers said.
That fell short of teachers’ demand for a $10,000 pay increase over three years for teachers and a $5,000 raise for support personnel.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
And yet, the West Virginia Education Association maintains a presence.
Do what Wisconsin did. Bar school districts from doing payroll deductions for union dues. Make members have to send in a check. Once you do that, then a lot of members will drop out.
A couple of decades ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Oregon after Easter.
As we checked in the motel, teachers and teacher supporters were picketing the hotel re a speaker that evening.
The speaker had been a top exec for one of the computer breakthrough companies in what became Silicon Valley.
He retired and was spending his time and own money to wake voters up to how schools were ripping the tax payers off.
I attend his detested program that evening.
After he introduced himself he handed out a simple one page sheet that asked how many students were in each class on an average.
Say there was 30 students, so you filled in that number and entered the cost or funding per student per year and multiplied that by the number of students.
At that time the cost/funding per student in that school district was $5,000 per year.
Then you multiplied 30 students x $5000 for a yearly minimum cost. $150,000 per year per Classroom.
Then, you subtracted the teacher’s average yearly salary, which was $30,000 subtracted from the gross funding.
The extra left over cost was $120,000. Then, he subtracted $20,000 for custodial cost and other costs, which left $100,000 of funding left over per school year for each class.
His closing moment was a simple question,”Where in the hell is that $100,000 left over per classroom going?”
That defeated the so called necessary increases in teacher salaries, which was really spent on bloat from the top down.
About a year later, we had the same so called, “Our Teachers are starving and we need to increase taxes to pay for our starving teachers. A friend at a local service club asked me to present the one page sheet at the weekly meeting.
I had left this club a few years before, but the school principals and superintendents remembered me during the prop 13 wars. I handed out a sheet of paper to everyone showing how the property taxes on our previous Cul de Sac home had basically tripled due to my company buying our previous home. That increase would have forced most retirees in our old neighbor to sell their homes and leave.
This newest work sheet was used in at all service clubs to beat back another raise for the poor teachers and students.
Of course the liberals never give up trying to raise our taxes to help the “Chilrun”.
Pretty sure it's closer to $15,000 in New York.
You wouldn’t be inclined to post a link to such a handout?
That sounds like a simple and lethal way to defeat such antics.
I live in the People’s Soviet of Washington, where the tax is as high as an elephant’s eye.
I'm safe because of me...not law enforcement. Never has been the case once I was of age....IMO.
I totally agree about the roads...and how long they take to fix stuff.
My town just got a new School Superintendent. She is going wild hiring personal friends from a nearby town where she used to work. Our school interviews a variety of job candidates (of course) but lately everyone who is hired for an administration post always comes from that one particular school system a few towns away. Weird, huh?
By the way, our School Superintendent has an assistant. I think that makes sense. But it’s interesting that the assistant has an assistant. And I’m not sure this is true, but someone told me that Superintendent’s assistant’s assistant has an assistant.
Oh, and we’re cutting teaching positions pretty drastically. No one can figure out where the heck the money is going, but the budget for actual education is completely dried up around here.
The Oklahoma legislature 'works' about 80 days a year. Their salary is $7,000 higher than the average starting salary for a new teacher. Legislature leadership makes over $10,000 more than the average teacher for those 80 days of work. Add per diem and mileage and the legislatures make more for their 80 days of work that the overwhelming majority of teachers.
Don't say teachers are under-worked. Compared to others they aren't.
When I was a kid, one of our best family friends was a family whose father was our biology teacher. He made about the same kind of money my father made in a union shop as a journeyman pipe fitter.
He was the ONLY conservative voice I heard in my childhood. He was a Goldwater Republican. He told us he would like to be making more money, but teaching is what he wanted to do with his life. Obtaining his masters degree would help get him a raise so he went to ASU during his summer breaks to accomplish this. He still managed to get in the 50 mile hike each summer with us in Boy Scouts and all the regular season camp outs along with Tuesday night troop meetings.
He LOVED teaching, and you could see it in his passion as he taught. He loved scouting, he loved his kids and his wife. He loved his life. He was rich.
Today I own a small motorcycle business, been in the motorcycle business since 1984 and I love the business. I love my customers, many of whom have become good friends. It is fun. It does not make me a whole lot of money; I drive a ‘92 F150 that I bought pre-dented 4 years ago, my wife drives an ‘03 Accord that defies its age as it’s pretty nice. I could have gone into the automobile business just as well as motorcycles and had a still modest but more lucrative lifestyle, BUT!, I have no passion for cars. Everyone has cars/trucks but a unique sector of our society rides motorcycles and they tend to be the people whose company I prefer. Hence, I am RICH.
Teachers who don’t have a passion for teaching SUCK. IMHO teachers’ unions are toxic.
No links, that good man has left this orb.
Basically, this what you need on a one sheet hand out.
1. Average number of Students per class ________/*
2. Cost/funding per year per student $___________/*
3. #1 X #2 = $________________ Total cost/funding per Class/
4. #3 minus average yearly teacher pay/benefits __________/
5. Minus 10- 20%** of #2 for non teaching cost per year
____________/
6. #5. “Where the hell is all this money going?” __________/
7. Open discussion!
* Before handing this sheet out, you need to know the
average # of students per class and the yearly total
local/state/federal $ per student. I preferred to leave
that number blank and to have a discussion before plugging
it in.
**This a generous % for this work sheet. Again discuss the
extra costs and then plug in the 10-20%.
Well stated, and spot-on. I’ve lived in Edmond for 35 years. Great town with excellent police and infrastructure. The muslims and associated goobers are closely supervised. The schools are reportedly the best in the state, or so the town fathers claim. The dumbass apartment dwellers that moved here for the schools, (don’t pay property taxes) repeatedly vote for property tax increases for school “Improvements”. The last fiasco concerned a bond issue to construct a football stadium with digital scoreboards at each of the three high schools....but the roads in Edmond are terrible....misplaced priorities.
Mary Fallin is an excellent Governor...it’s the worthless state legislators that need to pay attention. Until they get their priorities straight, the “Crossroads of America” will be strewn with potholes.
What you posted is probably SOP for many school districts!:
“She is going wild hiring personal friends from a nearby town where she used to work. Our school interviews a variety of job candidates (of course) but lately everyone who is hired for an administration post always comes from that one particular school system a few towns away. Weird, huh?”
“By the way, our School Superintendent has an assistant. I think that makes sense. But it’s interesting that the assistant has an assistant. And I’m not sure this is true, but someone told me that Superintendent’s assistant’s assistant has an assistant.”
“Oh, and we’re cutting teaching positions pretty drastically. No one can figure out where the heck the money is going, but the budget for actual education is completely dried up around here.”
Also, each Superintendent’s Assistant probably has an office manager and asst. managers, (we used to call them secretaries!)
I think that it is over 12K/student/year here in sunny Californicator land.
The school boards exist to represent the taxpayers but most people don't know that and don't even vote in them. Usually professional 'educators' run unopposed and make these important decisions.
It's like the fox guarding the hen house, but the football game and dancing with the stars are too important I guess.
My wife is a teacher. We spend about $3 to $4K out of pocket every year for supplies like paper, ink, printers, etc
But the various superintendents have nice house boats.
She has a calling, and makes a decent salary. But most of the cost of education does not go to the classroom.
” The dumbass apartment dwellers that moved here for the schools, (don’t pay property taxes)”
Not true. ALL property owners pay property taxes. Rent moneys charged to renters include these taxes.
LOL. Where would we be without them?
put out a call to parents - anyone who would like to substitute teach, report to the school.
Declare the teacher union illegal and fire every single teacher on strike.
Our church holds a drive every semester for school supplies.
Many of us save the coupons from products for schools and give to local teachers we know.
We have not had a student in a local school for 3+ decades, and I tell the whining parents, they get to pay for their kids. For 3+ decades, our state/federal income taxes, state/local sales taxes and property taxes send a lot of bucks to our local school district.
Our grand kids went to and some still go to private junior and high schools and not a dime of public school money has been spent on them since they got in Junior high.
One was recently turned down by our California Universities because she made 2 b’s and the rest A’s in spite of gradation with highest honors at a prestigious private high school. She was accepted at every out of state school where she applied. She was accepted at a prestigious East Coast University with an excellent partial scholarship. Yet her parents, aunts/uncles and grandparents/us have paid a lot of local, state and federal taxes that illegals get in our colleges when they are accepted.
” The dumbass apartment dwellers that moved here for the schools, (don’t pay property taxes)”
Not true. ALL property owners pay property taxes. Rent moneys charged to renters include these taxes.
Agree..should have worded it better. Should have stated that they pay a fraction of what a homeowner pays in property taxes. The burden is always on the homeowner...by the way, the bond issue for the stadiums passed.
Many thanks.
That’s all I needed, esteemed Grandfather.
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