School districts, layoffs and other things of interest....

[chickened]

You bring up an interesting side point about summer school, why cannot the kids get what they need during the regular school years?
Our president who I do respect says he is from Hawaii not Africa. I do not posses a higher education but do make more than 45K by choice. Again I will say did teachers not in all their infinite wisdom not know what they would make? give me a break man.
Quote:

1 term will be a very resounding response by many voters that voted for radicals in 2010. All those old people at the TP rallies are now looking at getting their Medicare and SS reduced because of the people they held signs for. The only ones you see now are getting off buses after being paid to go stand around with signs and no dentures so they look really upset. Sorry, get used to the guy from Africa. He'll win 2012 by a landslide. His timing is impeccable. Doesn't matter if you agree with his policies. The majority still does believe in most of his policies and it will grow as we slowly come out of his predecessors recession. Besides he has no competition at all. If you would gladly work for 45k a year after 6 years of higher education than good for you. It's not an 8 hour a day job and a lot of those teachers run the summer schools for no pay. Not to mention that the 45 k is an average. In other words your in the job for 15 years before you get to that figure.

 

[WriterofWords]

The kids CAN get what they need during the regular year but if they don't pay attention, don't do their work, don't put some effort into it they end up in summer school to make up what they should have paid attention to during the regular year.

 

[WyandotteTX]

Here is a great article written about the current state of funding issues in the state of Texas.


Stop labeling teachers, label the lawmakers
By John Kuhn
Apr 14, 2011, 08:39

Provided by John Kuhn as printed in the Minerals Wells Index


Dear Editor,

The age of accountability should be renamed the age of blame, when teachers wear the scarlet letter for the failings of a nation. We send teachers into pockets of poverty that our leaders can’t or won’t eradicate, and when those teachers fail to work miracles among devastated children, we stamp ‘unacceptable’ on their foreheads.

I ask you, where is the label for the lawmaker whose policies fail to clean up the poorest neighborhoods? Why do we not demand that our leaders make “Adequate Yearly Progress”? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet? Why do they not join us beneath these vinyl banners that read “exemplary” in the suburbs and “unacceptable” in the slums?

Let us label lawmakers like we label teachers, and we can eliminate 100 percent of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and preventable illness by 2014! It is easy for elected officials to tell teachers to “Race to the top” when no one has a stopwatch on them! Lace up your sneakers, Senators! Come race with us!

Teachers are surrounded by armchair quarterbacks who won’t lift a finger to help, only to point. Congressmen, come down out of those bleachers and strive with us against the pernicious ravages of poverty. We need more from you than blame. America’s education problem is actually a poverty problem.

If labels fix schools, let us use labels to fix our congresses! Let lawmakers show the courage of a teacher! Hold hands with us and let us march together into the teeth of this blame machine you have built. Let us hold this congressman up against that congressman and compare them just as we compare our schools. Congressmen, do not fear this accountability you have given us. Like us, you will learn to love it.

Or maybe lawmakers do such a wonderful job that we don’t need to hold them accountable?

Did you know that over the next five years, Texas lawmakers will send half a billion dollars to London, to line the pockets of Pearson’s stakeholders. That’s 15,000 teacher salaries, sacrificed at the altar of standardized testing. $500,000,000 for a test! I’m sure it’s a nice test, but it’s just a test. I’ve never seen a test change a kid’s life or dry a kid’s tear. Tests don’t show up at family funerals or junior high basketball games. They don’t chip in to buy a poor girl a prom dress. Only teachers do those things.

If times are desperate enough to slash local schools’ operating funds, then surely they are desperate enough to slash Pearson’s profits. Lawmakers, get your priorities straight. Put a moratorium on testing until we can afford it. Teachers are our treasure – let’s not lose the house just so we can keep our subscription to Pearson’s Test-of-the-Month Club. We have heard Texas senators often talk about the teacher-to-non-teacher ratio in our schools. Lawmakers, they are ALL non-teachers at Pearson. Don’t spend half a billion dollars that we don’t have on some test that is made in England.

Parents are so fed up with standardized testing that hundreds are now refusing to let their children test. They do not want their children run through this terrible punch press. They do not want standardized children. They want exceptional children!

Let me tell you Texas’s other dirty secret – some schools get three times the funding of other schools. Some schools get $12,000 per student, while others get $4,000. Did you know that every single child in Austin is worth $1,000 more than every single child in Fort Worth? Do you agree with that valuation? Congress does. They spend billions to fund this imbalance.

Now the architects of this inequity point at the salaries and staff sizes at the schools they have enriched to justify cuts at schools that have never been given enough. State Sen. Florence Shapiro, of Plano, says, essentially, yes, but we’re cutting the poor schools by less. Senator, you don’t take bread away from people in a soup line! Not even one crumb. And you should not take funds away from schools that you have already underfunded for years. It may be politically right to bring home the bacon, but ain’t right right.

Legislators, take the energy you spend shifting blame and apply it toward fixing the funding mechanisms. We elected you to solve the state’s problems, not merely to blame them on local government. After all, you have mandated local decision-making for years. Your FIRST rating system tells school boards that their district’s administrative cost ratio can be no higher than 0.2 percent. And over 95 percent of school districts in Texas are in compliance with the standard you have set. At my school, our administrative cost ratio is 0.06 percent – so could you please stop blaming me?

If 95 percent of schools are compliant with the administrative cost ratio indicator in the state’s financial rating system for schools, then why are state officials saying we have too much administration? We have the amount of administration they told us to have! Either they gave us bad guidance and we all followed it, or they gave us good guidance and just need someone other than themselves to blame for these cuts.

Is this the best we can do in Texas? I wish they would worry about students half as much as they worry about getting re-elected.

These same senators have a catchy new slogan: “Protect the Classroom.” I ask you, senators: who are we protecting the classroom from? You, that’s who. You are swinging the ax; don’t blame us for bleeding wrong.

They know that their cuts are so drastic that school boards will have no choice but to let teachers go, and I can prove it: while they give press conferences telling superintendents not to fire teachers, at the same time they pass laws making it easier for ... you guessed it ...administrators to fire teachers. Which is it, senators?

If we don’t truly need to cut teachers, then don’t pass the laws that reduce their employment protections. And if we truly do need to cut teachers, then go ahead and pass those laws but quit saying teacher cuts are the superintendents’ fault. Here’s the deal: I can accept cuts, but I cannot do anything but forcefully reject deceit.

Politicians, save your buck-passing for another day. We need leadership. Get to work, congressmen. Do your jobs, and find the revenue to fund my child’s education.

Sincerely,

John Kuhn, father of three, Perrin

 

[WyandotteTX]

Also, just wanted to mention I pay for all of my own retirement benefits, 80% of my own insurance(doesnt sound to"cushy' to me). I work 11 months a year as well. I will not finish my school year until the second week of June and I will be back at work full time the middle of July. I work 90+ hours a week, I see other peoples kids 10 times as much as I get to see my own. So please dont preach about how cushy of a job I have........I have figured out my hourly wage and it is less than $2.00 an hour. BUT I am making a difference in young peoples lives and that is a great responsibility which I choose to take upon myself. There is not and never has been a guarantee of my job as a teacher. If you do not do your job and perform the tasks you have been asked to do, for every district I have ever worked for, you will get fired. Writer of Words went into much more detail than I did about what a teacher truly has to do. BTW, my first year teaching I took home $1200 a month....

Also, watch the weatherman comments please. My brother is a Meteorologist for the National Weather Service, a lead forcaster for the past 20 years. And YES he could get fired if he failed to put out the appropriate warnings to people in danger because it is his job to notify the public. He has to write a report for every warning he issues, if damage to property occurs or people are injured in any way, he must visually survey the damage and write the official report. Also, any prediction over 24 hours for the weather is usually bogus. Too many variables the farther out you go.

I agree with you chickened on the DofE.....No Child Left Behind is a big cause of the problems currently going on in education but good luck having that somehow go away. The standardized testing is just to the point of ridiculousness these days. We literally do nothing but teach directly to the tests. Cant spend time on other stuff that makes up a well rounded education...nope, we have to teach only the stuff on the test because the schools rating and funding etc will be based off those test scores......a mess. BUT, I love my kids that I get to teach and spend time with each day. The day I dont, is the day I stop showing up.

 

[PineappleMama]

Quote:
No vouchers, but I did decide that the school wasn't doing a good enough job and took it on myself. We pay taxes so other people can ship their kids off to public school, wash their hands of the burden, but we also pay for our kids HSing curriculum as well. And this on a below poverty line income. If we can manage it, then others could if they wanted to. I feel it's a priority thing.

Here in Arlington (since COL varies so much by city, county and state I'll stick with the area I know and the district I know) I know for fact that you can live on $30k a year... no BMW, no Gucci true but you can have a roof over your head in a decent (sic safe) neighborhood, you can have healthy food on your table and clothes on your back. Rookie teachers here in my town, NO experience at all, start out with AISD at $45,000.00 per year. It increases each year after that, and if you've a masters instead of just a bach then you get an add'l $1500 per year on top. That is more than 50% more than what we support a family of four on so I don't in any way think that it's 'unlivable' by any stretch. Cries of outrage about that really tick me off because of my own experiences. But also because of my Libertarian leanings. Personal Responsibility doesn't just mean owning up to crimes, but owning up to ALL your choices. If you choose to put yourself through four YEARS of school knowing that the career you chose is low-paying, high stress, and often thankless please do NOT whine when later it turns out that the career you CHOSE is low-paying, high stress, and often thankless. Now if you already had 8 kids by your rookie year than maybe you'd struggle to make it on 45k, but then no one forced you to spit out that many, or any, children. That is another choice that many try and force others to pay for. It's just bloody annoying. If you don't like the negatives of that career than do not choose it, pick something else to train in, or go back to school to train in something else. But please for the love of KIDS stop whining about your lot in life as though it was someone else who chose it for you.

Whoops... ranting again... *gets bucked off high horse to land face down in the mud*

 

[chickened]

One thing that I have found while running a business for 20 years is there are people who are worth hiring and those that are not. In the private world when someone doesn't pull their weight they not only put more burdens on the productive workers but cost the employer money that could be used elsewhere. Until the teachers stand up to the unions and insist that the dead wood be removed teachers will wear the labels that their unproductive counterparts put on them by mere association. In our state teachers that don't produce, cannot get along or just have issues are shoved in a corner somewhere mainly because it is cost prohibitive to fire them.

Law makers last time I looked are in the spotlight daily getting grilled by the media daily and are under an enormous amount of stress the difference being they have the ability to deal with criticism and are not subject to the unions demands and control, teachers need to wake up and realize their unions are killing them in the public eye. I mean people including myself do not hate teachers but we hate the system they are forced to be under and you teachers are forced to join the unions and you get the good with the bad.

Law makers and taxpayers will fund things that work you don't need to beg for money I for one am happy to pass a bond measure if I believe in it and the school can demonstrate that they can be trusted. I for one am thankful for the lawmakers that they do not blindly fund our schools with an open wallet especially mine, I mean who in their right mind would hold their wallet open to anyone? and you expect the public to do that? Not to repeat here but schools must learn to live within their budget it is coming from the top in our government and it will filter down I see it happening and it is real people and yes it is going to be painful in some areas especially to those that are not accustomed to living cheap.

 

[PineappleMama]

Well said Chickened, well said.

And the same can be said for so many areas, not just the political hot buttons, but also in our own lives. So many stereotypes that hang on because a few zealously destroy their 'own'. Hopefully we'll get there.

 

[Dunkopf]

All I can say is thank you teachers. You are severely underpaid and unappreciated. It makes me sick to hear all the BS about how you only work 9 months out of a year and are overpaid to boot. Or that you should be teaching out of the goodness of your heart and be happy with whatever you get. It's a real sign of the times and the me first screw everyone else mentality that is so prevalent.

The cuts to education are not coming from the top, chicken. They are coming from the state level. Governors who don't have the guts to raise taxes like they need to. So we sacrifice our children's futures so that people can have a few extra dollars in their paycheck. I believe that most of us on this forum got a pretty good education. Everyone needs to give more and the more you make the more you should give. Instead our clowns in Congress are trying to give the top 2% additional tax cuts while they take away Medicare. At the state level some of the governors are doing the same thing. Taking from the poor to give to the rich.

It seems like a lot of people seem to think that since they have already gotten their money's worth out of the school system that they shouldn't have to pay anything in. Like the bumper sticker says. "If you can read this, thank a teacher".

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
1 term will be a very resounding response by many voters that voted for radicals in 2010. All those old people at the TP rallies are now looking at getting their Medicare and SS reduced because of the people they held signs for. The only ones you see now are getting off buses after being paid to go stand around with signs and no dentures so they look really upset. Sorry, get used to the guy from Africa. He'll win 2012 by a landslide. His timing is impeccable. Doesn't matter if you agree with his policies. The majority still does believe in most of his policies and it will grow as we slowly come out of his predecessors recession. Besides he has no competition at all. If you would gladly work for 45k a year after 6 years of higher education than good for you. It's not an 8 hour a day job and a lot of those teachers run the summer schools for no pay. Not to mention that the 45 k is an average. In other words your in the job for 15 years before you get to that figure.

Just waiting for another interesting topic to be shut down now because of politics.

Well like most of the interesting topics it is political. So yes it will most likely get shut down. At least some teachers have had a chance to shed some light on the real situation instead of the pretend situation.

 

[PineappleMama]

I'd happily vote for a massive pay cut, down to teachers or military level (and based on years served to boot), for all politicians... and use those funds to give money to schools, hospitals, etc... of course they'd never allow such a thing to be put on the ballot, they prefer giving themselves raises and a pat on the back for their cleverness... but a gal can dream.

I'm not saying in any way that teachers are overpaid, simply that they're paid enough (at least if they work AND live in my town) to live on. Not live high on the hog, drive a Beemer, live in a McMansion... not THAT kind of living... but living a decent life with good shelter, plenty of food, etc. Overpaid, Underpaid, etc is all opinion really... depends entirely on your definition of 'live'... Paris Hilton (or politicians ftm) would probably stroke out if she had to live on such a paltry sum (n'mind actually working her arse off 8+ hours per day!) but then Plato would prolly stroke out if he heard he'd get such a living for doing something he loved, knew well, and chose to teach. Perception all around. I know the life we've got on only $30k in this city... how HAPPY we are... so I just don't see how it's possible (if you're a responsible adult that is) for anyone to not be able to function on $45k+. That is my perception. Are teachers worth $45k, absolutely, just don't think that they NEED more than that to live is all.

Our society has changed SO much... particularly in the last generation or two. Nowadays a person can't "live" without computers, cable, ipods, etc... where before living used to mean a roof, food, clothing and good health. Whether this change will turn out to be our salvation or our destruction time will tell... but I'm giving serious thought to buying stock in handbaskets.