12-03-2017, 10:47 AM
quote:
I guess I need to make another FOI request and post the results here, again. It will take a while, because they resist providing the info. The majority of the teachers in Pahoa are making over $75k and they don't have anywhere near your mythical 43+ years on the job. A surprising number are right at $100k. Don't believe the unions numbers.
Sounds interesting. Did it give a cash value for benefits as well? I look forward to seeing it. I wonder if it includes admin, the dreaded middle management, and all the other higher ups who don’t have any students in its report. Can you link to your previous post that had the older FOI info? The updated info would likely be higher so your point would be made.
A friend of mine jokes that teacher salaries should start at $100k and go down a few thousand each year, so that some of the best and brightest would consider teaching for a while—and the burnouts wouldn’t stick with it. A true voucher program would be much less expensive than the current system and lead to more improvement, methinks, but I’ve already posted too many times about that.
My take home pay as a 30 year teacher (16 in Hawaii), dual certified in SPED and elementary ed, with some twenty credits beyond a MS degree will be under $42k this year which includes some of the recent raises. Deductions include the normal fed and state taxes and about $540/month for medical (an incredible deal for a family plan I know). And $66.58 a month to the union so they can buy politicians and buildings.
And just recently my charter school’s teachers got a $3k annual bonus (a little more than $2k after taxes) for being in a “hard-to-fill” zone— which other local schools’ teachers have received for years.I feel, given the 185 workdays per year, that this is a more than a fair salary. My wife and many teachers disagree.
If big money was more of a goal for me (or I lived in Honolulu) I would do something else.
I agree with Frank that more money will have absolutely nothing to do with solving discipline issues in the classroom.
HotPE: “If you think Hawaii public schools are bad now, wait until/if the Republican tax bill passes”
I don’t know much about republican tax bills, but I suspect there is no correlation with the clustfusk that is Hawaii public schools’ success or failure. Indeed, the only constitutional way the feds can tell any state anything about education is to tie compliance to title one+ money. (Reminds me of Jimmy Carter’s national 55mph speed limit dealio way back when: states don’t have to comply but the feds will withhold road money’s if you don’t.)
Reasonable people disagree about this stuff all the time, but holding the opinion that the federal (and most states’) government has gotten too big for its britches, is largely ineffective, and not in important ways accountable—well the opinions can’t even be expressed before one is considered to be some sort of Tea Party idiot.
But the idea that “government” is the solution to the problems of public schools always takes me aback, so to speak. Almost to the point of coming up with a new fangled logical fallacy label. Still working on that though...
Why the federal government has a Dept of Education is as mysterious to me as how the county Office of Aging and Office of Housing and Community Development could possibly be big enough to need a former Safeway store. Not newly as mysterious as how a tree can give up so many lovely avocados, but mysterious nonetheless.
Cheer,
Kirt