There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch…. or, in this case, a free Learning.
I don’t know what it’s like in other states, but in Wisconsin, there’s a law that says school districts can’t raise property taxes. Their spending limits are capped by law. That sounds like a good thing, right? Just one problem. Another law says that teachers must be be given raises to, at least, match the cost of living increase. The problem? The allowed increase in spending is less than the allowed requirement for spending. Doesn’t quite add up, does it?
So, every year, the Madison Metropolitan School district has to look at trimming a minimum of $8 million from their budget. And yet, they’re expected to provide the same quality of service to the students and the community. And here’s where the disgust starts.
Every year, the taxpayers refuse to give extra money to the schools. They want their taxes to stay low. And every year, those same tax payers bitch that their little Timmy is going to miss out on violin lessons because the strings program is cut, and little Suzie will have to pay extra fees to participate in Volleyball, and little Xiang won’t have and ESL teacher to help him learn English, and little Levon won’t have a Gifted & Talented program to attend…. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Pure selfishness.
The solution is simple. The constituency tells the state Congress and the Governor–in no uncertain terms–that they want the schools to be funded adequately. ‘Your job, people, depends on you changing the laws’. But no. Instead, people bitch and whine that their precious little child isn’t going to get all the special treatment he deserves, while, on the other hand, refusing to put up a fair share of the cost.
Under these laws, entire school districts have shut down. Kids are sitting on buses for 2 hours or longer–each way!–to get to school districts that can still keep their heads above water.
These are the same people that bitch about the fact that kids today aren’t learning anything. And they’re the same people who will pay $300 billion to send young men and women off to die in a foreign country for a hopeless cause. $1,000 to send PFC Bubba halfway around the world so he can get blown up? Hell yeah! Put it on my tab! $100 to make sure that the kid that’ll be fixing your furnace can read the instructions? Are you crazy? That’s outrageous!
Yeah…. Read the blog title, folx. I’m talking to you.
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May 3rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
Well, I beg to differ, there is free learning. Take a look yourself: http://alison.com
It is free!
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Despite what most people think, teachers, on the average, have great salaries in almost every state in America (when compared with the hours worked, benefits received, cush working conditions, etc.), but you are correct that most school SYSTEMS are financially lacking.
From my perspective, though, “lacking” is not the same as “without”, and I honestly believe that the GREAT majority of school systems are RECEIVING enough money… they just do a piss-poor job at MANAGING those funds.
For example, here in Tennessee, we have a state lottery that subsidizes education. Practically ANY kid can go to college here for FREE, no matter what their parents make. And teachers salaries are some of the highest in the nation. To ice the cake, last year we had a $400,000,000 tax SURPLUS, up $150,000,000 over 2005. But yet every year I am asked to donate $100 to the school for this or that fund, and told to “donate” $50 in additional school supplies for OTHER people’s kids. (Meanwhile, these same kids’ parents are getting FREE lunches while I pay $560/year for the same sandwich.) All of this is taking place in the wealthiest county in my STATE. And then the school has the audacity to come to me again at every opportunity and request more donations, or contributions, etc. because their “budget is tight.”
That’s BS. Budgets for this kind of thing are NOT tight. They are simply mis-managed. I’m not so naive as to say this applies to every district in the country, and there are many who are legitimately in dire straits. But on the whole, my suspicion is that many districts are merely hemorrhaging cash because they can’t work a decent budget. Most likely because they were never taught to do a proper one, and are just fumbling with numbers. (As evidenced by the fact that 78% of American households do not have a budget.) So, in a sense, education is failing itself.
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Holy cow, you’re saying that teachers are paid well? Not even “well” but have “great salaries”? Can you back that up with some numbers, because you are literally the first person in my entire *life* to say that.
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Sure. Google is awesome. Read this press release – http://www.aft.org/presscenter/releases/2007/032907.htm
Even THAT biased research states that the LOWEST paid teacher in 2005 made over $31,000. To put this in perspective, the poverty level in 2007 is about $10,400 (http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/07poverty.shtml). And the average salary nation-wide in 2002 was about $37,000 (http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.txt). So teachers are by no means impoverished or suffering, but they’re also a tad behind the average US salary. Fair enough. But this doesn’t mean they are UNDER-paid.
But let’s put that in perspective. Teachers do not work 50 weeks a year like the “average” US citizen does. They work about 10 months total, with the ability to pick up tutoring or part-time work during summer breaks and after school hours. And they STILL get paid vacation time. Oh, and state-funded medical benefits, retirement, discounts on everything from real estate to mortgage loans to daycare, car insurance, supplies, and pretty much anything else you need to survive or thrive in today’s consumer climate. (Meanwhile, I think something like 40% of Americans have NO health insurance. So your “average” American might be making $37,000, but he also pays through the nose for his health care, or suffers because he has none.)
I have family that are teachers (my wife’s cousin, my niece’s mother, etc.) and they both tell me the same thing: if you’re a teacher in America complaining that you’re broke, the problem is with you and not your salary. And these people have worked in both rural and urban/sub-urban schools teaching everything from high school English to middle school Music. Are their school systems constantly strapped for cash? Sure. But they aren’t… because they’re fiscally responsible people. Yet they have peers who are bankrupt.
I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve a raise, or that schools don’t deserve more money… but PROVE to me that you NEED it, not that it’s just another band-aid fix for your horrible mis-management of what’s been given to you. My point is that citizens have a right to tell the school systems to piss off when they ask for more money, ESPECIALLY if they inflict it via taxation, because the answer is not to bleed the citizens dry. Asking the community to give MORE money to schools just because they ask for it only addresses the SYMPTOM, not the DISEASE.
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
First, let me preface this by saying that I have spent about 15 of the last 20 years working in some area of academia. I’ve been non-academic staff, consultant/contractor, teacher, coach and, in the position I just left, a purchasing clerk for the 2nd largest school district in the state (50 schools, 25 non-school departments, and dozens of ancillary programs and private schools piggy-backing on the state/district purchasing contracts[1]).
First off, Paul’s question. Yes. Teachers are paid well. Starting pay for a teacher in this area is about $24k. For a 10-month contract [2] They also get a week off in the spring, 2 weeks off in the winter, and every damn holiday there is off. They get dental & term life for free. Most pay (or have the option of choosing a plan for which they pay) $0 for health insurance–full coverage with drug copays of less than $10. The district pays 100% of the retirement–a very nice retirement package. And the teacher has the option of picking up a summer job for extra cash or just taking 2 months off during the summer.
A retiring teacher, with 30+ years experience and an advanced degree can be making $80k+ (again, for 192 days of work). Along with all the associated benefits.
So… yeah. That’s a pretty decent wage & benefits package.
On to Martin’s comments. I can’t speak for all the other districts out there, but I was *very* closely involved in the money side of things with MMSD over the last 4 years. While there were certainly places that could be trimmed back, they were a drop in the bucket when talking about the total operating budget of a district of this size.
If you want to read up on the budget, you can go the MMSD Budget Page and read up on it for yourself. In the last 5 years alone, MMSD has cut 449.1 staff positions, and $35.15 million out of the budget. Over that same period, the population of Dane County (in which Madison resides) has risen 6%, and Madison has gained a disproportionate number of ESL and special-needs students (mostly due to it’s reputation for providing an excellent learning environment for these students). Some of the more salient facts can be found here
I don’t know how your school district does things, but MMSD has been cutting the fat for 15 years now. They’ve been cutting into the muscle for the past several years. If this keeps up, they’ll be shaving bones before too long. They are not mismanaging their finances. They keep a very tight rein on their budgets. They work diligently to get not just cheap prices, but actual value from their vendors and suppliers. And they do all this while still trying to maintain the exceptional standards and rich diversity required to produce well-educated graduates who are ready to deal with the demands of college and the workforce.
[1] Allowing private and parochial schools to piggyback on state/district contracts is a win/win situation. It grants the district more purchasing power which allows them to negotiate for lower prices, and lets the private schools buy for less.
[2] For MMSD, it’s 192 days at 7.75 hours/day. That’s 1,488 hours per year, as compares to 2,080 hours for a standard job. (I’m including holidays and vacations, since they are paid). Expand the teacher’s salary out and it becomes comparable to $33.5k for a normal worker.)
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Wow, those are some amazing stats up in Wisconsin. I find it curious that the amount of eliminated positions seemed to escalate rapidly from 2002 onward, just after the passing of No Child Left Behind. It took 10 years to eliminate 166 positions (not a bad average, actually), whereas the last 5 years accounts for 73% of EP’s since 1993. Blaze’s point is well-made that they’re trimming the muscle now. Scary.
This sorta speaks to my point, though. When I was talking about budgets, I was referring to the state as a whole. Education/academia is a portion of the state’s overall budget, the same as law enforcement, road improvement, etc. You’ve got a state like Wisconsin that’s whittling away its education system down to the studs with an AXE, but missing the point that there is an equilibrium that needs to be achieved.
If the taxes in the state are such that the population is at the brink and resists an increase, but yet you have facets of the state’s infrastructure (eg. education) that are troubled, then SOMETHING is amiss in the allocations. If the state has X population, and thus knows it will have so much in revenue, but yet is continually lobotomizing the education system, THIS is the mis-management I’m referring to. Something else MUST be getting fat and shouldn’t. 2+2 always = 4.
It still doesn’t give the schools a right to ask the taxpayers to pay more, because they already are paying their fair share (probably more so). If anyone, they need to be going back to the state, and also to the businesses who are getting all the fat tax BREAKS while the average Joe’s are being bled to death. But that’s a WHOLE other discussion.