Teachers' pay

[buckabucka]

Our pay scale tops out just over $50,000. Teaching has changed a lot. Most kids have experienced violence and trauma. Sometimes one parent is in jail, sometimes both. Some live in the local homeless shelter. Behaviors are out of control and class sizes get bigger all the time. I would much rather have more social workers and psychologists in the building than get a raise, but I doubt that will ever happen.

 

[seedcorn]

Stories my son can tell and he's only taught for 6 years. Problem is the people making the rules, are clueless. And the concept of parenting, is lost on the last 3 generations. I know, I digress.

In Indiana, all teachers are way under paid. In Illinois, pay is largely based on time doing it and the location cost of living.

@bobm, we all are tired of high taxes. We all think we are underpaid and someone else is way overpaid. Once again, people that won't get burdened with the results of their actions are making the rules.

 

[Nyboy]

I have no children and sometimes get out of joint that I have to pay school taxes, when will never have a child that will used the school. Then I remind myself I went though and used public school system.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, this is a political topic but I’ll respond anyway. I see others that usually don't want to talk politics have responded. Bob has given one end of the spectrum, I’ll try to draw us back to reality.

In Alpine County California, Kathrin Groden, a Teacher -K-12 Classroom in Alpine County Unified, in 2014 earned a base salary of $21,510.71, overtime pay of $0.00, other pay of $1,064.61, total benefits of $5,338.11, for a total salary plus extra pay plus benefits of $27,913.43. I just opened a California county at random. I don’t know if this is a rural or urban county. That makes a difference too. They are pretty transparent in California when you can find what an individual takes home. I’d kind of think that’s an invasion of privacy but since they are public employees they make that information known. I have no idea what other private income Kathrin Groden may have. But since we are talking about teachers’ pay that is irrelevant. Her base salary is $21,510.71 to compare to others.

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2014/school-districts/alpine/alpine-county-unified/

The salary for teachers varies a lot by school district but also by teacher. I’ll let you do your own research on this if you desire but I got the annual mean wage for a teacher in California is in the $60,000’s depending on various factors. I’m pretty sure this is teacher’s salaries only, no principles or other higher paid positions included or lower paid clerks or such included but I’m not 100% sure. I’m sure Bob’s wife understands the difference between mean and average salaries.

Arkansas compensation also varies a lot district by district. I did not find a breakdown by individuals or anything that included benefits and extra pay. The lowest base salary I found was Union County. A teacher with a bachelors degree and no experience was $30,122. The maximum for a bachelors was $36,872. It did not give how many years’ experience this requires. If you have a master’s degree add $4000 to $5000. The maximum base salary in Union County Arkansas for a teacher is $42,140 with the highest degree and many years of experience.

The highest starting salary (bachelors) was Springdale at $46,815. The maximum base salary regardless of degree and years of experience I found was $75,316, also in Springdale. The average (not mean) beginner’s salary with a bachelors degree in the state of Arkansas was $33,645. The highest degree state average for Arkansas was $51,695. Not a lot of six figure salaries here.

http://www.arkansased.gov/public/us...Reports/Teacher_Salary_Schedule_2015-2016.pdf

As far as I know these are all public schools and do not include private, parochial, or charter schools. I did not see that clarified.

My son and his wife are both teachers in their third year of teaching in Louisiana. Between them they have taught in parochial, private, and public schools, rural and urban. What they make is none of your business but some of these pay a lot more than others. Some aren’t that bad but some don’t pay a living wage if you are the sole income earner. The quality of the students can vary a whole lot too. Louisiana has a voucher system which has a big effect. My son almost quit teaching after a year at a rural school where none of the parents had any interest in their kids’ education and the kids picked up on that. With the voucher system any parents that cared put their kids in different schools. He wants to make a difference and he didn’t think he was with those kids.

About that silly “only nine months a year” thing. First, most schools I know let out in fairly early June, assuming no hurricane, flood, or snow days that can’t be made up. They start back in mid-August at the latest. But teachers have various workshops and continuing education they are expected to take during the summer. These are not a lot of days but they are at different times during their time off. The have to plan any summer vacations or summer jobs around these. They also both had to be at work two weeks before school started, getting ready for school to start. That’s why I missed two weeks on this forum in early August. My wife and I were babysitting our granddaughter while they were getting ready for school to start. The granddaughter who was going into kindergarten when school opened needed to be taken care of. They could have done a day care but that is expensive and we wanted to take care of her. When you look at the reality, they get a bit less than two months off.

They are both fairly early in their careers and have not had the luxury of teaching many of the same classes in the same school system in consecutive years. That means they are lesson planning all the time, late at night during the week and a lot of the weekend. Their school day is not really fixed either. They might have an early or late bus duty or be required to chaperone or be at other events so they have to have a flexible daily schedule plus make sure their daughter is always looked after. This year my son is quiz bowl coach, which means he sometimes stays late to coach them plus some quiz bowl matches are on Saturdays or after school. Most are during the school day though. He has to be there.

The only times we can got to see them and expect to see them are holidays when they are out of school. Even then we normally take our granddaughter away for a day so they can have some uninterrupted time to lesson plan. One year my son was told he would be teaching certain high school math classes plus an accelerated social studies class so he did a lot of lesson planning during the summer. When school started the principle switched most of those classes so he had to start all over lesson planning. That principle treated the teachers like that throughout the year and did not understand why most of his good teachers transferred out. The principle was politically connected so his butt was safe.

So much for the myth that it is an easy job with lots of time off. There are several teachers on this forum or people with teachers in the immediate family. Please tell me where I’ve misrepresented anything. It should get better after a few more years.

Now to get really political. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. The opportunity to succeed does not mean a guarantee of success. The opportunity to succeed means nothing unless you also have the opportunity to fail. What you make of your opportunity is up to you. America is not meant to be a society of aristocrats and serfs. We are supposed to be a classless society. We are not, money always gives an advantage. But one of the great levelers of opportunity is a decent education. If the rich can educate their kids and the poor cannot, then we do not have a society of opportunity. I don’t care if it is public, private, parochial, charter, or magnet schools, unless every kid has a decent chance at an education, we are not a land of opportunity.

I’ve seen good and bad charter, private, and parochial schools. Some people seem to think that putting the word charter in a school name is the best thing since peanut butter and sardines on rye withy yellow mustard. Some charter schools do a great job with all kinds of kids. Some look great as long as they cherry pick the best students and don’t take any students that aren’t great. Private schools do this a lot and send the problem kids to the public schools. Some are just a rip-off.

In my opinion if we fail to offer every kid the opportunity of a decent education and let the public schools fail then that is just un-American. All the other types of schools are fine with me but don’t let the public schools fail just because it’s the easiest way to go. Supporting public schools should be an American trait.

 

[Nyboy]

good point no one adds up all the hours teachers put in at home, planing lessons and correcting test and homework.

 

[catjac1975]

A first year teacher should be able to rent a place to live in the town in which they teach. I started at 8900. 35 years ago. I would not have been able to rent anywhere in the poor town in which I taught if I did not live with my husband who was also a teacher at a slightly higher salary. Salary ranges vary according to cost of living where you are. Now the top teachers salary where I worked pays around 80,000. That's after 25 years teaching in the same district, 3 degrees including 2 masters and the equivalent of 2 new courses a year forever. It is the billionaires of this country that have all of the money and want to keep it that way. They have convinced all of us fools that teachers, police, and firefighters, along with any government worker and to blame for the countries woes. Second only to the very poor. A government worker is lazy? Cuts after cuts after cuts have overburdened every state and government worker so that cannot get to your paper work.
And Bob, I am very surprised that teachers are making these kind of salaries any where in the country.But, I would be very upset if my accountant shared my private information and made judgements about it. These are the kinds of tax breaks that the very wealthy get. Good for the teachers for figuring out how to get a piece of the pie that has been legislated towards the very rich.

 

[Nyboy]

My sister worked for the county, every budget cut someone lost their job. She was doing her job plus 2 fired employees jobs, all for same salary. she counted the hours till retirement.

 

[bobm]

Cat ... those 2 teachers work in a N. Oregon grammer school teaching 5th grade and hubby at a nearby College. Both are in their late 20s. Between them , they had 6 different businesses that never made a sale so NO profit and they used some creative accounting to claim business expenses. No sales so NO profit only " expenses" .Totaly illegal according to the tax code. It took a while, but they were finally caught in their desire to not pay taxes, which I am sure others would frown upon. It had nothing to do in figuring out how to get a piece of the pie that has been legislated towards the very rich or anyone else. Far from the truth in that statement. My sister's daughter in law has a PHD in Pharmacology. She works for an international Pharma Co. doing research on new human medicines. Yes , she makes a little more than that 5th grade teacher, however her schooling debt far exceeds what any teacher or school administrator has incured . Then add her and my sister's son's income and property taxes, their disposable income in not much more that those poorly paid teachers. Now, consider this... The bleeding heart "progressives " are tauting a $15.00 / hr. as a minimum wage. $15/hr. x 8 hrs./ day= $120 . $120 x 5 days/ wk. = $600 / wk. x 4 wks,= $2400/ month x 12 months - $ 28,800 / year. Hows that compare for someone who may be a school drop out, or high school graduate, or even an elligal allien with possibly a grade school education or none at all. Comparable to teacher's lowest income in some areas of this country. So , the business owner has to raise his prices for his product in order to cover his cost of doing business . So in effect the cost of living for those lower payed teachers become much higher in addition to being saddled with a huge student debt and in effect is getting a pay cut untill such time as the teacher's union negotiates a much higher sallary if and only if the local tax base can even support such an increase. My wife and I are drowning in our tax burden already.

 

[catjac1975]

Cat ... those 2 teachers work in a N. Oregon grammer school teaching 5th grade and hubby at a nearby College. Both are in their late 20s. Between them , they had 6 different businesses that never made a sale so NO profit and they used some creative accounting to claim business expenses. No sales so NO profit only " expenses" .Totaly illegal according to the tax code. It took a while, but they were finally caught in their desire to not pay taxes, which I am sure others would frown upon. It had nothing to do in figuring out how to get a piece of the pie that has been legislated towards the very rich or anyone else. Far from the truth in that statement. My sister's daughter in law has a PHD in Pharmacology. She works for an international Pharma Co. doing research on new human medicines. Yes , she makes a little more than that 5th grade teacher, however her schooling debt far exceeds what any teacher or school administrator has incured . Then add her and my sister's son's income and property taxes, their disposable income in not much more that those poorly paid teachers. Now, consider this... The bleeding heart "progressives " are tauting a $15.00 / hr. as a minimum wage. $15/hr. x 8 hrs./ day= $120 . $120 x 5 days/ wk. = $600 / wk. x 4 wks,= $2400/ month x 12 months - $ 28,800 / year. Hows that compare for someone who may be a school drop out, or high school graduate, or even an elligal allien with possibly a grade school education or none at all. Comparable to teacher's lowest income in some areas of this country. So , the business owner has to raise his prices for his product in order to cover his cost of doing business . So in effect the cost of living for those lower payed teachers become much higher in addition to being saddled with a huge student debt and in effect is getting a pay cut untill such time as the teacher's union negotiates a much higher sallary if and only if the local tax base can even support such an increase. My wife and I are drowning in our tax burden already.

Your first story implied that they made those high salaries from teaching-if so i"m moving there. I did not realize they were doing something illegal. I guess you need to be rich to get all of those right offs.

 

[bobm]

Your first story implied that they made those high salaries from teaching-if so i"m moving there. I did not realize they were doing something illegal. I guess you need to be rich to get all of those right offs.

The tax laws apply equally to one and all ... you have to have a legitimate business that makes a profit in at least 2 out of 5 years in order to take any expence as a right off against the profit. Otherwise , the activity is reclassified as a hobby and does not qualify for any deduction. One can challenge the rulling , then go to tax court for a judgment. The tax Revenue agency is the enforcement branch of the IRS, and they will collect the tax due as ruled by the tax court, if the tax payer refuses to make tax due payment.