Apparently 6.25% is some magic number. I was reading yesterday that San Francisco intends to fire some large proportion of its employees (maybe it was even everybody, I don't remember) and then hire them back with new contracts. The new contracts would be for 37.5 hours per week instead of 40. If you do the math, that is a 6.25% reduction.
That 6.25% s the same amount DeKalb County is proposing reducing teacher salaries by for next year. Take 6.25% less or some unknown number of furlough days. That percentage (6.25%) of fewer days works out to 12. There are generally 10 extra days for teachers during the year: preplanning is 5, postplanning is about 3 and the rest are teacher work day during the year. If you took furlough days, you would still need to come in at least one day on your own or your room wouldn't be set up and your copies made for whatever you are doing the first day.
I was reading another article about Central Falls and how the district was justified in firing the teachers for refusing the reasonable request made of them: work an extra 25 minutes a day for free. Guess what? Twenty Five minutes out of 6.5 hours is - 6.25%. The comment in the article that got to me was "But the least they expect is that their teachers, making an average $72,000 to $78,000 a year, put in a full day on the job."
Really? I put in more time teaching than I ever did on any other job.
OK. The economy sucks. People are having to tighten their belts. Personally, I would rather get a little less in my paycheck and know that we all make it through to better times.
But can we stop assuming teachers are greedy slackers? And can we take 6.25% from EVERYBODY? Governor Perdue, your portion is $7,687.38. President Obama? $25,000. Just a little solidarity.
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I'm going to say it AGAIN; everyone who makes policy - EVERYONE - needs to spend some significant portion of time with the people who are going to be directly affected by that policy. My state representative should have spent a couple of weeks with me and my dying mother last summer, just to see what the impact of health care really IS on a human being. The people who create social and relief programs need to spend some time with the people living below the poverty line and the people trying to get jobs, THEN go back and make their decisions.
WHAT is this notion that teachers don't actually WORK? ANY TIME anyone wants to come and spend a week working with me - come and see what I do (and, not for nothing, consider the considerable expense I put out in order to get the education and certification I needed to get (and to retain) my job)- they are more than welcomed.
Sheesh.
When you break down a teacher's salary by the time spent on planning, grading and all the other stuff, we get about $15 an hour. Nice.
Not only that, after years of underfunding the state workers' and teachers' pension fund, New Jersey has come to realize that they may not have enough money to pay all the baby boomers what they promised them back when they were negotiating their low salary.
Lovely.
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