Posts
The teachers in my county are discovering how the rest of us live.
Their new health plan will result in them paying up to $36 a month to pay for their health insurance!
AND They will have co-pays for emergency room visits.
AND They will have more limited choices about whom they go to see and under what circumstances.
Oh? You mean just like the rest of us since Obamacare?
Harvey plunks down nearly $500 a month for healthcare, has co-pays and gets to pick from a short list of places she can see.
So, sorry, Teach, if I don't have a lot of sympathy for your plight.
We've been trying to explain to the teachers we know that benefits are part of "pay" and they make a lot more than they think they do. I won't even begin to talk about their no-contribution-instantly-vested-retirement-plan's value.
Their real problem (for them) is Florida made it possible, simple and not very difficult to get our kids out of public schools and into smaller education venues that actually teach the Three-R's. Public schools lose the money when a parent does that.
So lots of school districts are seeing a funding problem and rather than reduce admin overhead, they're hitting the teachers up for healthcare.
Of course, they're not blaming their unions for going along with it or the administrators for sucking up 3/4 of the funding... Nope! It's us cheapskate taxpayers and the Rethuglicans in Tallahassee!
Well, a lot of us watched how you behaved during COVID and we remember. You didn't deserve what you were getting then and you haven't done anything to redeem yourselves.
So suck it!
Entirely agreed, especially on administration and fancy administrative offices and perks sucking up too much of the funding. The Superintendent should really not make 4x+ the amount a math or science teacher makes. Of course management salaries in private industry are imbalanced also, but for public service jobs it doesn't have to be that way.
ReplyDelete-swj
The disparity is easily observable if you compare the product of the per-child spending and number of children in any class, and that class's teacher's salary. The difference is administrative cost. Some of it is justified, but I suspect most is not.
ReplyDeleteIt's the hostage puppy problem again. The system is broken, but no one wants to hurt teachers. But most of the money goes to something else, while teachers are left buying school supplies for their class with their own money.
The solution, of course, is school choice. It would naturally add a disincentive to waste money on unnecessary administration.
Daosus
School Choice is why their budget is reduced and they have to make hard choices about their employee health care plan.
DeleteThe non-government schools employees get insurance just like the rest of us and aren't accustomed to getting Roll-Royce levels of care.
I mean, they could try to compete with private schools by actually teaching useful stuff, but I suspect that's counter to doctrine. In that case, a reduction in funding is exactly what should happen
DeleteDaosus
The real solution to drive down 'costs' and 'expenses' in public education is, of course, to eliminate, with fire if necessary, the Department of Edumacation and all its varied programs and requirements. Then cut out all the employees whose jobs are just based on doing all the paperwork for all the varied programs and requirements.
DeleteThe office staff should be: Principal, Vice P, 2-3 staff assistants, a school nurse. 1 counselor per 200 students, maybe (my experience with guidance counselors is they suck moose members.) Other than the janitorial and cafeteria workers, all other personnel should be teachers. That's it.
And quit with all the 'arts magnet' schools. The only magnet schools should be STEM, if you're going to do a magnet school at all. Bring back shop classes to every high school or make 1 out of 3 high schools a tech-school (though I'd really rather have shop offered to all students who want to take the class.)
Get rid of all the excess admin staff and useless bloated staff and that saves tons.
Then make all teachers take and pass mandatory skills and functions tests. If they can't do the subject they shouldn't be teaching the subject. (This was done back in the 70's in Florida, until the various teachers' unions got it shut down before it actually happened. No, really, passed the state legislature, signed by a democrat governor, shot down and shut down before it could be emplaced due to teachers' unions, which, coincidentally, need to be shut down...)
Have to ask: How many of those bloated administrators are on the dole because of gummit mandates? If so, time to get rid of those mandates chop chop.
Delete