Are teachers being Greedy?

Question

our current situation is the teachers union are asking for a 5% increase in salary. Their benifits include paying only 5% into their health insurance and a starting salary of 45 grand in a community where the average house value is 70 grand just so you can gain perspective. Inorder for the school district to accomadate the increase in salary the taxes will have to be substantially increased along with certain cuts which include less honors and AP course in high school. Also they want to have more teachers on the payroll. Currently the average school size in elemetary school is 15, MS 18 and HS 21. Also enrollment has been declining each year. Roughly 20 percent less students yet no teachers have been let go. Do you think this is the problem with Education.

Answer 1

No, teachers deserve to be well paid. They perform one of the most important functions in society. What about football players? They make millions.

Answer 2

It depends on the situation and the cost of living where you live.

If the cost of living is high (usually in med.-big cities) and this is a low income school (which judging by the average housing price and the staring salary it probably is) and the demand for honors courses and AP classes is not there, then no, they are not greedy. That's hard work and I am willing to bet more than 1/2 are on blood pressure medications (seriously).

But if the neighborhood is fairly decent then yes, they are greedy.

I am a teacher, our starting salary is 25k, the average house is probably about 80k. We have about 17 students per class. Its also a VERY rural school. The whole district is made up of less than 1,000 students. Most of the children are fairly well behaved.

As a teacher I do not see the problem in education as teacher's greed (no teacher has ever gone into teaching for money...that's simply laughable), but the general lack of respect for anyone a lot of children have. This is mainly the parents fault because there is a great deal of difference from child to child, even if they have had the same teachers. However I believe its also the blame of society as whole. In general children are coddled and let go of responsibilities far too much.

Answer 3

My first teaching job in 1979 was in a Catholic grade school. I had 3 classes of 7th graders, 3 classes of 8th graders- 40 kids in each class. I had 1 planning period a week (if the gym teacher wasn't sick). I made $7,200. The starting salary for a teacher in a public grade school was $15,000. I worked very hard all year and I was grading papers all the time. I lasted 1 year- I couldn't afford to drive up to the school - the gas and the expenses were too much. I wasn't in a union.

I say teachers should make what they can. They teach the greatest and most important commodity-children.

I suspect that the salaries will not be as high (5%), but sacrifices will need to be made (on the teachers part for sure).

Teachers also need more than just a Bachelor's degree these days- that costs time and money.

Just my humble opinion.

Answer 4

If teachers went into teaching for the money, we would all retire before we were 40 and live in gorgeous houses, drive fast cars and go on really long, really expensive vacations every year. Instead, we're happy that we can pay our bills, our car is still holding up and that we still have some money to buy the supplies and resource books that we need in order to provide a more interactive and dynamic lesson. The supplies are not paid for by the school, nor is the time that we spend when we get home and correct countless tests and reports,and make up countless extra material because you want to help your students succeed. So are teachers greedy? I definitely don't think so!
The real question should be, why are teachers underpaid, under-valued and disrespected by society? What do pro baseball, football, basketball players, etc give to society that makes them earn millions and why do teachers barely get by?

Answer 5

This is what the union is asking for, not what they will get. Most likely a compromise will occur.

A typical agreement would be:
The increase will end up around 3%. The starting salary will be the same as this year + 3%. Class sizes will increase. Health insurance will remain the same percentage. Retiring teachers will not be replaced.

The unions always ask for more than they expect to get because they know they will have to give up things.

Answer 6

You are making generalizations on something you do not know about first hand.

I don't know where you live, but in our district the average size class of elementary schools are 21, middle 25 and the high schools classes have up to 30 kids. And I teach in one of the largest and better-funded districts in Texas. I am also pretty sure most districts are not shrinking, but growing.

If you knew anything about education you would know the salary starts off nice, but you are capped after a few years. I am going on 14 years of teaching (with a master's, which provides a pay upgrade) and there are kids coming out of college who are starting at $5,000 less then I am.

I can tell you what the problem with education is high paid administration who have not been in a classroom for 20 years and a lack of parental interest in their children's education and/or lives. Not only are we supposed to teach, but we also expected to raise these children.

Step into my shoes for the day and I think you will see things a little differently.

8:00 Show up to school, go to my classroom.
8:05 Kids begin showing up in my class. Tutoring begins (every day of the entire year)
8:20-10:45 Class
10:45-11:30 Planning period (grade, make copies, call parents, gather art supplies, type reports, file graded papers, clean all the glitter that was spilled earlier, laminate, prepare the supplies for science lab, attend staffings....the list goes on)
11:30-12:00 Lunch
12:00-3:20 Class
3:20-3:30 Bus duty (everyday of the entire year)
3:30-4:00 Watch the little 9-year-old demon child until his "special" bus arrives. He was thrown off his regular bus because of his disruptive behavior (actually had to call the police to get him home).
4:00 Is that administration starting to go home? Must be nice. Now I can start preparing for tomorrow
4:30/5:00 Go home

Hmm... Now what did I forget to do? Oh yea- pee. That little luxury has to wait until lunch or end of the day.

Weekend: 3-5 hours of lesson plans and preparations and grading.

Summer: 5-10 days of professional development, because we are obviously not developed enough. (BTW, this is unpaid time. We do not get paid for summers).

End of Summer: 7 days to get my room ready because everything had to be taken down, packed up and put in a closet. We almost never get our old rooms again and guess who gets to physically move all that stuff? Certainly not the maid I can hire with the incredible amounts of money I make.

Here is another little tidbit- We went 2 years without a raise and when we did get one last year it just covered the $75 a month increase in our health insurance and did not cover the brand new $500 family deductible.

Also, unions are about more then just salaries. I used mine to threaten an office bully who harasses every person under his authority. This is a guy who only taught 4 years and has less education then I do and now he is "administration" because of the stupid politics that go on in education. I have been thanked graciously many times by others for helping to curtail his bullying tactics.

Yea, we teachers are a greedy lot. EVERYONE knows you go into teaching only for the money. Just like cops only eat donuts and firemen only barbeque and watch TV.

Answer 7

You are paying for a person (teacher) who has earned a degree. Teachers like doctors, lawyers, investment planners etc. all have degrees in higher education. Some teachers have more education then the above mentioned careers. School districts get money from the state. No Child Left Behind Act, a federal law, requires less students in certain classes. In our county, we are required to have 25 in core classes and 35 in electives (foreign lang. art, music, business and law studies etc.). School districts must comply and that is probably why they aren't getting rid of anyone. If they are not cutting positions, then why are honors and AP courses being dropped? This doesn't make sense because AP courses generate a lot of money for the school. Teachers have little say in anything today. All important laws and decisions are made by individuals who have never been in a classroom or taught ever. You should be thankful that your child isn't in over crowded classes.

Answer 8

This cracks me up! Apparently, you do not understand the enormous work load a teacher has nor the amount of personal money that is spent on their classrooms and students. Most teachers teach because they love children and want to guide and shape society into a positive place. Teachers should be paid as much as any other professional. Look at the salaries Doctors and Lawyers make. These professionals are held to high educational standards-as are teachers. I don't know where you are but I find all that you have said hard to be true. I have never seen a school administration do such things or the public allow it....But to answer you question, HELL NO! teachers are not greedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 9

Let me tell you how greedy I am...........and I can assure you that the teachers do not start out at 45 grand....when they average the salaries they include health benefits with that.
I'm so greedy that I pay an average of one hundred dollars a paycheck to supply my children with breakfast food, food for their homes because they have none and the weekends are long without food.
I am so greedy that I have paid to have childrens teeth fixed who have had cavities so bad that they couldn't endure the pain, bought beds for children who slept on the floors, bought more winter coats, gloves, etc. then I could even count becaue parents are unemployed and don 't have the resources to buy them. I have purchased supplies because the district hasw no funds to provide simple things like glue sticks, paints, scissors, etc. They have no money because people don't pass millages..they think that teachers make too much. I have paid thousands of dollars to take teachers tests, classes to improve my teaching, and become recertified so that I could keep my teaching certificate up to date.
I'm so greedy that when we are reading a story or working on a science experiment, I buy the materials so that the kids can have a first hand experience and build prior knowledge. In the past few weeks I have very selfishly bought octopus, so they could see one, taken them to a bakery so that they could eat fresh baked goods like the book we were reading, paid to have them go to the zoo because none of them had ever been and had no clue how big an elephant was....I am currently saving money to pay to have them go to a lake...not one has ever seen one and they are eight years old. I greedily, take laundry home at night so my kids have clean clothes in the morning and meet them by the back door so that others don't know that they don't have any clean clothes. I buy sock s and underwear for them so that they have them available when they come to school.
And the list goes on..............I have paid to have houses that were infested with rats...exterminated, purchased turkeys for thanksgiving, christmas gifts for the kids in my class and then for their parents to give them at home.....
The problem in education is not the teachers. It's the attitude that others have for the teaching profession and the ignorance they have about how committed we are to the children and the profession we love.
5 % doesn't even begin to pay for all that we put into it.

Answer 10

This might be a problem where you're at, but in my district there's no way the faculty would still all have jobs if the student population was decreasing like that.

I wonder which part of the country you're in.
It's important to look at individual circumstances like that instead of thinking about this as being a problem for education in general. Because, no, the rest of us definitely aren't being greedy when OUR class sizes INCREASE annually, while things like our salary DON'T.

Answer 11

There are other places a district spends money. Frequently, districts threaten to cut sports, music, art, AP classes etc. and blame it on teacher salaries. I am a teacher living in a decent house (2 bedrooms 2 baths -I'm happy) but the only reason I can afford the mortgage is I'm married to a carpenter who makes more money. I've taught 18 years and have a masters- I make $50,000. I work from 6:00 AM to 5:30 PM and then bring home work for the evenings and week-ends. I love my job but, am I greedy?