i know this is pretty similar to Jay’s thread, maybe 99%, but still… this fight needs to be brought to Ontario… against the teachers union.
im sorry, but a tenured grade 5 teacher does not deserve $80k, full pension, full benefits, 3 months paid vacation, 8-3 work day etc. etc.
isnt there a commission that can peg jobs to their relative international pay scale, skill set required, difficulty, relevance etc. etc. as a means of fighting unions rather than stripping away their rights?
if you’re in a private school for kids of parents that are paying crazy dollars for the education then yes… but a regular grade 5 teacher does not. There are a lot of very hard working, skilled people out there who will never make 75% of that who do more important and more difficult jobs.
I think a good teacher in a public school who can help the children of the poor break the poor-begets-poor cycle is a lot more valuable than a private school teacher. But that’s comparing apples to beef because a private school teacher is subject to market principles (which is what I think you’re getting at), whereas a public school teacher really isn’t. I would be fine if my taxes paid public school teachers $80k per year if the pay was based on merit rather than tenure.
So yeah, bust up the unions if it will help and encourage good teachers.
Hell I’m moving to a place where I’ll be paying more taxes in large part because I’ve got a kid on the way and want to be in a better school district.
It’s really tough to use any type of numerical analysis to determine a good teacher. SO much of kids’ achievement is outside their control. If they’re stuck trying to polish a class full of turds with no help from the home, even the best efforts go unnoticed. At the same time, there are some really shitty ones that end up with smart kids by where they teach or luck of the draw, and leech off their success.
eitherway, i’m glad that many US states are combatting this issue even though US teachers do not enjoy the same level of status that they do in Ontario… heck the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund owns basically EVERYTHIHNG that matters…
lol this is just comical now. Democrats in the state senate went into hiding. Democrats in the state Assembly tried to filibuster it. After 60 straight hours of debate, at 1AM last night, the republicans voted on the thing in seconds before the dems even had a chance to grasp what was going on.
Debate had gone on for 60 hours and 15 Democrats were still waiting to speak when the vote started around 1 a.m. Friday. Speaker Pro Tem Bill Kramer, R-Waukesha, opened the roll and closed it within seconds.
Democrats looked around, bewildered. Only 13 of the 38 Democratic members managed to vote in time.
My step dad’s pension is about $40k a year for LIFE. And now that he’s passed away, my mom still gets his money.
I have no problem with teachers negotiating their salary, but negotiating these crazy benefits doesn’t make any sense. Federal union employees are already not allowed to negotiate salary, pensions, etc. as per Jimmy Carter eliminating collective bargaining “rights” for them in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Why should state unions have these benefits when federal unions don’t?
This thing was such a farce. They claimed it was about balancing the budget, then stripped all budgetary implications out of it in order to pass it with just Republicans present. At least the Senate Majority Leader came out with the real intentions behind the bill. They just pissed off the blue union base, in one state anyway, even more than health care pissed off the other side. I just hope they stay pissed off until next year. In the meantime, he continues to hold the Dem senators in contempt so they’re not even allowed to vote on anything.
“If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”
– Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald ®, quoted by the Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, admitting what’s really driving the controversy in his state.