<p>So if the citizens are voting down raises and forcing teachers into prolonged periods of service w/o a contract, how then can the citizens cry foul when teachers are forced to exercise what amounts to the only bargaining leverage they have?</p>
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<p>Could it be that the contract was never ratified by the teachers union members? I don’t know if that’s the case, just offering a potential explanation.</p>
<p>The average person doesn’t have that kind of leverage. Try using the approach of extortion in corporate America and you’ll get handed a cardboard box by security.</p>
<p>In the real world, if you don’t like your job and you have other options, you leave.</p>
<p>It’s also common for employees in corporate America to take an hour or more for lunch, conduct business on the golf course, and entertain clients in luxury suites at major sports events. End of year bonuses are also common practice. </p>
<p>None of these are the norm in public (or private) education.</p>
<p>You’re comparing apples and oranges.</p>
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<p>And work until midnight regularly. I used to work 80 hours a week and be on call all the time. A lot of corporate workers are essentially on call all the time. You might have to take calls with your coworkers in India and China at 2:00 AM.</p>
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<p>What percentage of corporate employees gets to do that?</p>
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<p>What percentage of employees gets to do that?</p>
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<p>Yes. Ever worked in a company where it isn’t? Or where there’s an across the board pay cut for all employees?</p>
<p>Most corps don’t provide three months of vacation time.</p>
<p>The three towns making up the King Philip district are NOT poor towns. They are very upper middle class. It’s just difficult to get three towns to agree on anything.</p>
<p>There are many, many classes with over 30 kids in them, including science classes, where safety is an issue.</p>
<p>They recently built a new school, with more classrooms, but will not fund more teachers to fill these additional rooms.</p>
<p>Forgoing raises is one thing, but working conditions can be improved in lieu of raises</p>
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<p>Most corporations also compensate their employees far more than teachers are compensated. I’m not complaining about my pay, I make a decent living and I never went into teaching with the expectation of becoming wealthy. </p>
<p>I’m fully aware that I stereotyped life in corporate America with my post but as I said, you cannot accurately compare corporate life with the life of public education. The two are entirely too different.</p>
<p>As for three months vacation time, I would challenge any one who is not a teacher to spend 10 months in the classroom (not 9) and then say that the 6 weeks we are off (again not 12) are not only welcome but very much needed.</p>
<p>wharfrat, please read my post #17. The Wrentham contract is for elementary teachers in Wrentham. King Philip is regional district - not the same union.</p>
<p>In examining King Phillip’s salary scale it appears that teachers max out in year 14. A teacher with a masters degree and 14 years of experience earns a little over $70,000 per year. Certainly a person can live on that salary though that’s without knowing anything about the cost of living in the area.</p>
<p>When we look at the salary scale however since most states require 30 years of service for full retirement that means that means that teachers in King Phillip must go 15 years at the same pay unless of course they continue to earn post-graduate credits beyond a Masters or receive COLA’s. (That also depends on what increments a step represents.)</p>
<p>That leads to questions about other benefits i.e. tuition reimbursement, etc.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kingphilip.org/jobs/salary.html[/url]”>http://www.kingphilip.org/jobs/salary.html</a></p>
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<p>So you’re saying that MacDonalds and WalMart and Target and Purdue
Chicken workers get paid more than teachers? There are a lot of
corporate workers: not only the ones that you see on television.</p>
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<p>If you stereotyped corporate life, why can’t I stereotype teaching life?</p>
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<p>I was working until 11:30 last night on a problem that my manager dropped
on my lap yesterday morning. I’m was up at 7:00 AM this morning to continue
work on it - all of this from home. I didn’t get to work on my regular
projects so I’ll have to get to those today and this weekend. I challenge
teachers to work 80 hour weeks for several years on call at night and on
weekends. That’s not a typical corporate job but it was mine years ago.</p>
<p>We homeschooled our kids for 12 years each. I do know a little something
about teaching and learning.</p>
<p>Median household income is $78,000 there. It sounds like your typical dual-earner family with a teacher would do fine.</p>
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<p>I don’t envy anyone in corporate life. I’m sure it has significant pressures of its own and I’m grateful for every day I get to spend in the classroom, even the worst ones. </p>
<p>I just have a difficult time not responding when I perceive a lack of respect for public education and educators. If I misinterpreted your comments about the consequences of job action in corporate life as a slight against educators I apologize. </p>
<p>As for the comment I quoted, yesterday I spent my 30 minute “duty free” lunch period helping a student who had been out of school for 2 weeks with an illness get caught up. I also spent some of that time contacting a representative of the VFW about student entries in an essay contest. I then made a quick trip to the restroom on my way to a 30 minute cafeteria duty.</p>
<p>I spent my planning period scoring 20 AP essays and gathering materials I will need to bring home with me this weekend to plan lessons for the next two weeks. Oh, and then because that took all of my planning time I stayed late at school for an hour so that I won’t have to spend all Sunday afternoon or evening grading papers. I can probably get away with only 2-3 hours or so. </p>
<p>Tonight I’ll be at school for three hours helping to work at the football game. (albeit voluntarily)</p>
<p>Nearly everybody works through lunch these days, public and private sectors alike. That situation is so commonplace that’s not even worth mentioning. Same for taking work home. Every exempt employee I know in the corporate world takes work home. Nobody works harder or longer than anybody else. </p>
<p>Please, quit splitting hairs over who suffers more. Good grief. </p>
<p>The issue is raises. Everybody wants them, but the teachers are demanding them. You can’t do that in the private sector.</p>
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<p>And that makes the teachers actions wrong?</p>
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<p>In trading, we have a saying: it’s not good form to complain about your profits.</p>
<p>When you are funded by the public and the public is seeing their income go down, demanding a raise is bad form. The teachers in my district understand this. I live in a district where the median household income is about $10K less than Wrentham but I’d guess that our town has a better quality of life because it costs less to live here.</p>
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<p>Well said.</p>
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In economic times like these, yes. It does.</p>
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I’m sure it is very welcome and much needed. The thing is, lots of people work jobs where what they do for 10 months makes 6 weeks off very welcome and very much needed. But they don’t get 6 weeks off.</p>
<p>There are several questions and issues at play here. It would be helpful to know what the steps on the King Phillip salary scale represent. Do they represent years of service? Are they in one year or multi-year increments?</p>
<p>Another is how long has it been since teachers in the King Phillip school district have had a raise even if it’s in the form of a COLA? </p>
<p>As for your statement that the stand teachers in King Phillip are taking is wrong, obviously that’s a matter of opinion.</p>
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<p>Wall St has been bailed out and they’re giving out $140 billion in bonuses this year. Maybe they really, really, really deserve their bonuses - though the stock performance of the big bankers would seem to argue against that. Can you see that paying out those kinds of bonuses is bad form when there were 100,000 new foreclosures in September alone?</p>
<p>Well said, DougBetsy in post # 32. The grass is always greener on the other side. My h works the way BCEagle described-- Works ridiculously long hours night and day, then on the phone with India from midnight-3 am. If he gets <em>maybe</em> 3 hrs of sleep a night he is lucky. Lunch? Thats a box of crackers on his desk. Has more work dumped on him than any human can possibly manage. He has no union to complain to, and even if he did, he wouldn’t complain. HR, even if he did talk to them, wouldn’t do anything. He has a job to do and he does it. Doesn’t complain. He also works both nights AND weekends.</p>
<p>When he worked for a worldwide company, the overseas offices didn’t care about holidays like Thanksgiving or Memorial day or labor day or whatever-- they needed something then and there. Oh, but try to reach them during the month of August when they are all on holiday. Too bad-- that’s what they do in Europe. Oh, and as for the middle of the night daily talks to India? Why cant they be done at hours that are more convenient for the US staff and after hours for the India staff? They all have set hours and leave to catch trains, busses or whatever. And they don’t work from home. The one night a few weeks ago when he didn’t have to stay on the phone 'til 3 am was because India had a “bank holiday” so the staff was off. So DH had to stay up all night to get something finished to meet an unreasonable deadline imposed by his boss here. It doesn’t end. Try to take a day off here and there/ They still put required teleconferences on his calendar? Six weeks off would be nirvana. Heck, he’d kill for 6 days off. Officially he has vacation time on the books, but even if he takes “time off” he is still working much of that time to get things done for deadlines, respond to emails and phone calls, etc. Time off? That’s a dream. not a reality. He has no one to delegate stuff to, so cant put up an “I am away I’ll get back to you in a few days” message on his email. I wish he could do that, but it isn’t an option. </p>
<p>I am self employed. So while yes, I can set my own hours, I have no corporate benefits-- no healthcare, no paid time off, no other corporate perks. I always, work though lunch, return phone calls, write reports or talk to my assistants while maybe occasionally eating a pkg of Breakstone cottage cheese and fruit or a lean cuisine, and am typically in the office 10-11 hrs/day. I have no guaranteed income. Work could dry up tomorrow. </p>
<p>We all have job stresses and I have a healthy respect for teachers. But, at least we have jobs.</p>
<p>I asking that bonuses on Wall St. are in bad form especially following the bailouts. There are a couple of considerations here though. One is that the situation with the teachers in King Phillip is not the same. There is no financial bailout factored into the mix there I would presume.</p>
<p>In addition we all, myself included are making judgements based on incomplete information.
What do the increments in the salary scale represent? Are they one year or multi-year increments? How long has it been since they’ve had any increase in salary, even COLA’s?
Has the local school board made any non-monetary concessions to the teachers to demonstrate their desire to negotiate in good faith or have the terms of service remained unchanged? For example, in our school district we received no pay increase. Times are tough, we understand that. However, our school system worked with us in other ways such as shortening our contracted year by a day and giving us additional time for planning, etc. Yes, we would have liked to have pay increases but our school board’s willingness to make other concessions that incur no additional cost to them has gone a long way toward assuaging any ill will that may or may not have developed.</p>
<p>The article says that the teachers have already worked for two years w/o a contract. I would hardly consider that selfish on their part.</p>
<p>The bonuses on Wall St is an extreme example of bad form. The average wages of those in the US is falling. Teachers asking for raises in this environment is bad form. Not to the extent of what is happening on Wall St but still bad form. When everyone else is making less, you should be happy with maintaining your income.</p>