Posted on 08/11/2015 9:41:40 AM PDT by MichCapCon
One schoolteacher who gets paid $87,349 annually, and another who gets $80,472, were highlighted in a recent Oakland Press article complaining that teachers had to get second jobs “to make ends meet.”
The article was written by a third teacher, Julia Satterthwaite, who works at the Rochester Community Schools district and is described as a "summer intern” for the newspaper.
The article featured one of the author’s colleagues, Karen Malsbury, who has been teaching for 14 years. Malsbury was quoted as saying, “There is little or no room for professional growth, little opportunity to increase your personal income, no step increases, no bonuses, no inflation pay rises, rising health care costs and more requirements to take college level classes to get up-to-date endorsements.”
Except, that’s not accurate. Rochester Community Schools teachers did experience a freeze in their automatic, seniority-based “step-increase” raises in 2013-14, but the raises continued in 2014-15, with additional step increases scheduled in each of the remaining four years of the current union contract.
While the story didn’t mention how much the teachers who were featured get paid, these figures are a matter of public record. Malsbury was paid $87,349 in 2014-15. Satterthwaite herself collected $65,987 from the school district. Under the district’s union contract these compensation levels were for 184.5 work days.
The Rochester contract has 20 annual “steps” in its pay scale, so teachers have some idea of approximately how much more they will earn for each year they remain on the payroll. Some of these seniority-based raises are as high as 5.5 percent, but in most cases they run between 3 percent and 4 percent. Teachers with more than 20 years on the job received bonuses ranging from $450 to $550.
Rochester Community Schools confirmed in an email that the provisions in the teachers’ contract as posted online were accurate.
Malsbury didn’t respond to questions sent to her work email.
The story also featured another Rochester teacher, Erin Slomka, who was quoted as saying it’s sad that teachers aren’t able to survive on one income. Slomka collected $61,741 in 2014-15.
Hudsonville teacher Lori Humphrey was quoted in the story as saying she knew several teachers selling skin care products on the side to make up for pay freezes.
But according to her district’s union contract, Humphrey didn’t have to endure pay freezes. She was paid $80,472 in 2014-15. The three-year contract specified 183 work days, and also included step raises for each year. An example provided in the contract text spells out how step increases work, so that eligible teachers will get a 7.7 percent salary increase in the 2016-17 school year.
The teachers' salaries reported in this story were provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request sent to the state of Michigan, which included a database of public school employees that are a part of the Michigan Public School Employees' Retirement System (MPSERS). The figures cited here do not include health insurance and retirement benefits also given to school employees.
We had a good laugh over Sandra in the factory lunch room. Best line was by a Black co-worker who offered “Maybe she had to pay that kind of money to get laid!”
On an aside, I really don’t know how anyone can make it making under $50K/year. $80K is possible, but $50K wold be tough.
I fully know why education is more expensive today. I focused on teachers since the article was about teachers. Btw, the quality and cost of education 30 years ago should not be a benchmark for education today. Educators 30 years ago were no better than they are today. The results they produced are about the same. Teachers are half the problem.
Now, if you want to expand the conversation to adminstrative overhead, then I am game. Administrators in terms of their numbers and backgrounds are just as disfunctional as teachers today. In fact, most administrators in schools are former teachers. Being a teacher doesn't qualify one to be an adminstrator. Adminstrators would be better if they had degrees in business, not advanced degrees in education or non-rigorous degrees in adminstration that are filled with a bunch of liberal/progressive nonsense.
When I was in high school in the late 70's the entire high school had a principal and a vice-principal. I graduated in a class of 465 students. Add three other grades to that and we had the work load for two adminstrators. The same should be effective today if you remove all the bull crap that liberals have brought into education. That bull crap begins with teacher unions and government mandates on local education.
The problem with education today is that there is no focus on education. We have lost focus. Education is about effectively and efficiently transferring knowledge and American values to minds full of mush, nothing more. For every dollar spent on something else is a dollar not spent on educating. Those are wasted dollars.
The difference between me and her...is quite different.
I don't have a Union to protect me. I haven't had a raise in 5 years. My insurance keeps going up..and my benefits keep going down.
I don't have summers off. I've been doing what I do for 25 yrs..almost twice the number of years...Malsbury's been a "teacher"...and she makes more than I do.
I'm damn good at what I do....
So Malsbury....go complain to someone who cares...And BTW...I save lives for a living.
Ummmmm.....detasseling what?
I’m guessing -
hair, nails, vacations
You forgot the /s...or did you?
Yes, it would. Just get government out of education. Let parents choose how and how much to educate their children. My grandfather ran a successful fuel oil and oil burner repair business. He had a sixth-grade education. Can that be accomplished today? Perhaps. There might be a need for HVAC training on the trade side of things. If we get rid of government regulations and tax laws then the business side of things requires little more than a sixth-grade education. Our country is screwed up because there is so much government. Solution: either downsize or eliminate government.
I just put their complaints in another perspective from an economic standard of living below theirs, echoing their gripes about higher paid people.
Kind of depends on size of household, etc. It is doable for a a family of four in my flyover city in central Illinois. Probably not much left at the end of the month.
Second that!
BTW.........a BA, MA, PHD, MD, DO...don’t mean you are any good at what you want to be.
Seed corn.
These “educators” are “working” about 7-8 months a year “for the children”...so...lighten up!
Well, there’s something in that. My niece teaches algebra to eighth graders, and barely had enough math courses to qualify as a math teacher. But because she is able to get the least promising eighth graders to learn algebra, she is highly valued by her school and district, and won teacher of the year for her district. I’ve probably forgotten more math than she knows, but I could never get anywhere with those kids.
Very little is needed to teach 8th graders algebra. And I mean little as in don’t clutter the kid’s minds with non-relevant crap. Kids need to master arithmetic before algebra. That’s not a lot of knowledge to master and they have 8 years to do it. It doesn’t take a great deal of knowledge on the part of the teacher either. However, it does take the ability to teach.
You’re a pastor?
What do you do?
I’m a retired soldier, current oil and gas jman electrician.
Now I’m curious what you do outside the hospital? Heh
I mentioned pastor because lately given the global situation, I can’t help but feel that revelation events are imminent.
Teachers don't create a damn thing.
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