ummm, HELLO!!! Teachers work too (some of us might even work harder than you do), and we also pay state taxes.
If you'll read carefully, he's proposed increasing our pay by 2% and our health insurance premiums by 13%.
They've also taken the caps off class sizes, so now I can have 30 or so science students in a room built for about 24. It's not the numbers I mind so much as not having room to turn around, and it's hard to keep an eye on everyone during lab.
Zell was the last teacher-friendly governor we've had, but Zell knew what being a teacher was like.
Umm hello yourself. People at the ATF work too (at least as far as they know), but who cares? What they do isn't something that anyone would pay them for if it weren't for government regulations and the ability of government to plunder taxpayers and spend the money on things that bureaucrats want. If it weren't for tax fueled manditory education that takes from the workers and gives to the bureaucrats you might NOT have a job (unless you worked for a private school.)
You have to consider government jobs in the light if it weren't for government regulations would the jobs even exist in the free market? And the answer for teachers is complex. Yes surely there would be a demand, but it wouldn't be the same since the parents of many might not chose to ejjicate their chillin if they actually had to pay for it.
(some of us might even work harder than you do),
Possible, but so what?
and we also pay state taxes
Again so what? You're still a net tax consumer. You just consume a little less than your gross pay amount.
If you'll read carefully, he's proposed increasing our pay by 2% and our health insurance premiums by 13%.
Is a 13% increase in your insurance premiums equal to a 2% increase in your gross pay? So you really pay almost 16% of your gross salary for insurance? No. I didn't think so, although the freshly educated from public schools might fall for it.
They've also taken the caps off class sizes, so now I can have 30 or so science students in a room built for about 24
What is the voodoo about class size? When you went to college (as presumably you did to get a degree) did you ever have a lecture with a couple of hundred people in it? Of course you did. Was your ability to learn diminshed in proportion to the number of people in the class? If you had 200 fellow students instead of 20 did you learn 1/10th as much because of it? Of course not.
it's hard to keep an eye on everyone during lab
If they require constant supervision during lab, then maybe labs aren't appropriate for that age group.
but Zell knew what being a teacher was like.
What makes you think people don't know what teaching is like? Do you think that if everyone spent a couple of months in a classroom that they would rush out to press their tax dollars on you? Think again.
Bottom line is if you don't like the pay you can do something else that pays better. The government hasn't (yet at least) frozen people in their jobs. I propose the hypothesis that if teachers were really dissatisfied with their pay and working conditions they'd find other employment in droves. But they don't, so either they're not qualified to do anything else (unlikely) or that they found their appropriate level of compensation in the labor market.