Posted on 04/11/2012 4:40:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
EAGnews.org is releasing a series of stunning reports to show taxpayers exactly how our dollars are being spent in government schools. We repeatedly hear from the education establishment that school coffers are being raided, requiring teachers to be laid off and programs to be cut. We hear schools are on the brink of bankruptcy and are operating on shoe-string budgets.
But local media outlets have long been derelict in telling citizens how the billions of K-12 dollars are really being spent. How can taxpayers determine if schools actually do need more money if no one is tracking where the dollars are going?
Enter EAGnews.org.
In the first of a series of reports, EAGnews.org examined the teachers’ contract for Milwaukee Public Schools for the 2010-2011 school year and discovered a slew of expensive provisions. The numbers are shocking.
For starters, 5,200 teachers took a whopping 92,691 days off last year, for sick/personal leave, convention leave and “incentive” leave. That level of teacher absenteeism – over 9% of the school year – resulted in $11.9 million being spent on substitute teachers.
“Step” raises – given for a teacher’s years of service, not effectiveness – cost $5.5 million last school year. “Lump sum raises” cost another $10.4 million.
According to data received from the Milwaukee district, teachers do not contribute to their retirement or health care plans. Thus, MPS paid the full freight of those benefits for teachers – spending $56 million on pensions and roughly $128 million for health insurance.
While Gov. Scott Walker’s budget reforms now require school employees to pay a portion of both of these items, MPS extended its contract with teachers’ union members prior to the reforms passing. And that haste is generating millions in waste.
More examples:
MPS spent nearly $2 million to compensate teachers for monitoring the lunch room in elementary schools.
Milwaukee provides for teachers who want to retire early – at 62 – but don’t yet qualify for their full pension, which begins at 65. Thus, taxpayers pay the difference of the pension they will receive at 65 and the one they receive a lower rate for retiring early. MPS spent $15.6 million on that perk.
MPS paid out $709,306 for unused sick days.
Have you detected an expense that directly benefits children? Me either. Yet Milwaukee, like too many other schools, continues throwing money out the door to make adults happy and maintain “labor peace.” With this kind of reckless spending, it’s no wonder Milwaukee Public Schools are facing a financial crisis.
As long as these teachers can dupe the taxpaying public into believing that teachers are underpaid saints, they will continue to be able to milk the system — get paid a fortune to not work and saddle our kids with liabilit for their rich pension and medical plans.
That equates to almost 18 days/year. That’s a lot of sick days.
>>That equates to almost 18 days/year. That’s a lot of sick days.<<
I am not a big supporter of teachers (or any) unions, but 18 days a year of PTO (they combine sic/vacation) isn’t totally out of range and pretty well matches what middle management gets in Corporate America (I get 5 weeks a year and have for the last 30 years in each of my various jobs).
And State Laws are structured that if you don’t use it you lose it or you get a payout (this looks like a payout state) to keep the outstanding liability manageable.
There is a lot to dislike about some of the apparent issues on this union contract, but the headline sensationalizes by taking 2 reasonable numbers to come up with a BIG number.
The Fortune 100 company I work for would fire them for attendance. unless it is a disability thing. 18 sick days for sniffles? This is how we refer to those that call in. “Bill called in; he has an eye problem,,,,,,,couldn’t see coming in.”
They’ve got PED, “public employee disease.”
It is an ailment that makes them use every single sick day available.
In union employees it is incurable.
Yes, and that equates to 10% of the number of school days they should have been teaching but missed.
Especially when you consider they work 9 months out of the year with a week off at Christmas and a week off for Spring Break - not to mention the numerous holidays/off days during the school year. I figure they work about 7 1/2 months for a years pay.
Speaking for myself, I've been in the work force for 32 years and I've only had one sick day. That comes out to an average of .03125 days per year (or an average of 15 minutes per year).
It's amazing how much "healthier" you are when your livelihood depends upon it.
It's you use it, or lose it for us. ( Personally my idea would be to reward the folks that don't use it...by giving them a 1/3 of the days they don't use every year...)
I'd cut "convention" and "incentive" days totally out...and I suspect that's a big slice of their PTO.
That all said....I'd get rid of the NEA...and give parents "school choice". Period.
My bet is this system is mostly black teachers by now and they are the ones abusing it along with some of the white teachers. Newer younger “teachers” “edumacters” will skew black and Hispanic in a system like Milwaukee. How many white students there...just saying
Most people work 49 weeks a year.
Teachers work about 38 weeks.
18 sick days? I’ve never worked for a company that gives any more than 10 days each year and no carry overs or pay if you don’t use them. Vacation days increase over the years, but this also should not carry over year to year.
Teachers as someone else said only work 9 months out of the year. And yes, they get Christmas break, February break, April break and how about all the other holidays that are thrown in there. Then they get the whole summer off. I just can’t believe that this is allowed.
I have big problems with teachers complaining. Don’t get me wrong - I have 2 sister-in-laws that both teach, but I do think they get way too much leverage, pay, and benefits. I’m outraged!
The school year is about 180 days give or take a day or two depending on which State you are in minus 7 or 8 holidays and a week for spring break leaves 166 or 165 days of work. Take 18 “sick” days off that and you only are working 148 or 147 days a year.
A private sector employee with 3 weeks vacation and 10 paid holidays and 5 paid personal days is expected to work 230 days in a year. Or about 56% more for the privilege of paying the salaries and benefits of the “educators” through their school taxes.
Teaching is like getting full time pay for part time work.
Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s my school district did not have paid teachers aides and our class size was between 30 and 40 pupils. We also did not build new schools at the mere suggestion that there was a shortage of class room space. We did double sessions, we did classes in the bus garage, the basement of a local church, and other rented space.
My teachers included World War II and Korean war veterans. There were very few discipline problems-they did not put up with crap from children (anybody that was still attending school).
We learned to read, do math,algebra, trigonometry, geometry studied history and English, a year each of chemistry, physics, biology,and qualitative analysis and had to pass the state wide test in each subject to get credit toward graduation.
We did not know that Johnny had two mothers or that Rachel has two daddies. We did not practice with condoms we practiced football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse, track,and cheer-leading.
Global warming for us meant that the Russians and the Americans had gone to war with their nuclear arsenals not some cow flatulence or power plant emissions causing some imperceptible rise in temperature.
Now we turn out graduates that do not know the proper use of “two, to, and too” or “there and their” or “lose and loose”; can’t make change unless the cash register tells them the amount and need a calculator to do addition on a short column of numbers. Forget about multiplication or division.
And you only have to wonder how much teaching gets done during those 148 days a year to achieve today’s results.....
Those 18 days are on top of the regular school holidays. Regular person has a work-year of approximately 240 days. A teacher has a work-year of around 190 days. Also, of your 5 weeks (I recieved 4) how many did you actually take, and did your company have to hire a temp while you were gone?
I think 18 days is fairly significant when the total situation is considered.
I just retired from a highly unionized school system. We were allowed 10 days per year, 3 of which could be used for any purpose, the other 7 for sick days alone. If you accumulated sick days, you could use them with a more serious illness, such as surgery, etc. You could also use accumulated sick days for family leave if a parent or child needed emergency care, or whatever. I think this is pretty standard for a large school district. So, there might’ve been accumulated days involved. Normally, you just have to let your supervisor know if you need more than the standard sick days, and as long as you have accumulated days you are okay, or you have to take leave without pay.
This is a lot of days, but with the tensions as they have been, I doubt any principal is going to take on the union over sick days unless things got out of hand. If this was one school, yes. But, if a district or several schools, it would be hard to say.
Agreed however is your work year 181 days a year? That is too much time off for folks who have a several weeks off each year, 3 day weekends, and every federal holiday. A week spring break, a week thanksgiving and a two week Christmas holiday.
>>I think 18 days is fairly significant when the total situation is considered.<<
That is my point. I don’t think everything is shaded but I don’t like when a publication generates a number and then runs with it.
You both post almost 180 degrees of potentially similar situations.
I would live to root the anti-union on with an “ends justifies the means” stick, but I can’t do it in good conscience.
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