Originally Posted by ****OnWheels
Disclaimer - I'm not a teacher, I'm a school psychologist, but I'm part of the NJEA so I lump myself with the teachers.
It's not that teachers don't want to help. We aren't refusing a pay freeze because we don't want to take a freeze. As Steve said, we have contracts. If you had a contract with someone to pay a certain amount of money, you think you could just break that contract to pay less? Or if the person you were paying wanted more? Doesn't happen that way. Why should it be allowed to happen to teachers? And in many districts that did take the pay freeze, they STILL had layoffs and their budgets were STILL defeated. Kinda defeats the purpose, no?
Sure, the private sector has seen layoffs, pay freezes/cuts, and pay in to their benefits. However, when the private sector was seeing huge bonuses and raises year after year back in the 90s, what did the teachers get? Their normal negotiated raises. They didn't complain they weren't getting the same raises and bonuses, because they knew they had a contract and had to abide by it.
As for paying into benefits, I'd have no problem with this either. But you have to realize that 2 people with the same credentials between the private and public sector (degree, years experience, etc) do NOT make the same amount in most cases. I have my BA and an EdS (between a Masters and a doctorate), and I make less than my husband in the private sector who never finished his BA. If pay was similar, it'd be easier to pay into benefits. Teachers with just a BA do not make $50k except maybe in the wealthiest of districts. It often takes 5 years, maybe more, to get there for a teacher with just a BA. With a Masters, maybe they start closer to $50k and take less time to get there. It takes 15 years to see the top of the salary guide, or about $75k - $80k. Teachers do not also get 4% raise every year. The amount of money that goes to all salaries increases by 4%, but is distributed among all steps of the salary guide, so it's usually only a 1-2% raise each year, if we're lucky (my raises are about $1000 each year - very minimal really). And although contracts are for 6 hours 185 days per year, most work much more than that. Some have tallied all the extra time they do work, and have added an addition 2 weeks to 2 months above and beyond. But they don't get overtime and don't ask for a penny more. (in fact, as soon as I finish this, I will be spending about 4 hours on work, as I have a ton of IEPs to write and many other work related things to get done that I couldn't complete in the normal work day)
A lot of people go in to teaching because they have a passion for it, and enjoy it. The benefits make it much more attractive, and attract good and great teachers to the profession. Without that, you'd have a lot of people who want to teach, but because of the pay and/or lack of benefits, decide to go to the private sector instead. Who is left to teach your kids?
The other thing people aren't considering is, with a pay freeze and/or paying in to our benefits, that's less spendable money to pay for necessities and luxuries, which results in lower sales tax and income tax revenue next year. So then what? Another pay freeze and more money into our benefits? The cycle never ends. When the economy does eventually pick up and more money is available, teachers will NEVER see that money back. It's not like they'll "catch up" to where they should have been if they never took the cut, which would typically happen in the private sector.
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