school fundraisers

Chris wrote:

On Nov 24, 5:19?am, "Woolstitcher" wrote:
"Akuvikate" wrote in message

...

On Nov 21, 5:09 pm, Chris wrote:

Someone I know had a good idea -- why not make the teachers
participate in the generation of funds?

This sounds to me like a slap in the face to people who already work
hard for peanuts.

Peanuts? ?you have to be kidding. ?Almost every person in my DH's family is
an teacher ... most of them make WELL over the norm for the area that they
live in. ?This is an old and tired argument. ?The benefits that teachers get
are amazing. ?Absolutely no one I know in the private sector even comes
close to the benefits that teachers receive.

Teacher's salaries have gotten better. In 1986, I took a large pay
cut (i.e. I went from $30K a year to $15K) when I left teaching and
went to work for the State government. But when I did that, I started
over at the beginning of the salary scale and I had taught for several
years and worked my way up.

It's not that they don't work hard for what they earn .. they deserve the
money that they earn .. but it's not bad ... not bad at all.
Anyway ... IMO all the pimping at schools should stop ... teachers, kids,
parents, etc. ?No one should be asked/made to buy stuff. ?A bake sale here
and there is ok, a car wash, a 'rent a teen day' where kids do yard work for
$$ to go to band camp .. those are ok to a point.

I agree. We've already figured out the average hourly rate of a
teacher, overtime included, as compared to other high-paying full-time
(i.e. nonseasonal) professional occupations wherein the employee is
salaried and also does not receive overtime. Is a teachers presence at

I'm not sure how you are doing that. Because while teachers are
salaried, they are only paid for 10 months of the year. So when I
retired from the State government after having worked 7 years as a
teacher and thirteen as a government employee, I had to work for an
additional 14 months to qualify as a 20 year employee. Now the school
system PAYS the 10 month salary out over 12 months, but they only
count 10 months of it as time worked.

Plus how are you figuring the work teachers do when they are not at
school? I did have one teacher on one of my teams who organized her
work so that she did it ONLY at school in school time. But I think
that's relatively rare. I always had papers to grade and work to do
at home in the evenings. There was no extra benefit to working extra
hours - neither in pay nor in recognition.

When I worked as a salaried state employee, they didn't give us any
overtime pay, but we could take compensatory time off with their
agreement as to schedule.

movie night any different than the employee attending the after-hours
board meeting or convention? Nope.

When I had to attend conventions, I got reimbursed for some of my
expenses (like plane tickets, and for meals and hotel). The
accounting office counted it as time worked but we didn't get any comp
time, and they could make us leave on Friday for something that
started on Monday so the tickets would be cheaper.

Annually, the numbers differ, but
certainly not hourly. I have teachers in my family as well, and they
are the first to confirm the awesome benefits and perks.

I don't know that the benefits were that awesome. You get the summer
off so that you can take additional required courses at your expense,
or you can do it at night. All the so-called teachers days are
usually taken up with mandatory training or meetings.

The real benefit is that you get to teach if you like teaching and
want to teach. And if you have kids, most of their vacation time will
coincide with theirs. Otherwise, you have much less flexibility in
scheduling, even though you have the summer off. It's like working
on an assembly line - you can't leave just to take a kid to the
dentist or something. No one would go into teaching to make big
bucks.

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:19:34 GMT, "Woolstitcher"
wrote:

Peanuts? you have to be kidding. Almost every person in my DH's family is
an teacher ... most of them make WELL over the norm for the area that they
live in. This is an old and tired argument. The benefits that teachers get
are amazing. Absolutely no one I know in the private sector even comes
close to the benefits that teachers receive.

Some areas pay teachers better than others, but most teachers I know
don't make well over the norm and some qualify for food stamps.

My pay in Chicago was not bad, but my ds made significantly more as a
first year engineer than I did with a masters degree in math and 8
years in the system.

As for benefits, we did not have great benefits either and we paid a
good portion of our salaries for what we did get. My dh's health
insurance and pension were a lot better than the TRA in Illinois.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Oh, and now that our fundraising order is in, the other drawback with
the time change is that you have literally around 30 minutes to
deliver as many items as you can before dark. @@

Plus how are you figuring the work teachers do when they are not at
school? �I did have one teacher on one of my teams who organized her
work so that she did it ONLY at school in school time. �But I think
that's relatively rare. �I always had papers to grade and work to do
at home in the evenings. � There was no extra benefit to working extra
hours - neither in pay nor in recognition.


That's part of the issue/argument certainly; however, just as any
salaried 12-months-a-year and 8-hours-a-day employee, you must be as
efficient as possible to cut down on the imposition on personal/free
time. Many jobs, no matter how low or how high on the professional
spectrum involve uncompensated work time at home in the evenings.



The real benefit is that you get to teach if you like teaching and
want to teach. �And if you have kids, most of their vacation time will
coincide with theirs. �Otherwise, you have much less flexibility in
scheduling, even though you have the summer off. � It's like working
on an assembly line - you can't leave just to take a kid to the
dentist or something. �No one would go into teaching to make big
bucks. �- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Everyone else has job responsibilites that they cannot just up and
leave either. A teacher has more benefit at hitting any appointment
prior to 5 p.m. than the average worker. Even on orientation night,
teachers at our school will send home a note saying that they won't be
there for the entire time because they need to attend their own
children's orientation night at another school. A lot of teachers are
also able to bring their children to and from school with them on
their commute, thereby avoiding the cost of daycare. I'm not saying
all teachers make big bucks, but I do know some in IL who make 6
figures.

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:04:23 -0800 (PST), Chris
wrote:

Many jobs, no matter how low or how high on the professional
spectrum involve uncompensated work time at home in the evenings.

OTOH, when I worked for IBM, I got compensatory time off when a
project that had required working really long hours was done.
Also, when I worked for IBM, my education and training were paid for.
Many companies reimburse for college classes that are relevant to the
job. IBM also provided training on company time while they paid you
your salary.

Teachers must keep their credentials up-to-date by taking classes and
we paid for them out of our own pocket and went to them on our own
time at night or in the summers. Summer off is a myth. Most teachers
don't have the summer off. They are either going to class to keep
current, working on updating their plans for the following year and/or
working a second job to make ends meet.

My ds who is a chemical engineer, travels and sometimes works 12 hour
days. But he is allowed to take off when the work is slow. He also
gets a lot of perks - travel allowances, frequent flier miles,
upgrades from economy to business class when he flies (and sometimes
he can take his family with him on trips - the plan is to take his
wife and dd to Wales for 10 days between his work hours on a startup
he has to do there and while they won't pay the air fare, his frequent
flier miles will).

Low teacher pay comes at a high cost for schools and kids, who lose
good teachers to better-paying professions. Some 20 percent of new
public school teachers leave the profession by the end of the first
year, and almost half leave within five years. Pay-related turnover is
especially high for minorities, males, and teachers under the age of
30.

http://www.nea.org/pay/maps/teachermap.html

Accountants, Management Trainees, Registered Nurses, Software
Designers, Field Engineers and Computer Programmers all earn more than
teachers on average.




--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Nov 26, 2:03�pm, toto wrote:
On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:04:23 -0800 (PST), Chris
wrote:

Many jobs, no matter how low or how high on the professional
spectrum involve uncompensated work time at home in the evenings.

OTOH, when I worked for IBM, I got compensatory time off when a
project that had required working really long hours was done. �
Also, when I worked for IBM, my education and training were paid for.
Many companies reimburse for college classes that are relevant to the
job. �IBM also provided training on company time while they paid you
your salary.


IBM is far removed from the reality of most other organizations/
corporations however. I, personally, won't be bought out with
compensatory time off, as my personal time and expertise/skills are
worth $$$$, unless of course the ratio of compensatory time to OT
worked is 1.5:1 or greater.


Teachers must keep their credentials up-to-date by taking classes and
we paid for them out of our own pocket and went to them on our own
time at night or in the summers. �Summer off is a myth. �Most teachers
don't have the summer off. �They are either going to class to keep
current, working on updating their plans for the following year and/or
working a second job to make ends meet. �

Just curious. What portion is a write-off?


My ds who is a chemical engineer, travels and sometimes works 12 hour
days. �But he is allowed to take off when the work is slow. �He also
gets a lot of perks - travel allowances, frequent flier miles,
upgrades from economy to business class when he flies (and sometimes
he can take his family with him on trips - the plan is to take his
wife and dd to Wales for 10 days between his work hours on a startup
he has to do there and while they won't pay the air fare, his frequent
flier miles will). �

Low teacher pay comes at a high cost for schools and kids, who lose
good teachers to better-paying professions. Some 20 percent of new
public school teachers leave the profession by the end of the first
year, and almost half leave within five years. Pay-related turnover is
especially high for minorities, males, and teachers under the age of
30.

Nobody is to blame that new teachers leave before they get established
enough to command the higher salary, just as the advertising executive
and the majority of any other professional workers had to do, they
start out at the bottom of the range and work their way up. I don't
cry to anyone that I made peanuts at my first job and that it took me
5 years to work my way up in position or salary before I could quit my
second job.


http://www.nea.org/pay/maps/teachermap.html

Accountants, Management Trainees, Registered Nurses, Software
Designers, Field Engineers and Computer Programmers all earn more than
teachers on average.

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Planning is a huge part of being an effective salaried employee to
where you don't hurt your own hourly rate.

Salaried positions are created with the knowledge that overtime exists
that will go unpaid and with a general idea of how many extra hours
will occur in a position, on an average. It is up to each individual
employee to become as efficient and effective a worker as they can be,
understanding completely what is expected. If a teacher is spending
two whole months of summer vacation prepping for the next year and
closing up the end of the previous year, then I would say they need to
take a close look at their organizational methods OR prove to admin
the exact reasons they deserve more money/a step up in scale because
of the exact requirements of a position that are going unnoticed, just
like the rest of us dancing monkeys can do and do do. If teachers need
to be switched to hourly pay, then take it up with the appropriate
folks, but hourly averages still afford a teacher a higher hourly rate
even considering all of the unpaid OT the average salaried worker puts
in as well. Construction workers are also seasonal and have to find
ways to make ends meet during *down* times.

I don't understand who is rationalizing LESS PAY at all. I honestly
don't see how if using $30,000/year as the number = less pay at all.

Salaried Teacher A makes $30,000 a year, works 180 days a year @ 1530
hours per year = $19.60 an hour.

Salaried Worker B makes $30,000 a year, works 260 days a year @ 2080
hours per year = $14.42 an hour.

Retention/Incentive bonuses based on performance and qualifications
are entirely different than getting paid for time not spent working
IMO.



Even if you take it to the far ends of the spectrum to include obscene
OT for each, you can come up with the following comparison:

Actually, I'll start with an obscenely low amount like $10,000, along
with this $50,000 comparison, and everything in between still figures
out the same way....

10K at 195 days per year:

Teacher works 8-h days/40-h weeks=1560 hours= $6.41/hour
Teacher works 9-h days/45-h weeks=1755 hours= $5.70/hour
Teacher works 10-h days/50-h weeks=1950 hours= $5.13/hour
Teacher works 12-h days/60-h week=2340 hours=$4.27/hour

10K at 260 days per year:

Worker works 8-h days/40-h weeks=2080 hours= $4.81/hour
Worker works 9-h days/49-h weeks=2340 hours= $4.27/hour
Worker works 10-h days/50-h weeks=2600 hours= $3.85/hour
Worker works 12-h days/60-h weeks=3120 hours= $3.21/hour

10K at 244 days per year: (minus 16 days - 2 weeks vacation and 6 paid
holidays)

Worker works 8-h days/40-h weeks=1952 hours= $5.12/hour
Worker works 9-h days/49-h weeks=2196 hours= $4.55/hour
Worker works 10-h days/50-h weeks=2440 hours= $4.10/hour
Worker works 12-h days/60-h weeks=2928 hours= $3.42/hour


50K at 195 days per year:

Teacher works 8-h days/40-h weeks=1560 hours= $32.05/hour
Teacher works 9-h days/45-h weeks=1755 hours= $28.49/hour
Teacher works 10-h days/50-h weeks=1950 hours= $25.64/hour
Teacher works 12-h days/60-h weeks=2340 hours= $21.37/hour


50K at 260 days per year:

Worker works 8-h days/40-h weeks=2080 hours= $24.04/hour
Worker works 9-h days/45-h weeks=2340 hours= $21.38/hour
Worker works 10-h days/50-h weeks=2600 hours= $19.23/hour
Worker works 12-h days/60-h weeks=3120 hours= $16.03/hour


50K at 244 days per year:

Worker works 8-h days/40-h weeks=1952 hours= $25.61/hour
Worker works 9-h days/45-h weeks=2196 hours= $22.77/hour
Worker works 10-h days/50-h weeks=2440 hours= $20.49/hour
Worker works 12-h days/50-h weeks=2928 hours= $17.08/hour

So, no matter how you slice it, even if all workers contained the same
level of education and worked the same number of extra, unpaid hours,
regardless of technicality, teachers still come out ahead.


Salaried positions in general bother me because they exist simply to
prevent a company or organization from paying for all of the extra
they expect out of their employees, teachers, executives, and
laborers. i don't believe in getting paid for time not worked.

For example, if we say a teacher works 195 days a year at 10-hour days
for 50-hour weeks at $25.64/hour, it is in fact considered comparable
to the "average" worker possessing the same degree who gets paid time
off and works 60-hour weeks at $17.08/hour, actually $8/hour less; is
still comparable to the same person who works the 60-hour weeks at 260
days a year, and yes, and I even go as far as to say that it turns out
to not be comparable for the average worker.

Also, here is some information on various professional ranges from my
state alone:

Here is more than one position since you asked, starting with a
teaching position, all from my State's current job posting list:

Special Ed Teacher - salary comm. with experience
School Teacher P11 = $18.29/hour

Special Alternative Incarceration Officer = $15.44/hour
State Worker 4 = $7.50 hour
Corrections Program Coordinator = $16.78/hour
Corrections Resident Representative = $13.55/hour
Information Technology Programmer/Analyst = $15.75/hour
Transportation Maintenance Worker = $13.85/hour
Environmental Quality Analyst = $16.22/hour
Toxicologist = $17.52/hour
Corrections Officer = $14.35/hour


Accountants, Management Trainees, Registered Nurses, Software
Designers, Field Engineers and Computer Programmers all earn more than
teachers on average.

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

And they do earn more annually, but not necessarily hourly, than a
teacher, and for reasons that the positions you cite are highly
technical/skilled positions (based on the definition of technological
positions these days), some requiring many all-nighters with no extra
compensation, some that involve risks to their own health and safety,
etc.

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:03:35 GMT, toto wrote:

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:04:23 -0800 (PST), Chris
wrote:

Many jobs, no matter how low or how high on the professional
spectrum involve uncompensated work time at home in the evenings.

OTOH, when I worked for IBM, I got compensatory time off when a
project that had required working really long hours was done.
Also, when I worked for IBM, my education and training were paid for.
Many companies reimburse for college classes that are relevant to the
job. IBM also provided training on company time while they paid you
your salary.

Teachers must keep their credentials up-to-date by taking classes and
we paid for them out of our own pocket and went to them on our own
time at night or in the summers. Summer off is a myth. Most teachers
don't have the summer off. They are either going to class to keep
current, working on updating their plans for the following year and/or
working a second job to make ends meet.

DH's family and friends are full of teachers. They seem to have the summer
off. SIL is a high school teacher. She had the summer off. Sure, she
spends some time preparing just before school begins, but she had most of
it off and was travelling a good deal of the time, not at home working on
anything.

Sure, the salary could be higher, but then she doesn't work summers and
vacations and holidays are always off, no weekends or night shifts. Her
salary is not bad. It is nearly six figures. For having more than three
months off a year, that's not bad.

She does continuing education on her own time and money, but so do I.

She does grade papers at home for no pay, but I consider her salaried, like
DH, who also brings his work home for no extra pay.

The only quibble I have about her job is that she has to supply the class
with basic necessities, like tissue and markers for the whiteboard. I
can't believe she has to go to work and supply those things out of her own
pocket. OTOH, that stuff is mostly donated by parents at DS's school, so
there are ways around it. It does bother me that it is not part of the
package, though.

The only quibble I have about her job is that she has to supply the class
with basic necessities, like tissue and markers for the whiteboard. �I
can't believe she has to go to work and supply those things out of her own
pocket. �OTOH, that stuff is mostly donated by parents at DS's school, so
there are ways around it. �It does bother me that it is not part of the
package, though.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

That is what we do here. There isn't a single time that we enter one
of the kids' classrooms where we aren't expected to pick something off
of the donation tree to buy and provide the class with, and the items
are numerous--white board markers, hand sanitizer, tissues, snacks for
kids who forget to bring their own, stamp pads, markers, etc. We also
volunteer to help out, and in some classes there can be as many as 3
parent helpers there on a given day -- to cut down further on any
imposition on personal time. We grade things, cut out paper shapes for
projects, create spiral-bound visual aids for teacher, cut out die-
cast paper letters and shapes for classroom boards, sharpen all
colored pencils, do laminating, etc. While I understand that some feel
my opinions lack in respect for teachers, it is simply not true. I
merely figured out hourly rates. I also understand that not all
situations are as they are in my area, but it contributes greatly to
*my* perception of the teachers are underpaid generalization.

Chris wrote:

I also understand that not all
situations are as they are in my area, but it contributes greatly to
*my* perception of the teachers are underpaid generalization.

Well, given that these things vary dramatically from
region to region, is it not surprising that generalizations
either way are likely to leave someone in disagreement? And,
of course, it also matters what your personal perspective is.
If you're earning less than a teacher's salary for your area,
I'm sure a teacher's salary seems more generous. If you earn
much more, perhaps it seems less generous, particularly if you
are in a high cost of living area.

Best wishes,
Ericka