Go Red for Ed(ucation)!

[jamil]

33 years ago when I started teaching I knew what the job was and the salary schedule was. 10 years ago I did not know I would go this long without a raise and near doubling my insurance costs with tripling the out of pocket costs of insurance. Non educators dictating education mandates has increased tenfold. This debacle planned at Indy is less about money than it is to get legislature's fingers out of the mandated tests. You know and I know legislature pockets get $$$$ for picking one test format over another. We are told of new mandates and given dates to comply without warnings or ability to react/act. Two years ago legislature decided all students going for general diplomas wouldn't count as diplomas! ? ! Thus our school's graduation rate went from 93% to 40 something. Now they have overturned that decision BUT our school is being visited and on a program due to our low graduation rate! What??? So a lot of it is just bull**** from Indy towards student populations via testing.
Dollars and days, you all went to school so you are experts on teaching/teachers and schools so I won't go into that debate.
My school has cancelled for the 19th due to not enough subs to cover teachers putting in for leave. Me, I'll be at home cutting and splitting firewood or hauling manure. I will be at school the day they require us to be there to make up for this cancelled day.
Coach is very articulate and I agree with his post.

I agree about the mandated tests. They're mostly bull**** as far as I can tell. It seems teachers mostly teach for the test because that's what they're evaluated on. Ideas, good intentions or not, have unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences of "no child left behind" is the artificial creation of the test market, and whatever corruption or cronyism goes along with that.

About the "experts", I'm not a teacher, I'm not an expert on teaching, but I can tell an effective teacher from an ineffective teacher. I think the effective teachers deserve to make more than the ineffective teachers, because the effective ones have more value. And that's about all I have to say on that.

 

[Ballstater98]

 

[Nazgul]

Ok, what about sports? Why does the local school of 700 have 3 gyms? why are there new football fields buiult and swimming pools??

Physical activity is very important but if your mission is education why is half the budget spent on sports?

Maybe it should be separate. If you want a basketball team let the parents form a group, build a gym and pay the operating costs. You can enter any school and see all the prominent athletes awards and jersey's on display. Why aren't the Lilly Scholars, National Merit and others displayed?

Was in a High School for an academic competition in Nashville, the foyer has rows of scholastic achievers displayed.

Yeah I know, I dissed Basketball in Indiana...………….

 

[avboiler11]

Got notice yesterday evening that New Albany Floyd County Schools would be closed in the 19th for teachers to attend this rally in Indy.

Now I myself am a union member, so I get that collective bargaining gains its strength from numbers. My sister-in-law is also a teacher in Kentucky who lost her job one day shy of tenure after the state passed its unconstitutional "sewer" bill that thrashed teacher pensions, which is what ultimately led Gov. Bevin to being voted out this year. That said...

I find it a bit hypocritical that teachers claim to want better public education, but are causing students to miss a scheduled educational day so that they can protest. I'm sure it'll be made up on a scheduled in-service day, or perhaps lose a day of spring break or worst-case, extend the school year into the summer. Either way, nobody can tell me student outcomes will ultimately benefit from this.

I also came across an interesting blurb from some small school district superintendent saying that state's property tax cap is 'starving' his district of money which would be used to better compensate teachers. Nevermind that voters in individual districts can lobby for and pass referendums adding property tax for the purpose of better funding schools, the state is at fault here. I'm sure they think this because voter will rarely vote themselves increased taxes (and they're not wrong), but if the state raises the cap ANY then that will result in more money for school districts across the board.

 

[Ballstater98]

Ok, what about sports? Why does the local school of 700 have 3 gyms? why are there new football fields buiult and swimming pools??

Physical activity is very important but if your mission is education why is half the budget spent on sports?

Maybe it should be separate. If you want a basketball team let the parents form a group, build a gym and pay the operating costs.

Those monies have to come out of the capital fund (or cashing in a bond,etc.) not the general fund where teacher salaries have to come from.

 

[ATOMonkey]

I am a non-union public school teacher. I would be interested in seeing the law that requires teacher raises. I know of some corporations in my area that have taken pay cuts over the last handful of years. I wish I knew more about state and school finance so I could form an educated opinion on how the state treats teacher pay. I have a feeling that my displeasure with my pay has as much or more to due with my local corporation than it does with the state. Other teachers I work with want to blame the state but I'm not sure if some of them are smart enough to realize the state gets its money by taking it from the people.

IC 20-28-9-1.5

 

[ATOMonkey]

About special education, the IDEA act kinda ****ed school districts. It’s one of those mostly unfunded mandates from DC, which is a burden to the local school districts. It requires, among other things, that students with disabilities must receive Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that is tailored to their individual needs.

Courts have ruled that the standard for FAPE is “significant progress”. So lots of law suites filed by parents who think their autistic child hasn’t made significant progress. And I’m not disparaging the parents. My nephew is severely autistic and he is no less loved by his family. But the “significant” standard of FAPE is really ****ing expensive, especially when the cost is paid by the local school districts. “Significant progress” for my nephew, isn’t a lot to people without mental disabilities. But it’s a lot to his parents. And it costs a lot to taxpayers.

It’s just a bad overall problem that’s not easily solved with a decentralized public education model. I want to keep the public schools decentralized. But the “significant progress” standard is unfair to the local school corporation to have to pay for that. It takes highly trained specialists with nearly constant individualized interaction with these students to achieve FAPE. If that has to be the standard then something else has to happen.

Ideally, maybe we have to talk about how realistic, and valuable to society is FAPE. I know it’s highly valuable to parents. But these parents are asking their local communities to pay for 6 hours per day of intensive individualized interaction with trained professionals, 5 days per week, 36 weeks per year. I think the community should get a say in how much that is worth to them.

So maybe this task needs to be different from the decentralized school model. Maybe there should be a different school for these kids, something that's not a burden to communities. Not sure that’s an answer I like. I kinda think we need to be more realistic about the real value to society. I empathize with these parents. They just want what's best for their kids like any parent. I would want that for my kid. But to educate their kids with the "significant progress" standard is an unfair burden on society for some of the most severe cases. Either way, The IDEA Act, with "significant progress" standard of FAPE, is incompatible with the idea of community school systems, and it takes resources away from the traditional classroom, which has a larger impact on society.

Schools with special needs children do receive additional funding from the state (don't know if it's enough, probably not) along with federal grants and medicaid dollars. Which is why (so they tell me) IPS spends so much more money per child than any other corporation. It's because they receive more money per child than any other corporation.

 

[Sigblitz]

Here is what's going on. I'm in Wayne township so I'll use that as an example. The schools got more money this year. And some, like Wayne, are getting a referendum, another wind fall. It's at the district's discretion to pay more money to the teachers. It's certainly there, and they feel they should get a piece of it. So let's march the statehouse. The administrators, who dole out the money, are giving them an e-learning day to go to the statehouse. So there's no e-learning going on that day, so basically it's fraud. But they are encouraging them to go because they really should be picketing the administration. The are being paid by the administration that have the money and won't redistribute it to picket the statehouse to give the administration more money.

 

[ATOMonkey]

Those monies have to come out of the capital fund (or cashing in a bond,etc.) not the general fund where teacher salaries have to come from.

While true, the law also states that money can be transferred in and out of the General Fund however the corporation pleases. It just can't PAY for capital improvement out of the general fund. So you transfer the money, then you write the check.

 

[Nazgul]

Special needs students are by far my favorite. You see more success helping and socializing them than some others.

Get to to interact with these students daily and it is very uplifting. Money well spent.

Don

 

[Nazgul]

Those monies have to come out of the capital fund (or cashing in a bond,etc.) not the general fund where teacher salaries have to come from.

Understood. Still the money is spent somewhere other than academics.

Don

 

[Coach]

Special needs students are by far my favorite. You see more success helping and socializing them than some others.

Get to to interact with these students daily and it is very uplifting. Money well spent.

Don

What do you mean?

 

[Clark & Addison]

to my knowledge, teachers are the only profession that has a state law requiring raises so long as certain standards are met. I can point you to the law if you need it.

IC 20-28-9-1.5

Thank you for the code regarding teacher salary. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand, but I read IC 20-28-9-1.5 and I don't see where it requires raises.

The way I read it is that section (a) requires compensation for additional degrees attained before 2015 to continue and that additional degrees after 2015 may receive additional compensation under certain conditions. This varies from when I started teaching. When I started a teacher got an automatic pay raise when a master's degree was attained. This code changes that. I can agree with this change. Just because a teacher has a master's degree does not mean that he/she is a better teacher.

Section (b) states what teacher pay increases must be based upon. No longer can pay raises be based only on years of experience and degree(s) attained. This section states that teacher pay increases must be based partially on teacher evaluation. Another point that I can agree with. I've worked with teachers that had 20+ years of experience and a master's degree (which had them topped out on the old compensation model) that were not near as good of teachers as some of the younger teachers with only a bachelors degree.

There are other sections (c-i) to this code, but I can't see where any of those require pay raises either.

The way I read this code is that state law prevents pay raises unless certain conditions are met, but does not require raises if those conditions are met. If I'm misreading this please let me know how I should be interpreting it.

 

[jsharmon7]

So many questions...

How are school districts getting away with shutting down for the day to go protest? I’m not against their cause, but I don’t understand this.

I think a lot of public service jobs should pay more. I know plenty of police departments in Indiana paying guys less than an Amazon warehouse worker makes per hour. How about our folks in the military? Has cost of living just gotten too high?

Should teachers become hourly employees so are compensated for after-hours time? People view teaching as a “calling,” and think teachers should do things on their own time for the good of the students. I think they should get paid for it. Nobody gets into public service to make a bunch of money, but they shouldn’t have to volunteer time either.

 

[jamil]

Schools with special needs children do receive additional funding from the state (don't know if it's enough, probably not) along with federal grants and medicaid dollars. Which is why (so they tell me) IPS spends so much more money per child than any other corporation. It's because they receive more money per child than any other corporation.

It’s not usually enough. At least they have insurance for when parents sue them when their kid doesn’t make the progress the parents expected.

 

[Jludo]

That is a big problem, teachers could deal with students if they were allowed to. they cant deal with parents threatening to sue them when their precious timmy goes on a classroom destroying tirade and the adult finally steps in to physically restrains him.

 

[jsx1043]

After working as a school resource officer in one of the state’s largest and most diverse school systems for three years, and the following year as a teacher myself... I don’t think it’s fair for teachers to be paid on evaluations ONLY. It would be more appropriate to do so if they had the ability to clean out their classrooms of troublemakers and negative influence, but their hands are tied in most instances.

As with anything government-operated, it’s a mess.

 

[Sigblitz]

So many questions...

How are school districts getting away with shutting down for the day to go protest? I’m not against their cause, but I don’t understand this.

I think a lot of public service jobs should pay more. I know plenty of police departments in Indiana paying guys less than an Amazon warehouse worker makes per hour. How about our folks in the military? Has cost of living just gotten too high?

Should teachers become hourly employees so are compensated for after-hours time? People view teaching as a “calling,” and think teachers should do things on their own time for the good of the students. I think they should get paid for it. Nobody gets into public service to make a bunch of money, but they shouldn’t have to volunteer time either.

My daughter puts in a lot of time grading, preparing. I make twice as much and she works twice as hard. And she almost gave it up. Kids won't do their work, or lack any kind of home structure and is disruptive in class.

 

[HoughMade]

That is a big problem, teachers could deal with students if they were allowed to. they cant deal with parents threatening to sue them when their precious timmy goes on a classroom destroying tirade and the adult finally steps in to physically restrains him.

This is a good point.

Too many parents are failing to back the teachers and are, in fact, undermining their authority.

 

[Jludo]

This is a good point.

Too many parents are failing to back the teachers and are, in fact, undermining their authority.

Ya as someone else mentioned having a single problem kid can make a big difference in how effective a teacher can be to the rest of the students.