There’s not enough money per student and most parents don’t even care about their kids or education to begin with. If the money isn’t there to begin with, it can’t be paid to instructors. You have to consider that school spending has to be split between construction of new facilities, operation and maintains of said buildings which means you have to employ teams of janitors, handy men, etc. to fix and clean all the destruction kids do every day. You have to pay support staff like school nurses to mange sickness, counselors to manage emotional issues, deans to manage behavior issues, security to manage crime, librarians to manage books, IT staff to manage computer and AV equipment, accountants to manage payroll, receptionists to interface with the public, cooks to serve meals, etc. Being that schools have to feed the poor thanks to the welfare model, breakfast and lunch have to be provided to kids free of charge if their family falls bellow a certain income level. Thanks to inflation, obviously food expenses are skyrocketing. You need administration to manage staff and run day to day operations. You need to transport kids to and from school with buses which need to be maintained by mechanics and driven by bus drivers who have to fill their tanks with diesel fuel which is on the rise thanks to inflation. You have to replace equipment from time to time like whiteboards, markers, projectors, computers, desks, books, and supply a small amount per student to pay for copy paper and to run labs, art projects, sports equipment, or other projects/activities depending on the class type. Kids are expensive and most people aren’t willing to pay for their kids to get a good education. So whatever is left at the end has to be divided up among the instruction staff. There is never enough to fill all the needed instruction positions each year so there is always a staff shortage which leads to overworked teachers that are way underpaid which leads to high turnover in the industry.
Parents don't prioritize their kids. They let the government do stuff like fund proxy wars in Ukraine to support the Nazi party. That's a bigger concern for them oh and of course social issues like tranny surgeries in Pakistan. Democrats go to the polls every year and vote to send money everywhere except to Americans to do things like improve our roads and educate our children.
Image if parents could prioritize and wanted to spend millions of dollars on their kids here at home instead of spending it on things like buying cell phones for illegal immigrants or paying for vaccines and food for poor starving people in Africa? Fucking imagine that...
America needs to stop providing foreign aid and needs to remove the welfare state. You know we spend as much on welfare for people that fail in society as we do to our own fucking children? We could double down on educating and raising children the right way to be successful responsible educated adults if we just stopped propping up and promoting failure. Shit we probably wouldn't even need double. We could probably spend some of it to improve roads, hospitals, etc. If children were raised right, you'd have less crime, drug abuse, and homelessness as well. But that would be too hard to actually try to create good citizens in our own communities right? Focusing on America First is racist and bigoted and transphobic xenophobic and all that communist bullshit right? People are stupid.
I saw two school districts near each other, each paying about $12,000 per student. The city schools actually paid more by 10% and had a 50% drop out rate and terrible standardized test scores. The suburban school was a top school in the country and actually paid a little less per student.
It’s about parents, discipline, motivation, the school board as well as unchecked corruption that make a difference, not just money. Money is not the answer, that is just the cry of the school unions. Some countries have ridiculous housing costs but they should also have a property tax structure that provides the money. That is their issue to figure out, it’s not an average school districts issue.
@Jersey2 In Florida, money is definitely an issue in the school system. I’m sure it is different in other states. Every state manages their own budget and each county manages their own school district. Florida is very fiscally conservative and manages the budget to stay solvent. While that is great for tax payers, it leads to budget cuts every year regardless of what part of the government you work in. In Florida in every single school in every single department of that school they are short like at least 2 teachers for the number of students they are responsible for. There isn’t even enough money to hire the number of teachers needed let alone pay the teachers properly. Every year the budget is changed and schools are told they need to drop like 4-8 teachers from every single department. Then after the budget is refined they are allowed to rehire a certain amount of them depending on how many students are enrolled for the next school year. It makes it a very unstable career option for anyone that is willing to do the job. Two years after I left that school I think only two people from my department still worked at the same school and everyone I worked with that year were very highly educated scientists.
I don’t really care being that I don’t teach at the moment and don’t have kids right now so it doesn’t personally affect me, but that is the reality of the situation. I taught while I was seeking a better job because I wanted some temporary income to pay student loans and living expenses while I was interviewing in the afternoon for the jobs I really wanted. I got the impression that is what most teachers in the science department were doing. The school year I was there, we were short two science teachers in my department. Three new science teachers were hired that year (1 being me) and we were still short 2, but when the budget was announced for the next school year the school was told they would need to get rid of all three of us and 4 additional teachers that had worked there for several years. I didn’t care because I was leaving anyway because I already had another job lined up and they knew that, but the other 6 teachers that got canned weren’t too happy about it. So technically after that year they were down 9 teachers in the science department. I’m sure they rehired some people the next year when the budget was finalized, but still... All the remaining teachers lost their planning period the next year and were forced to take on another period of students.
A lot of students got their schedule delayed and couldn’t take the science courses they wanted to take. Elective sciences and AP sciences got cut to cover the meat and potatoes of science courses just to graduate students. The courses just were not offered anymore. As far as the money that was allotted for spending on laboratories and student supplies when I was there it was like $2 a student. Basically all you can do is buy copy paper for assignments you hand out. Anything you want to actually teach the kids hands on has to come out of your own pocket or get scrounged up from the limited supplies in the lab closet if they existed. I worked at the second best school in my school district. It was ranked A+ and graduation rate was something like 96%.
In our district, I do remember one school that was paying a bonus to teachers if they were willing to travel the extra distance to teach there. It was a magnet school in a rural area that was mostly Hispanic kids, many of who were children of illegal aliens (migrant workers). They got more money for each student, and the students performed very poorly. One of my colleagues had taught there two years ago and was very vocal about what a joke that school was. So yeah sure stuff like that happens. Teachers that are willing to go work at really bad schools that are high stress sometimes get a salary bonus of a couple thousand dollars. It’s not worth it, but yeah incentives like that are offered some times. But again that’s one of those problems that arise from funding illegal immigration.
They don't get paid more because they already get paid too much in most states. If they can't afford housing in parts of California, that is a different problem that should be dealt with. Teachers can just commute further, like people in so many other professions do in California.
At one time teachers were low paid. I remember researching the pay for different professions when I was considering a college major. The major I picked was the second lowest paid profession (for college grads). Teaching was the only one that was lower.
But the salaries of teachers have gone up very significantly since then. They are actually paid quite well, especially when you consider they they are mostly unionized state workers with top notch benefits. They have full pensions. They get their high salary and pension based on seniority, not merit. And on top of all that, they only work part of the year, and can get an even higher salary by working all year.
I quit listening to the "teachers are underpaid" mantra a few decades ago, because it was no longer true in most places.
Exactly. My district has an average pay of over $85K. And some top administrators make more than the salary of POTUS. No way a public school district superintendent should be paid more than the President of the United States.
@LiamJHayden I don't know the current average where I live. But I know at lest ten years ago there were teachers (not admins) who were making six figures. This is an area where a salary half that much is enough to live in a nice house in a nice suburb.
The school district in question is in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's well known that they have extremely high rent there. It's also well known that people in ALL professions leave there for cheaper pastures. It's a major reason why Sacramento started growing so fast in the 90s.
That isn't a problem with the pay, but needing to adapt a COLA adjustment for teacher pay across the state, decrease base pay, apply COLA. The corruption would be in the teacher's union. Every kid has a chromebook for unfathomable reasons, though almost none of them use them. After ACA most teacher's unions haven't tried negotiating for better benefits either, so their insurance is marginally better than Medicaid.
There are X dollars funded to local schoolboards from federal dollars, and the state. Most will be tied up in technology fees, sports, blah blah. Y comes from county and local property tax. That is where a teacher's pay comes from. If you want teachers to pay more, you either need to make a convincing argument for raising property tax, or own more than rent.
Still, it is the fault of teacher's unions for not unshackling the state and federal funding. If they need to rent a room, they don't even have a school, that isn't "the poor teachers". That's an administration with a really shitty plan. I bet there's a private school in the area doing fine.
I would counter, teachers are paid quite a bit despite the barrier to entry being low. I mean their degree is one of the easiest to receive. Let's say they get 48k, then they getting paid for the 9 months they do work, like someone who would make 64k considering they get 3 months off. But they can choose to work then too, making 64k a reality. The biggest benefit though is the generous pension many of these states offer. And some of these states like in California, these pensions go upwards of 120k which is ridiculous for the taxpayer but amazing for the retired teacher.
This is BS. Where I live teachers with a little seniority make almost as much money as i do. They only work a 183 day contract and get anice pension at the end. I was an administrator at a K-12 school system. I used to think it was funny that all of them thought they were over worked and under paid. i sed to say it was a full time job for part time work. i taught at a local college and once I developed the course and made up the exame and the syllabus I never had to do any prep time. I only taught part tome but once I developed the course it ended up I made close to $100 an hour.
Ummm... I guess the easiest way to explain it is the massive administrative bloat overtop the teachers. The people in the classrooms make up a disturbingly small percentage of education staff. Last time I looked, there were 2 administrators for every teacher in schools. All of those admins have higher salaries than the teachers and they have the same great pension benefits.
Its not exactly corruption. Organizations pay the minimum possible while still being able to hire people. Its no different from a person shopping around. Apparently people are willing to take less money to be teachers, than say attorneys.
Unions complicate the picture a lot - often increasing wages at the bottom end but decreasing them at the top
There are a lot of people who deserve to get paid high paycheques that are paid low ones but society has no other option then to give them low pay cheques cause there isn't enough money to compensate every person who deserves due compensation. If we paid every hard working person a lot of money your eggs would cost you $80 dollars.
Average teacher salaries are between 37 k and 77 I per year. Depending on where they live. 37 I was my lowest year welding. My highest year was 48k working in the heat aced humidity.
Teachers making 37k for 9 months of work is far to much. Considering most teachers don't even teach anymore.
This is one of those questions where MHO is already picked, but I feel like I need to inform. School system gets all that money and all the people on the top get 100,000 dollar raises... that's why the teachers never see shit.
Because our society doesn't prioritize them. Not coincidentally, school districts that raise salaries attract better teachers. Money is far from the only issue for teachers, but it's a big one, especially where housing is expensive.
Pay is NOT the problem. Working conditions are the problem. How do we know this? Because teachers at private schools get paid significantly less than teachers at public schools. Why in the world would this be?
What really gets me is that teachers have to pay for all their own supplies…like damn if y’all aren’t gonna pay them decently the least you can do is provide with the basic supplies 🙄
Someone explained it by the fact that they don't provide their service, teaching to as large of an audience as, for example, athletes. So since the size of their audience is smaller, they should be paid less.
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