Teachers

[Howey]

Somewhere, somehow a whole lot of right wing idiots got in trouble in school. This hatred of teachers is ridiculous!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/25/providence-school-board-v_n_828103.html

The school board of the state's financially troubled capital city has voted to send termination letters to all of its nearly 2,000 teachers after city officials said the move would give them "maximum flexibility" to make budget cuts.

State law requires school departments to notify teachers by March 1 if they'll be laid off the following school year.

Providence teachers received notices of potential layoffs before the board met Thursday night and voted 4-3 on sending termination letters. The notices don't mean the teachers will lose their jobs, but the vote means some of them could at the end of the year. The vote give the city the opportunity to terminate as many teachers as it deems necessary for budgetary reasons, but the city hasn't indicated how many that could be.

Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith had said earlier the decision was "beyond insane" and created chaos and anxiety among teachers.

More than 700 teachers packed the Providence Career and Technical Academy gymnasium Thursday to tell school officials their hearts were broken, their trust was violated and their futures as teachers were jeopardized, The Providence Journal newspaper reported.

[ekg]

I think it's their way to 'bargain'.. *shurg*..I kinda wish all those teachers would say "huh, OK" and bolt from the state.. let the state figure out what to do with all the kids..

the idea that we pay teachers too much is frankly ridiculous..  We expect them to sit in a class room with upwards of 60(coming soon to a Detroit school room near you ) children,preteens, and of course the know-it-all I'm almost 18 years old teen for 6-8 hours a day and make them learn at the great pay of maybe $35,000 a year. To top it off, we ask that they buy their own supplies, supplies of the students, not punish the students and pass them even though they can't read 2 pages of 'see Spot run' because it contains words instead of 'lol/iykwim/omg/brb'

and then, when there is a crisis, we give tax breaks to corporations who aren't hiring and who are leaving this country tomorrow after getting that tax-break today, because tomorrow is another day and what did you do for them on that day? and to pay for those breaks, or any other misuse of funds along the way, we take it from the people we expect to be in a room with our children 6-8 hrs a day when even we wouldn't do that and we're the parents..

sounds as smart as taking the police out of Camden and the fire department out of Harlem or the 1st responders out of any city.. but the Koch Brothers needed that extra billion because the 15 that they got just this year alone just isn't what it used to be..

 

how about this, how about we stop paying the salaries of our elected officials.. or we bring them down to the rate of the highest paid beat-cop. "elected official" was never supposed to be a 'job' or a 'career'.. I get that some need the money because they are small timers and I'm good with that, but why does John McCain need to make $200K a year plus get his medical? he's got what 8 houses? Same with John Kerry? and why would either of them need medicare and SS? Why does Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, T Boone Pickens?  If we're really going to do this let's start off with a cut off point, if you have X amount in the bank already you can't get medicare and SS checks, and you can't draw a salary by serving in gov't either.

until we address those "wastes"... all this other stuff is just Goliath picking on David just because he can..

[Howey]

I think it's their way to 'bargain'..

You should read some of the great comments on HuffPo. Especially mine:

“I'm sure in a couple of weeks the school board's going to come to the teachers and say, "Hey. Remember that pink slip you got a while back? About that...Tak­e a 40% cut in pay and benefits or you're gone!"

Here's what I don't understand. The average pay of a teacher is 50k per year. People like wrongo (yes I'm going there!) sit on their asses in their sugar-mommy provided job playing on not one, but two stupid fucking webboards all day long for more than that and make 50k a year...

Teachers have to babysit kids because they're parents don't, teachers have to buy school supplies because the kid's parents and the school boards won't, teachers have to work until midnight grading papers - or God forbid, figuring out how to actually teach kids in spite of the fucking FCAT's out there, teachers have to try to teach parents how to be parents for Christ's sake, teachers have to put up with bureaucratic school board members, school administrators and fucking politicians who've never spent a single fucking minute in front of a classroom and have no fucking idea what it's like...oy, I've gone off track...

I'm willing to bet there's far more teachers out there making far less than that magical 50k figure and far less out there making a hell of a lot more than it.

Vested? You've got to be kidding, me, right? Unions? Fuck yeah! If we didn't have unions protecting these teachers, they'd be ass-raped by every fucking teabagging politician out there.

Did you know that four of the five states in the country with the worst schools don't allow unions? (Wisconsin, for now, does; and is ranked second in the nation).