I was reading an article in the paper for my parents town, the school district has 18 administrators making over 150k/yr. They hired an interim superintendant at a cost of $825 a day, and the assistant superintendants pay was just increased by 1000 a week this year. The total school district operating budget is 77mil. The total number of kids in school is 5400.

And I'll bet the administrators bitch about the budget they have to work with. This is why I think the school voucher idea is pretty good. They are spending $14k+ per student per year of taxpayer money. If parents aren't happy with their child's education they should get some of that back to spend on a school that does a better job.

Another great idea stopped by Unions and the Department of Education (probably the biggest disaster to ever hit America). They've come straight out and said the reason is because they think "competition" will hurt the schools. Until our DOE can figure out the basic concepts of the capitalist system that America was founded on, I don't believe we can trust them.

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that I don't believe teachers are underpaid. Its kinda like how housewives tried to convince us that staying home with the kids is such a hard job....and we bought it. Men began to think, "Well, I better go work, cause I don't want the extremely hard job of staying home all day." Which is complete bullshit of course, housewiving is very, very, very easy.

Teaching is the same to me. First of all, they don't work a full year, so right off the bat you take a pay hit. Secondly, there are so many teaching aids that they don't even really do anything as far as drawing on their own knowledge to teach. At my son's school they use a website called "Raz-Kids". When I first went to his school and saw it I was like WHAT THE FUCK?!? lol.

I could understand if it was teaching kids how to use computers...but its not....its a website that does the teacher's job. Aside from that, their main job is to teach their kids to pass federally mandated tests, not to actually learn something about the world....so, how hard is it to teach from a workbook?

Now, I'm not saying I'd want to be a teacher....cause that job sucks. Have you ever seen all the kids inside a school? Fuckin' gross.

I hope you don't really believe this. It is Wrong. Teachers don't have to go into the building all year, yes, but that doesn't mean they don't keep doing their jobs all summer.

Between curriculum development, preparation for incoming special needs kids, meeting with the next grade to brief them on each kid coming into their classes, etc it's rare when my wife (who is an elementary school teacher) gets to take a break even in the summer and goes to bed after 1am every night.

Trust me, most teachers work a full year even though the school itself is closed over the summer.

I taught high school previously and I worked all year as well.

Maybe its easier in Tx. then. I have a good friend and an aunt who teach here in North Texas and they're always bragging about their summer off. Sure they stay a little later and go back a little earlier...but essentially they do have the entire summer off from school.

If you tell me that's not the case elsewhere I'd have no trouble believing it, as the schools here are so unbelievably fucked up I usually spend an hour everyday deprogramming my son when he gets home.

I don't dispute the work your wife does or you did, but I have not seen similar effort from the teachers I know. I commend the effort you both put in while I still recognize it was voluntary and not a choice many teachers seem to make.

Regardless, I think both you and your wife would agree that $90/hour to try and fix a failing school is a ridiculous demand.

Yup teachers around here are always bitching about not being paid for the summer when they arnt working, many of them get temp jobs during the summer

I think up here they get either ei benefits, or the school boards put a % of pay aside and give it to them when they're off.

Ya, their salary is divided in 52 weeks. Its in their contract.