Submitted By a Concerned Troy Parent–
Troy High School teachers abruptly close doors to students and make the parents sign off on it.
Are the students caught in the middle of a contract dispute between the teachers’ union and FJUHSD?
This is just one of many forms that came home with the students from Troy teachers yesterday.
Troy teachers are now:
Unavailable for help before or after school
Unavailable for tutoring before or after school
Unavailable to write letters of recommendation for colleges or scholarships
Unavailable for AP testing review before or after class time
Teachers have decided that they will no longer be available to help the student outside of their contracted work hours.
Is the unavailability due to a union contract dispute?
Before break teachers were wearing red to protest the lack of a contract.
Some, many, or all explained to the students, during class time, why they were protesting.
The understanding was that their teaching salaries were not enough. So when it is ever enough? You be the judge. Here is the salary list for the district.
The District’s school year consists of 180 instructional days of 372 minutes each-6.2 hours a day 180 days a year. Mr. Bainter, for example had total compensation of $136, 221 for 2014 and makes $122 per hour in total compensation if you do the math. Guess it is not enough for him or the rest of them for that matter.
Keep in mind that they do not work the whole year and the wages/total compensation are unsustainable: http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/calstrs-teachers-retirement-pension-system-in-deep-trouble/#respond
“Using the State accounting system for pensions, CalSTRS, the teacher retirement plan, had a $8.9 billion increase in liability, bringing it to an admitted unsustainable $67.3 billion. Using Federal pension accounting systems, the real unfunded liability is over $170 billion—and growing. At some point the taxpayers will be forced, by law, to bail out another government failure.”
Teachers want more, but are totally divorced from the fiscal reality.
Teachers want more and will totally turn their backs on the students in order to have their ‘unsustainable’ demands met. Looks like Troy teachers are doing just that.
#1 by Anon on January 7, 2016 - 5:28 pm
In answer to the various comments about teachers not being paid for what they are doing in their “free time” please keep this in mind: The majority of professionals work long hours beyond a normal 8 hour work day. True professionals don’t get over time. They receive a salary and they do what it takes to get the job done: working early, late, weekends and holidays. They also do professional development on their own time and at their own expense to further their careers. And most of them do not have the luxury of doing that professional development during their Summer, Fall, Winter or Spring breaks because they don’t have breaks – most work all 52 weeks of the year. Most don’t have job security, but rather are at will employees who can be fired for no reason at all. Most do not have pensions, but rather they have to save every dime for their retirement. And many can be personally sued if they make a mistake on the job, possibly losing everything they have worked hard for over the years. I don’t take issue with you asserting that teachers work hard – most do. But you can’t have the best of both worlds – if you want to clock in and clock out and get overtime you are NOT a professional so don’t call yourself one. If you want to hold yourself out as a professional stop whining about being underpaid and have the system overhauled. The lock step pay scale that the union sets up for you necessarily is there to compensate the lowest performer and thereby will underpay the over-performer. I can understand your frustration if you think you are busting your butt while the guy down the hall just phones it in and you both make the same pay due to the pay scale rates, but you can’t expect to raise the scale to properly compensate the over-performers since that would grossly overpay the under-performers. What is so wrong with a system that combines education, years in service, and merit based compensation??? It would reward the deserving and pay the minimum to the just-get-by guys. THAT is what the teachers should be looking to do. But whatever the teachers want to fight for, leave the kids out of it – they don’t write the checks and dragging them into it only is making the parents back away from supporting the teachers.