Our society shows its disrespect for teachers by not paying them a salary they can live on without working a second job.
In state after state, the powers that be have cut taxes, cut education spending, and boasted that they are not “throwing money” at schools.
Meanwhile, as this feature in the New York Times shows, many teachers have to work extra jobs to meet their expenses.
This is shameful!
Legislators think it’s fine to “throw money” at those who are the 1%. The less they need money, the more they get it from the state, while teachers give up their days off to patch together a living.
Having paid as little as possible to hire teachers, legislators complain about them, demand more of them, strip away their collective bargaining rights, attack their pensions and healthcare.
We have a crisis in education: a crisis caused by greed. Pure, unadulterated greed, which enriches the richest and neglects those upon whom we depend to educate the next generation.
Into this crisis come the Reformers, with their cost-cutting ideas, their plans to replace teachers with technology or increase class sizes or import low-wage temps from TFA, but no proposals to guarantee that teachers are paid as professionals.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NEA & AFT should pick a couple of fields and publish starting salaries and salaries with a Masters and compare that to what starting and Master’s level Teachers make in 50 states!
When I was working in Illinois I had a master’s degree plus grad hours and my standard of living was atrocious.
Things have gotten worse.
I, as a single parent, barely survived. I finally left the US and when I started working in Malaysia I got a decent salary. It was a privately run American school.
I often wonder what happened to all the music teachers whose jobs were eliminated due to lack of funding. Where do music teachers go?
Public money used to for “welfare” isn’t for the poor but flows to corporations and billionaire.
“Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs”
https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-vs-social-welfare/
And serial liar, failed businessman, coward, bully, troll, traitor, malignant narcissist and psychopath Donald Trump has also fed from the polluted gutter of corporate welfare subsidies to the tune of about one billion dollars that were used to build a business that went bankrupt that cost US banks almost another billion lost from the loans they made to that failed venture of Trump’s.
And when those teachers working second and third jobs retire they have another nasty surprise waiting for them: They will be unconstitutionally robbed of the Social Security benefits they EARNED BY WORKING SECOND JOBS to supplement their often low salaries. This theft of EARNED Social Security retirement benefits is because of two laws passed by anti-public employee politicians: The Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP).
GPO and WEP are unconstitutional violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment; here’s why: The so-called rationale behind WEP and GPO is that public pension benefits represent tax dollars given to public retirees and that since public retirees are already receiving these tax dollars as income from their pension plans it’s “only fair” that their earned Social Security income should be reduced to offset that. But GPO/WEP treat a public pension benefit as if it were nearly 100% paid to the recipient out of tax dollars, when, as you know, only a very small percentage of the typical public pension benefit is paid out of tax dollars, and in actual fact nearly all of most states’ public employee pension benefits are paid from the investment earnings on the pension’s trust fund plus payroll contributions from the pension plan’s active members, leaving only a very small percentage to be paid out of tax dollars. The non-political Boston College Center for Retirement Research reports that the national average state annual contribution to public employee pension plans is only about 5% of the typical state’s annual budget. That’s just 5 cents of a budget dollar. There’s no way that public pension plans are ever going to bankrupt a state, as enemies of public pension plans claim.
So, in accord with the so-called rationale behind WEP/GPO, any “windfall elimination” or “offset” from a public pensioner’s hard-earned Social Security pension should amount to no more than the percentage of annual budget that the pensioner’s state-of-residence annually contributes to the pensioner’s public pension fund, a “windfall” or “offset” of only about 5% of the Social Security benefit payment on average.
Nevertheless, even a 5% deduction from a public retiree’s earned Social Security benefit is still unconstitutional discrimination against the public employee: Beneficiaries of private pension income don’t have their Social Security benefit reduced, yet private pension plans are a tax-deductible business expense for the businesses that offer the plans, so the plans thereby deprive state and federal governments of revenue that often amounts to more than the small amount of tax dollars that states contribute to public pension plans. Therefore, in order to be non-discriminatory, either all WEP/GPO deductions from the Social Security benefits of recipients of public pensions should be eliminated as with private pension plan beneficiaries, or the Social Security benefits of recipients of private pension plan beneficiaries should have their Social Security benefits reduced by the amount of the tax deduction that their plan costs their state and the federal government in lost tax revenue. That’s a violation of the 14th Amendment’s provision requiring equal treatment.
Every year, one or the other member of Congress introduces a bill to remedy the injustices of WEP and GPO and other congresspersons pile on as co-sponsors, but it’s all just a show because they know that no such bill will ever get out of committee, let alone be passed by both Houses and signed into law.
The only way to end WEP and GPO is by means of a federal lawsuit based on the equal treatment clause of the 14th Amendment.
Thank you.
As he looked at our Amazon bill, my husband marveled that I am in one of the only professions where we have to buy our own supplies. He said “Can you imagine a business person having to purchase their paper, pens, keyboard, computers, headsets and other tools of the trade?“ Imagine a nurse or doctor having to buy their own stethoscope, otoscope, thermometer, syringe…?
It is expensive to be a teacher!
I once did a project in Iraq. My company was a “nickel-nurser” We had to buy our own tools, the firm would not even buy the batteries for our own testing equipment.
Personally, I am appalled, that public-school systems cannot budget for ordinary office supplies like scotch-tape, and other such items that are necessary in the classroom.
I would like to see more non-government organizations become involved with publicly-operated schools. Service clubs, would be delighted to assist in providing financial and in-kind assistance to public schools, if only they were asked.
If you have any students in your classes, who need winter coats, or other items, which would assist them in arriving at school, more ready to learn, please contact the Masonic Angel Fund. see
http://www.masonicangelfund.org/
If you have any students who need a computer, but their family cannot afford to provide one, then contact Laptops for Kidz (sic). The organization provides reconditioned computers for children. see
http://www.laptopsforkidz.org/
School supplies should be paid for by taxes, not private donations or teachers reaching into their pockets.
I was horrified, some years ago, when i went into a store in Honolulu, Hawaii. Near the checkout counter was a large sign asking for people to donate money to a certain teacher so that she could purchase necessities for her classroom. I was so fed up that I wrote a letter complaining to the head person in education for the state. Don’t now remember the name or the title.
I’m not mad at the teacher. I’m mad at a school district that won’t pay a decent salary and have money for materials.
In a perfect world, our society would make the sacrifices necessary to provide our children with a proper education. But we don’t. In the meantime, there is nothing at all wrong with NGOs stepping in to assist.
All children need to have a home computer. But some don’t. That is why some service clubs, assist in providing used, serviceable computers.
During the recent walkouts which occurred in some states, the participants (justifiably) were demanding to be paid an adequate salary.
I did not see any of them demanding that the citizens put up the funds for necessary supplies and equipment.
Shame on us, as a nation.
Charles thinks, “All children need to have a home computer.”
No they don’t.
I repeat, NO, NO, NO, NO they don’t.
If properly funded and supported public schools and public libraries offer computers for children to do research for school projects.
But portable smart phones and/or tablets are also capable of taking the place of the old desktop home computer. I know vets that write on their smart phones and then read what they wrote on their smart phones from their smart phones.
With a smart phone, they can access the internet at home, in the classroom, in a meeting, while walking, and while driving a car (even if that is dangerous and illegal in many locals).
They can also watch a film or read a book from their smart phone.
In addition, while our daughter was growing up and attending K-12, she had a cheap, inexpensive computer in her bedroom THAT WAS NOT LINKED TO THE INTERNET. That was before the smart phone became equal to a desktop or laptop computer.
She had access to one computer in the house linked to the internet that was not in her bedroom. Everyone in the family used that ONE desktop computer located in the family room if they wanted to go online.
She did not have a mobile phone, dumb or smart, of her own until she was in her second year of college … wait for it … at Stanford.
She also had access to computers in the middle and high school libraries where she went before school, during lunch, and after school and she took advantage of that.
She also had a library card and was an avid reader and still managed to graduate from high school as a scholar athlete with a 4.65 GPA.
In 2014, she graduated from Stanford.