WV teacher strke
- Thread starter tjebarr
- Start date
Berkeley County deputy superintendent on radio this morning. Said if they go back to work tomorrow, Wednesday, that currently the last school day is June 19th. However, he said the teachers are saying that the governor called school off one day, so they should not have to make it up. Also, said that the teachers are looking at getting some non-instructional days to count as credit toward the 180 days of instruction so they won't have to make up all the days.
Apparently some high school kids take college level classes at Blue Ridge Community & Technical College. He said that BCTC has stopped the classes to stand in solidarity with the teacher strike. Kids won't be able to finish the courses they were taking, they cancelled them.
The radio announcer asked him that if "it's all about the kids", then why are the teachers working to get out of giving them the full amount of required instruction?.................. no answer.
Just reporting what I heard. AM 740
The Berkley County teacher reps comments made it all about politics....she said teachers are still going to campaign against Repubs in the fall. This was after the Repubs delivered the largest across the board pay raise in decades.
Well if you get the right one, a prostitute can be a teacher.
Same with my retired sister teacher. Rolling in more cash than when working. Great pension.
My point wasn't to insinuate they don't earn their pay or that they don't do work outside of their normal hours. I was using it simply to show there are other professions out there that work "less" than the normal amount of actual work days that are valuable and deserve adequate compensation. I'm in no way suggesting the work I do is on an equal playing field with a doctor. What I'm suggesting is that we both deserve adequate pay for our services. Adequate, but by no means equal.
Everyone in a salaried job works outside the normal 40 hour work week. I don't disagree with people making adequate pay - but the devil is in the detail(s) - how do you determine 'adequate'? Add to that, using your analogy, physicians more than ever are being graded on quality - what are the quality initiatives for teachers? In fact compensation to physicians is more than ever going to be tied to quality - are teachers ready to go down that road? They should.
Yea, I heard that. The republicans deliver a long overdue pay raise, versus very little that the democrat controlled legislature has delivered over the years, so their way of showing thanks is to now make an all out effort to vote them out.
Ungrateful............ just as I would expect from them.
By my calculations, if anyone averaged $50k a year for 30 years and saved 6% of it and earned a 10% rate of return (the average of the S&P 500), they would end up with $542,830. They would need a 5.5% withdrawal rate (a little aggressive, but not crazy) to create a $30k/yr “pension”. Considering nearly anyone could do this in their 401K (and probably get a portion matched by their employer, to make the total amount much higher and required withdrawal rate much lower) or through an IRA....I don’t think that pension is an outlandish benefit. Now if they weren’t contributing the 6% of their own money it would be. From an employer perspective, I am in favor of a 401k, versus a pension, in general... but this does not seem out of hand. Most people just don’t have the discipline to make the steady contributions on their own, but anyone could do it. The power of compounding; the 8th wonder of the world.
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Apparently some high school kids take college level classes at Blue Ridge Community & Technical College. He said that BCTC has stopped the classes to stand in solidarity with the teacher strike. Kids won't be able to finish the courses they were taking, they cancelled them.
Please tell me that statement is not true. That isn't supportive. That step hurts the kids. I hope that part was a misunderstanding.
You are a real piece of work. The Republicans deliver, after teachers are forced to go on strike for weeks
A guy in my office, his wife is a teacher in the eastern panhandle. Kid in elementary school. Said his teacher is screwed up. She assigns homework then has other kids in the class grade the work.
Said he was looking at his kid's homework and saw where it was given a check mark on the top as being correct, yet it had obvious errors.
Said he and his wife teacher have a meeting scheduled to get it fixed. Sounds like another poor teacher that needs to be gotten rid of, yet she will get a nice 5% pay raise instead. I've never know teachers to clean their own house.
Said he was looking at his kid's homework and saw where it was given a check mark on the top as being correct, yet it had obvious errors.
Said he and his wife teacher have a meeting scheduled to get it fixed. Sounds like another poor teacher that needs to be gotten rid of, yet she will get a nice 5% pay raise instead. I've never know teachers to clean their own house.
Strike? I thought it was snow days.You are a real piece of work. The Republicans deliver, after teachers are forced to go on strike for weeks
Really what needs to happen - and I've felt this for a long time - the school teachers need to give up 1% so the school service personnel can get a bigger raise. It's long overdue, they deserve it. The do the dirty work in the school system, and without them the teachers would fail.You are a real piece of work. The Republicans deliver, after teachers are forced to go on strike for weeks
I say give them 10% raise and take them off PEIA. Then listen to the bitching about health insurance rates on the private market. My wife is a state employee and we love PEIA. They could double the rate and it is still half of what we had to pay on the private market and with less out of pocket and deductible.
when i typed this i didn't do the calculation if they invested the money in a 401k. so it's more like 16/17 years to break even. Putting money into a 401k is the easy part. Taking it out is a different story. I like guaranteed income in retirement. I think it will make it less stressful. A bad string of years and the "4% rule" is shot. It's just way too complicated once someone retires.
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Firstly the entire school system is out of date and needs to be completely revamped if not eradicated. School is not needed to get kids to remember facts anymore. Facts are available in the palm of your hand. Kids need to be taught how to decipher information and evaluate what the input they are receiving for legitimacy. Secondly, if they would just legalize marijuana already the taxes (which in most states majority goes to education) would go along way toward satisfying this situation.
This might be the most clueless statement I’ve ever heard in my life.
Sounds great for your office also, head engineering guy can surely afford to take a cut so everybody else in the office can get a fat raise
The pay raise was already on schedule. I believe it was 4% over 4 years. My sister who is a teacher said it was the first raise in many many years. Granted the teachers did not think it was enough which is their prerogative but the original posters statement appears to be true. It was their first raise in many many years.You are a real piece of work. The Republicans deliver, after teachers are forced to go on strike for weeks
The way the state pension in WV works for teachers is pretty simple. If they work the required number of years (it's 30 years OR age 55 with 30 taking the higher priority) then they will draw 60% of the average of their highest 5 paid years until they die. So, for the sake of an example, if a teacher in their last 5 years (when you typically make the most) averaged $60,000 per year. They would bring home $36,000 per year via the pension. Clearly that's not a lot of money, which is why you see many teachers subbing a few days a week to supplement that income. I think the big draw for this is that it's for life. If you are fortunate to actually get to retire at 55, you're looking at 25-30 good years or more in a lot of cases whereas a 401k there's a finite amount of cash. Of course, on the flip side of that, if you die within 5-10 years of retiring, then obviously the 401k would continue to pay off to spouses and family members where the pension may not. There's definitely a benefit to both sides of the coin.
This is very true. That's what I told my wife (we both teach in SC) when she was hearing how "outrageous" the PEIA pay hikes were. We pay roughly 30% and the state kicks in the other 70% on our insurance here. Even if they doubled our rates there's no way we could compete with that on the private market. I agree in principle with a lot of my WV colleagues but they better be careful what they wish for on the insurance front.
It’s not that complicated; if you want guaranteed income in retirement, take the lump sum you have accumulated and put it in a fixed annuity.
The teachers in Oklahoma are considering striking, for a $10,000 a year raise. Let that sink in...
I am, but I can't speak for all of us. There are reviews already in place here in my state and every 5 years when our license is due we have to walk through those processes. We have district evaluators in our classrooms several times per school year as well as administrators. It is a fairly painstaking process that would be made infinitely better if at the end we had the opportunity of a pay increase at the end of the tunnel. As it stands, it's a process to grade how well we do with no incentives at all. When I worked at Pizza Hut in college we had a bi-annual evaluation period with a raise opportunity of 5-10 cents per hour. It wasn't much, but every little bit helps. I wouldn't be looking for a 50% salary increase or anything crazy, but the prospect of a better life for me and my family would be a great motivator.
One thing I KNOW should not be included is test scores. I know that's the easiest thing from the outside to use to measure success, but there are far too many issues outside of the classroom that play a much more important role in those measurements. I've taught in affluent schools where 75-80% of the students are expected to go to college from their parents and I currently teach in a school where the same number of parents barely graduated high school. The expectation to do well just isn't here, and test scores reflect that. Sure, the cream always rises to the top, but there's not enough of that here to make a difference on the standardized tests. To punish good, hard working teachers who just don't have the work ethic and support from home isn't fair. Come watch me work, critique me, and give me advice all you want. I'm willing to do what it takes and jump through all the hoops you throw my way for a better life.
getting an annuity is easy. but the planning involved as you get close to retirement and in retirement is a lot more complicated then saving for retirement. that's what i meant.
It was announced several years ago that new hired school personnel would not be getting any health insurance when they retired. Yes, maybe that's a good thing come that time so many years from now who knows. But what I'm getting at that's a benefit that's been taken away from them. Any benefit, including what you'd get when you retire, had to have money set aside to pay for it. The state decided they wouldn't pay for that for new hires any more. The money they would had used for that should had gone back to the workers in a form of higher pay or a new benefit. But it wasn't. Just saying. The state saved money, and the school folks got screwed.
Or maybe it went toward paying the lifetime health benefits to those already retired that were much higher than anyone anticipated when they were promised.
I'm a republican and not even I can "like" that statement.
So when PEIA costs go up, will the teachers strike again? I mean, that was a real big part of this strike in the beginning. Why wouldn't they strike since this one was such a huge success?
Honestly after reading just a little bit I’ve tried my best to avoid this thread. Made a mistake opening it this morning.
What promised benefits were vested? Won't they have Medicare when they retire? If they retire early they can buy their own health insurance. When I was working I saw my retirement options change several times before I retired but I was aware of what was vested and what was not.
Exactly, the underlying issue was not addressed. All health care premiums are going to continue to climb. Maybe the tax mandate being removed will work faster than hoped in getting the cost down.
I am going to make the assumption that since the new rule pertained to people who were not yet hired, that they were not vested.
YES
Most all unions are there to protect the shitty employees......got to have them union dues....
Wow
This is a vast problem and unfortunately well behaved students suffer just as much as the teachers who's hands are tied...
Yep.
Needs to be completely overhauled. Won't happen tho.
They came off as jerks even to their own supporters..
this is a tad hyperbolic......disagreeing is not ugliness.
Absolutely
Won't convince many in this thread..........There will always be people that want to make things red vs blue.....this country is ate up with a political conscience.......
This kind of pisses me off...
Valid point.....
Not a surprise, a shame, but not a surprise.....
I wish we could do that, I want to meet the person who comes up with a formula that will be accepted........never going to happen.....99% of democrats do not like anything tied to performance or quality...just the truth.
While this is technically true it is also cringe worthy....
Last year, I had a problem with a teacher obviously doing the same thing..........we got it resolved with a phone call to the principle.
This post has way too much winning going on.....
Yep.
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