Comments on: Master's pay bump is waste of money

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:13:47 +0000

I always respect the garbage men. Or I clean up the garbage from my driveway. Easier to smile and say hi.

Lightly seasoned, you made a comment about breezing through Walden’s online course. I would like to become a teacher. My dad is a teacher, my mom works for a school district, and I want to impact learning for kids. However, already having a degree and having been out of college for 10 years, my time is very limited. In having just started looking into what I would need to do to teach, I have looked at a few online institutions, and the BS I already have (and I do have a lot of BS) is sufficient for them, and I would begin work on my Master’s immediately. I obviously do not want to pay and do work that will not be recognized by schools or states. I am curious what your (and everyone else’s) opinion is about online education. Thanks

By: K.Mom

K.Mom — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:23:16 +0000

Adminstrators and politics are the main reason the schools are so wasteful and corrupt. My mother-in-law who taught at a middle school in the ghetto, said she had a principal for a few years whom the teachers suspected of child abuse, and who suddenly was moved to a district office job. Turns out he was moved from one school to another as soon as parents complained, and now he has an office job at school district headquarters! That’s how hard it is to fire bad employees in schools. Way too much law suit abuse and politics! That is just the tip of the iceberg in how lawyers and politician have ruined our schools and are currently ruining our society. Sorry to any lawyers who are reading this. I have lawyer friends and I just keep my opinions to myself, and I like them, but after some of their stories, I don’t always respect them as much as the garbage men who come down the street.

San Antonio citizen

By: Rex

Rex — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:21:58 +0000

NDC,

Elected board which appoints the superintendent. Unions are almost revered by a majority of the folks here, but “the union” plays a role as one stakeholder amongst many. (Parents, teachers, other administrators, black organizations, community organizations, etc. are the primary stakeholders. I’m sure I missed some–and they are ALL involved in every hiring of every administrator to one degree or another.) In board elections, the union usually endorses certain candidates, which carries a fair amount of weight, but this district is not captive to the teachers the way a neighboring district is. (The teachers didn’t like a superintendent and over a 3 year period, got enough board members elected to fire the superintendent. Two of the board members promptly resigned, because they had achieved what they wanted.)

Believe me, our superintendent and board are very aware that the money comes from the taxpayers, and they are very concientious. Only 28% comes from state and feds; the remainder is from local property taxes. The super & board are consequently VERY VERY aware of where the money comes from. And the budget gets voted on each year by the residents of the district.

The union has a large role in the negotations for the teacher contract, and the board is usually loath to give them less than a 3.0-3.5% increase each year. This year they got a short-term (I think for one year at which time the increase will be negotiated again) increase of 2%.

By: NDC

NDC — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:36:31 +0000

Charter choice ought to be more attractive to teachers than it is, but it doesn’t offer as much potential to shed educational costs as other systems of choice because it retains so many of the teaching benefits.

Are the unions big in your district? Because if they aren’t, you theoretically could muster the political influence to elect a board that approached instructional space as a per pupil award like the number of teachers per school. A particular school would only get access to the number of classrooms that it could fill at that ratio with no choice to grow into the extra space.

And as weird as it would be, if you had to start with different charter grades at different schools, you could do it.

By: Hunter McDaniel

Hunter McDaniel — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:28:16 +0000

NDC-
1) Yes, our teachers were still part of the state retirement system (called PERA). Much like Social Security, it has an employee contribution which the teachers paid and an employer contribution which we paid.
2) Our teachers participated in the same health/dental plans as other district teachers. There was no way we could have ever negotiated a group rate on our own that was competitive with that.
3) Colorado does not have a state salary schedule for teachers. Our local district has a schedule which they negotiated with the teachers’ union, but our charter application specifically waived that policy. A large portion of any charter application in Colorado consists of identifying which district policies will be waived, and which will not.
4) “After all, these are district kids being educated by funds from the district.” I couldn’t say it better myself. Problem is, teachers in under-utilized facilities “grow into” to all the extra space just like my wife and I have as empty-nesters. And what do you do if you need 50K square feet for your charter school but there is only 10K free in each of 5 buildings? My solution would be for school buildings to be owned by a separate entity and then “rented”, either to district schools or charter schools. In my dreams…

By: NDC

NDC — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:58:23 +0000

I also can’t understand why charters can’t compel districts to give them existing space based on the number of children enrolled. After all, these are district kids being educated by funds from the district.

By: NDC

NDC — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:54:04 +0000

Were your teachers still in the typical state system for teacher retirement and benefits, even though they were on a different system for pay, I’m assuming.

How did you get out from under the state salary pay scale or doesn’t Colorado do it that way? Did the freedom in compensation just come in rewards above the state base pay?

I don’t think my district has seen a charter petition come forward, but I’ve read about one of the nearby district actively work to keep a charter from opening, and I’m surprised they get away with it.

By: Hunter McDaniel

Hunter McDaniel — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:54:51 +0000

NDC-
To answer your questions
1) Funding for our charter school was on a per-pupil basis, same amount for every child.
2) We admitted students by lottery. Which meant that a lot of students were rejected, but not from any criteria that we set.
3) Our funded-pupil count was based on the number of students on a special “count day” in early October. That’s just the way public school funding works in Colorado. I think there are provisions in the law for handling extraordinary enrollment changes during a year, but those never applied to us.
4) If we lost students during the year, we usually replaced them with the next child on the (lottery-driven) waiting list.

As to your question of “when in the year did you get your funds”, there is no clear answer. The local school district received our funding from the state and then included us as a “location code” within their budget. Our budget was something like an annual appropriation (rather than monthly), subject to the pupil count adjustment in October. The district did not have any system for directly tracking whether our expenses were running ahead of or behind the budget, but we sure as hell did.

As for how you replicate this kind of school choice, I don’t think it has to be that hard. In Colorado and many other states it is already the case that the districts are funded on a per-pupil basis. So it’s mostly a matter of lowering the barriers to charter school formation, letting charters organize themselves into their own districts, etc. Under such a system I believe you would soon see “brands” develop – the Kipp District competing with Core Knowledge District, the Waldorf District, and the Montessori District.

The biggest barrier for most charter schools is finding a facility. Our charter school was extremely fortunate that a narrow political opening resulted in our getting to use an existing district facility.

By: NDC

NDC — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:54:47 +0000

Rex, do you have elected superintendents or is he/she appointed by an elected board? Are you in a big union state where school board elections are affected by union behavior?

We have an elected board who appoints the superintendent and union politics have zero influence in local elections. Principals don’t have tenure as far as I know but are rarely fired. I’m not sure anyone is actually accountable.

By: NDC

NDC — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:46:47 +0000

Rex, it’s just really hard to make people accountable when the whole system is funded by other people’s money.

The politics are a big factor, but public funding is another.