Tom Zawistowski
Executive Director
Portage County TEA Party
The best way I can explain to you what our problem is with K-12 education is that our public schools are a jobs program for adults, instead of an educational program for students. We want great schools and we want to pay great teachers what they are worth. But we know we are grossly overpaying our teachers for the job they perform. They are going to say that is not true, but let me explain. When I ask teachers what they make, they think they make what they take home. They don’t even know what their gross income is, and they do not count their health care or retirement, which are real costs to the tax payer.
I have been involved with the Business Advisory Council (BAC) at Field School District in Portage County for three years, so I will use them as my example. In Field Schools, the starting salary for a teacher right out of college is $30,000. However, if they are married, we also pay $14,400 for their health care and dental care. That brings the total to $44,400. Then we pay 14% into their retirement, while most districts pay 12%. That is another $4,200, which takes us to $48,600 to start. Now in exchange for that, their contract requires them to teach 184 days per year for 7 hours per day. That is a total of 1,288 hours per year. If you divide $48,600 by 1,288 hours, it
comes out to $37.73 Per Hour. For someone right out of college. How many people outside of education do you know that get paid $37.73 per hour? How many people in your community make that much? The average household income in Ohio is $48,100 per year – with two people working 12 months, with perhaps two weeks vacation, perhaps some medical insurance and a 2% 401K match!
How many people do you know who can afford to pay $14,400 per year for their health care? How many people in the public sector are saving 14% of their income each year for retirement?? Very few. Why should we do for teachers what we can’t do for ourselves? That made sense when teachers were underpaid. That was the deal: you did not become a teacher to get rich, it was a calling.
So, we gave good benefits. Now they make more than us and have superiour benefits by any standard in the public sector.
Taxpayer Paid New Teacher Ave. Teacher Bachelors Ohio Worker
Salary $30,000 $63,000 $43,823 $21,003
Health Benefits $14,400 $14,400 $2,500 $1,000
Retirement $4,200 $8,820 $876.46 $0.00
Total Cost/yr $48,600 $86,220 $47,199.46 $22,003
Days worked/yr 184 184 250 250
Hours worked/yr 1,288 1,288 2,000 2,000
Pay per hour $37.73 $66.94 $23.60 $11.00
But lets compare apples to apples. The figures above are for a first year teacher. They make $48,600 to work 184 days. The average annual pay for a person with a bachelors degree, not in their first year, but on AVERAGE in the US no matter how may years they have been working, is $43,823 to work 250 days. Now let’s compare that to the average teacher’s salary. At Field Schools, that average is $63,000 per year. Add in the $14,400 for health care, and we are up to $77,400. Add in the 14% retirement which is $8,820. The total cost to the tax payer is now $86,220. All most double what the average private sector worker with a bachelors degree makes.
When you divide $86,220 by the 1,288 hours they work, the AVERAGE hourly wage of a teacher in PreK-12 education is $66.94 per HOUR.
Now as I explained earlier, we in the TEA Party want great schools and we want to pay teachers what they are worth. So what are they worth? Do you need a master’s degree to teach 5th grade math? To a common person, it would appear obvious that if you took 5th grade math and were taught properly, you should be able to teach 5th grade math if you have a high school education. The Amish do it all the time. Certainly all you need is a bachelors degree. The only reason teachers are required to get a master’s degree is because the union negotiated that requirement so that they could get a “step raise”. It has nothing to do with teaching children 5th grade math; it is only about the money. More money out of our pocket that buys no value. It’s money for nothing, because it does not help the kids, it only helps the adults.
In Ohio the average cost of salaries and benefits in any school district is about 84%. The Field SD budget is $19,000,000, so our cost of salary and benefits is just short of $16,000,000, and our Board gets to run the school district on $3,000,000. We have no budget for 2011! Page 1 of 2 bus repairs, and our newest bus is 26 years old. Our computer lab has Apple Mac’s with the purple and green and orange covers from like 1998. Our football stadium is going to be condemned, and our track has been unusable for the past 10 years or more. We have at most $100,000 in our reserve account. Under these circumstances our teachers demanded a 3.5% raise. They were threatening to go on strike.
As a business owner and property tax payer, I tried to explain to the union that we don’t mind paying taxes, as long as we get value for our money. So, my question to them was: “If I can pay $3,800 per year to send my kid to St. Pat’s School in Kent, and have them outperform every public school in the county on achievement tests for every grade from 1 through 8, then why am I paying $8,700 to $14,400 per year for every student in our public schools?” Their answer was that we have to take all the “problem kids” and kids with disabilities, and so it is not a fair comparison. Okay, but the cost of those kids is at most $1,000 more for every student in the school district because the special needs kids are such a small part of the population, so $4,800 should be enough. Why is it $14,400.
So, I said to them, “Let’s say you go on strike.” In our county the current wage for substitute teachers is $100 per day. I told our Superintendent, “If the teachers go on strike, let’s pay substitutes double that amount, $200 per day, so we can get the best sub available. Now we have 141 teacher. So, while they are on strike, if we pay $200 per day for each substitute, that comes out to $28,200 per day in cost to the taxpayers. If subs teach every class, for every one of the 184 days in the school year, the total cost to
the taxpayer would be $5,188,800 for substitutes. So, why are we paying $16,000,000??? By my calculations, we are overpaying for what our teachers are worth, by $10,811,200 – or about 67%. Why should we do that? How is that value for our tax dollars?
Now look at those substitute teachers who are making $200 per day. If they teach for the 184 days, they will make $36,800. How many people in your community make that for working a full year of work with no summers off, no christmas vacations, no spring breaks? No health care, no retirement savings? Now that is a drastic comparison, and teachers have bachelors degrees and are worth more than that, but you can see how ridiculous the unions’ claims of “poor under-paid teachers” are for those of us who pay the
bills. The bottom line is that the skills needed to teach 5th grade math are worth only so much and they are not worth any more when
you have 30 years of service.
The fact that teachers get raises based on years of service, instead of because they are actually good teachers, is what is wrecking our schools. The movie “Waiting for Superman” explains that the average teacher in the United States gets tenure after just two years of service without proving any kind of special skill or ability. As they put it, they get rewarded with a job for life, from which they can not be fired, and for which they get automatic raises nearly every year, just because they were “still breathing after two years.” After getting tenure, the bad teachers can just quit teaching and you and I can’t do anything about it. Here is the kicker, in that movie it showed that bad teachers are only about 6% of the teachers, but they ruin the entire system. If we could fire those bad teachers, our student learning would take us from 23 in the world to first. But the union will defend those terrible teachers to the end, because it is about union dues, $700 per year per teacher at Field Schools, and the political power the union buys with those dues.
Let me come at it another way. In our county, the state – meaning we, the taxpayers – give the school district $5,600 per student per year. That is significantly more than the $3,800 per year at private schools, and more than covers disabled students. We have about 2,100 students, so that would be an annual budget of $11,760,000, which based on the analysis above, should be more than enough to pay the teachers a fair salary and take better care of our schools. But here is the important part: the difference between what we pay for education through the state, $5,600, and what we are actually paying now per student, is property taxes. If we could educate our
children for $5,600 per year, which I think I have just clearly proven that we can, we would have no property taxes! Do you realize what it would do to the economy of Ohio if people could spend their property taxes on putting a new roof on the house, or getting a new driveway, or buying a car, or paying for better health care, or taking care of their parents, or saving for their own retirement! Do you realize how many private sector jobs that would create? This is the kind of negative impact on the economy that our public schools are having.
Our kids are falling further behind the rest of the world every year, not just because we can’t fire rotten teachers, but we are overpaying them for ruining the future of our children and our country. I hope that you will share this with your friends in education. They will not like what I have written, but they will at least see why we think the way we do. We must take back our school system or our economic future is doomed. We intend to get the education for our children that they need at a price we can afford – and we will do whatever it takes to get it. It’s that simple.
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:24 am
Thank you for the thoughtful explanation. As a teacher in a high performing district in Ohio and a member of the Tea Party, I’d like to offer some thoughts.
1. The claim that teachers are grossly overpaid, I believe, is incorrect. I would point you to the study The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground.
“An analysis of the weekly earnings of occupations comparable to K-12 teachers confirms the teacher disadvantage in weekly earnings and the substantial erosion of teacher relative pay over the last 10 years. Teachers’ weekly wages were nearly on par with those paid in comparable occupations in 1996 but are now 14.3%, or $154, below that of comparable occupations.”
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/book_teaching_penalty/
Also, please consider this study (albeit from a progressive source) regarding teacher collective bargaining in Ohio: http://innovationohio.org/featured/teachers-and-collective-bargaining
2. Regarding health care, I agree that it is very expensive. I would suggest requiring all school districts in the state to pool their purchasing power and buy insurance from one company. Boards could then negotiate the percentage that teachers pay.
3. To a degree, I agree with your point on master’s degrees. In some cases, depending on subject matter and grade level taught, they are perhaps overkill. Unfortunately, teachers have invested tens of thousands of dollars into them because the system was set up that way. They were basically required to earn them. While I think it’s grossly unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game, which would basically render these investments worthless, I would support local boards having the power to limit their value for teachers coming into the profession.
4. Regarding step increases for years of service, I believe some reform is justified- perhaps limiting to 4 or 5 steps (0-4 years, 5-9 years, 10-14 years, 15+ years) from which base salaries are calculated. Merit pay would be a multiplier from those base scores. The problem with what I believe will be the proposal to replace steps with is that it will be a plethora of bureaucratic hoops that the state (instead of local districts) develops. Things such as licensure types based on being nationally board certified or having some type of new state certification will probably be the basis. If teachers have to pursue these sorts of things, it will simply be more time out of the classroom to work on what is really important (teaching, keeping up with content, & planning good lessons). The bottom line is that merit pay sounds good, but research and studies about it are very mixed (most, in fact, that it’s not beneficial).
5. I dislike the NEA & OEA perhaps more that you do. I would welcome the ability for teachers to easily opt out of them.
6. I’m very concerned about the type of teacher that would enter the profession, given the severe cuts you want to make to salaries and benefits. Conservatives understand that incentives attract quality employees. If teachers (or plumbers, CEOs or members of the governor’s cabinet) are paid poorly, poor teachers will enter the profession. If teachers are paid well, many of the best and brightest will bypass high-paying private sector jobs for the teaching profession. Likewise, eliminating all step increases will drive some of the best teachers out. I SEE THIS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IN MY DISTRICT & THE BILL HASN’T EVEN PASSED YET. Many teachers in my school left professions as physicians, lawyers, and editors and do so knowing they would take large pay cuts. Further cuts and they’re gone. I can’t express enough how many great teachers this bill will force out of the profession. Education is too important to be a profession for mediocre talent. If you want to destroy your own district, go ahead. Don’t drag mine down too.
Let me conclude my including some other thoughts as to why SB5 is NOT conservative or libertarian and why Republicans should oppose it:
• A key principle of conservatism is local control. In SB5, the state moves in and removes control from school districts to do what they deem best. For instance, local districts would not have the power to offer step increases to teachers, regardless of how little money the district receives from the state. This is the exact type of thing that incenses Republicans at the state level when the national government is taking the lead. It would be hypocritical.
o A related point on local control: It’s understandable that the legislature must cut state funding to schools in order to balance the budget. There is no reason that can’t be done without this bill. Cut funding as necessary and let the local districts determine the cuts that will be made. I can assure you that school districts operating with 15-20% less state revenue will not be offering increases in benefits or salaries to educators. Similarly, given those constraints any union that wanted to be taken seriously would not ask for them. Many would accept paying more into healthcare.
• Conservatism, by definition, is a philosophy based on maintaining traditional institutions and making gradual, measured change when necessary. SB5, as currently written, does no such thing. It destroys the positive along with the negative, ultimately leaving students and teachers as the victims. Are there areas to reform? Certainly. Look at matters such as sick day reform, tenure limitations (not elimination), a state healthcare pool (negotiate for one company, but allow the percentage of the premium paid by each local district to remain a bargaining issue to a reasonable degree), limits on districts picking up the employee’s share of STRS, perhaps making it easier for employees to opt out of joining unions- particularly the NEA & OEA, and even limitations on wage increases tied to the amount of funding a particular district receives from the state.
• Less money spent on education at the state level opens the door for the federal government to increase aid to fill part of the vacuum. With federal aid come expensive federal mandates that will eventually lead to federal, rather than local control on a variety of things, including curriculum and performance standards. Do you really want Department of Education bureaucrats in Washington telling teachers in Ohio what “truths” need to be taught and tested about the New Deal, the United Nations, economic systems, climate change, religion, or political parties? These are just a sampling of social studies issues. Add other subject areas and the list is endless.
• This bill creates new and expensive bureaucracy. Who will be developing and creating the new performance reviews that “merit” pay will be based upon? What will their salaries and benefits be? Studies show very inconsistent findings regarding merit pay for teachers. Most, in fact, show that it does not improve education. We will be spending money on bureaucracy to implement unproven or even counterproductive methods. That is the definition of wasteful government spending.
• It has hidden costs to taxpayers. It will cost time and money to train teachers and administrators in the new performance reviews. It may open the door to costly litigation by employees who disagree with the reviews. Districts will inevitably hire consultants to advise them on how to implement all of the changes associated with the bill. This is money that need not be spent.
• Passage of this bill, in current extreme form, will result in the demise of the Republican Party in Ohio for a long time to come. Although a minority of teachers are Republicans, it will alienate nearly all (my estimation is about 40%) of those who are. It’s astonishing, right now, how many traditionally very loyal Republican teachers have one foot out of the door of the Republican Party. Firemen and particularly policemen will also leave the party in droves. Simply put, passage of this bill as currently written will halt the passage of important Republican policies for decades to come. Is it really worth killing the Republican agenda for twenty years?
The budget can be balanced without this bill.
I submit this argument very respectfully. We probably agree on 97% of principles and values relating to government, including the need to drastically cut spending (especially at the national level), a limited, Constitutional government, and to increase freedom for all Americans.
March 3rd, 2011 at 9:39 am
Thanks for the response! More input and insights, the better for all of us.
March 4th, 2011 at 3:42 am
Offering comprimises instead of the tough reforms needed in the public union system is like taking your antibiotics for 5 days instead of 10-the sickness is alleviated for a short while but comes back because you didnt get rid of it entirely. School districts in the past have agreed w/far too many wage/benefit requests & most dropped the ball by not grasping reality.
We The Taxpayers/Parents in most districts are constantly being told that most teachers just aren’t appreciated, are underpaid, constantly brainwashed w/guilt for having the gall to challenge the curriculum, salaries, etc. When mentioning the 2 1/2 months off, an editorial in our local paper scoffed @ us by saying that it was unpaid, apparently suggesting that their job is so valuable they should be paid not to work also? Every job done well is valuable, & it gets old having to be reminded how important teachers are. Teachers are already revered, their work noticed & rewarded far above most of the workers in this world. The vast majority of us can & should only expect to be rewarded with continued employment for a job well done.
W/my daughters threw themselves on the floor in a tantrum for the 1st time, I told them “We dont behave that way”, & walked away. I’m done w/the tantrums of public unions & certain employees in them & will walk away from them also. The Republican Party will suffer for making tough decisions. Only a small percentage of The People are mature enough to face reality & support politicians that are in office to do something other than give them a piece of The Taxpayer pie. Democrats will never deal w/unions because Democrats receive 90+% of union dues. I’m sorry for those who are blind to this illegal payoff of politicians. I’m fully in support of those brave enough to throw a wrench into that machine, as well as helping to balance our state budget.
March 6th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Tom,
I also would like to thank you for speaking out about the questionable political maneuvering used in the senate to pass this bill. As I told a friend, it made Pelosi’s Obama Care tactics look like mere child’s play. Having to resort to what they did given a 23-10 advantage speaks volumes for the quality of the legislation. It took guts to speak out. Thanks.
I really think that this bill could be fixed in a manner that would be beneficial to taxpayers & government workers IF these guys would slow down, study it, and make reasonable reforms. The first step would be to allow local school districts to maintain authority as to how they pay their teachers. A modified step scale (perhaps 4 seniority based steps)establishing base salaries, multiplied by a district created merit formula makes much more sense than the state mandating licensure types that look to be full of heavy-handed bureaucratic & time-consuming hoops.
March 17th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Thank you Rob for an excellent commentary on why this bill should not be passed as it is now. I have voted almost entirely Republican for my whole life. This bill as you say is more like we get from the “elites” in Washington and the Demoratic Party……more government not less!!
Yes, I was a teacher for 35 years and just retired the last school year. As for merit pay I think it would be terrible. There were years when I would have gotten merit pay and others probably not because of the differences in class. A friend of mine taught science to two different groups of students. One group did very well on the science test the second group did not. She taught the same thing in the same way. Would she get merit pay or not? I could go on and on.
May 5th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
The “hours worked per year” and, by extension, “pay per hour” categories are completely false. What teacher do you know that only works from when the first bell rings till the last bell ends? Planning, grading, bureaucratic paperwork, professional development, researching your subject matter and finding new material, the list could go on… When you take all of this into consideration, the “total hours worked/year” becomes MUCH larger.
What do you think the reaction would be of most Americans if you pulled out all their college educated teachers, and they were replaced by people that only had high school diplomas? It would be a PR nightmare for those responsible.
June 23rd, 2011 at 6:46 pm
I just cannot let this go without comment. There are two major untruths in the original post concerning base salary and student performance.
First, I am here to tell you that retirement and health benefits are NEVER added to a contract salary, they are subtracted. I started teaching in Maryland at $42,000 per year. That contract number IS the gross income, from which everything else was deducted – I certainly did not take home that much money! I didn\’t even have the option, as retirement and health costs were mandatory in my district. After living costs and car payments, I wasn\’t able to save much for my personal savings account.
Second, I found a lot of math in this post. The bit about cost per student makes sense, though I still have to point out that having problem children and those with disabilities means you need more disciplinary, aide and security staff and so the cost DOES go up for public schools. The part that made me wonder about your number skills was this: \"…bad teachers are only about 6% of the teachers, but they ruin the entire system. If we could fire those bad teachers, our student learning would take us from 23 in the world to first.\"
Removing 6% of teachers would make our education system the best? That\’s all? Even with the worst of the worst gone and no more union strikes, all the good teachers would still be operating under ridiculous testing requirements and poorly chosen curricula. There are SO many more factors that play into this country\’s student performance than just a few lazy, tenured teachers. It has been argued that the real issue in performance is the increasing income gap. Will that 6% take all the deep-seated economic woes that have plagued the entire country for half a century with them? That’s quite the optimistic statement.
September 12th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
This letter has a lot of unverified facts in it. Also, the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and special ed and energy (school buildings and buses) are not the fault of the teachers but angry folks always blame teachers for this.
The average income in Ohio is not $25,000 as stated by “The T-Man” That number is the per capita income. The per capita takes all sources of income for Ohioans and divides it by every man, woman, and child. So comparing teacher salaries to this number is absolutely absurd!
Real studies about employee compensation, done by experts at various universities, have found that private sector employees out earn public sector employees in total compensation when including factors such as level of education, number of hours worked, and years of experience.
Teachers across this state are taking pay cuts while CEOs across this state are giving themselves pay raises. Kasich gave himself a raise and raises for all of his appointees even while he began raping local taxpayers by reducing the local piece of the state tax pie returning from our taxes paid to Columbus. Kasich will hand our piece of the pie to giant corporations and leave school districts scrambling to provide essential services with less funds.
If the T-Man made sense he’d quit complaining and become a teacher (since it’s so easy anybody can do it and you get paid out the wazoo for doing nothing but planning your great vacation).
Obviously, the T-Man is greatly mistaken. Unfortunately, he may drag Ohio down with his populist nonsense.
Average income in Ohio is close to $50,000 including folks who can barely read. Average teacher salary in Ohio is around $54,000 including fair benefits and a pension that risks not to be there (such as social security). The writer is a master of hyperbole and fact stretching. He needs to get a job at Fox News.
My benefits get worse every year. I have no vision coverge and my dental is very limited. I pay $200/month for my wife and $100/month for my kids. That’s $4000/year plus co-pays for “free healthcare” according to the T-man.
I am not whining, but I went into teaching with the idea that my family would have great benefits. If Kasich ruins this, I am out. My family is priority numero uno and let the Tea Party ruin this and see how many teachers stick it out?
I am looking for my new career because too many people listen to this garbage.
November 7th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
I support the t-party, but i’m a substitute teacher…
Where are these $200 a day sub jobs? I have a masters degree and finished first in my school which is top ranked in it’s field. I’ve substituted at several different schools and made a maximum of $67 per day. Thats $8.38 an hour. I get no benefits and have to buy my own insurance.
I’m not doubting you, I just want to know where those jobs are so I can go get one!
January 14th, 2012 at 11:07 am
The original article is inaccurate in a number of aspects already mentioned. I just want to highlight a case study that doesn’t reflect the tenets in the article.
My husband taught, and after several years his contract said he made $36,000. He brought home $24,000 after paying health care, retirement, and other deductions.
He has a master’s degree in the subject he taught, and completed a teacher’s preparation program in college and paid for and passed the tests to get his license. He also had to pay for his continuing education, which was about $3,000. Then, he bought supplies off and on for his room out of his pocket.
And the hours and hours he spent on school related work at home was crazy. Teachers don’t walk into the classroom without planning for the day. They also have piles of work to grade and record, professional documents, and research and resources to find and prepare for each child.
Our own children were often upset, because they wanted him to spend time with them, but he had various school responsibilities. He was also involved in after school activities too, that he wasn’t paid for, but unofficially expected to do if he didn’t want trouble.
So, if you think paying to get a master’s degree + over a year of teaching courses results in bring home pay close to the poverty line is too much, I guess teachers should teach for free. When their student loan comes due, I’d hope the government would understand they can’t pay it.