Questions / Comments
Why don't you just pay the teacher's less?
Why don't you cut the teacher's health insurance?
Why don't you make it harder for teacher's to get raises?
Why don't you not give teacher's Cost of Living Increases?
Why don't you reduce benefits, make teacher pay worse, etc.?
Data / Links
ANSWER:
Quick Answer: We as a community should want our teachers to be paid well and to be the best trained that they can be for our children. Just as it is in the private sector, the job market for good teachers is competitive. We want the best teachers for our kids. Cutting teacher benefits or pay will only harm our children and our teachers and not solve the long term financial challenges.
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Long Answer: Teacher benefits are negotiated at fixed time frames with the teacher's union. Benefits, pay scales, and other details are agreed to at that time between the school and the union. These agreed to items cannot be changed in the middle of the agreement, nor should the school want to make those types of changes during that period. Everyone agrees to these numbers.
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The pay and benefits provided to teachers is directly related to the quality of teachers our school will have. If we as a community wish to cut salaries and benefits for our teachers, we should not wonder why our State Report Card is getting worse. We should also not wonder why we have a difficult time keeping teachers or quality staff.Â
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The school needs to work WITH the teachers to provide the best education for our children. That does mean there has to be conversations during negotiations about benefits and the costs associated, but that certainly isn't a reason to NOT vote yes on the Income Tax.
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The District Profile Report from the Ohio Department of Education - Office of Budget and School Funding shows that the Milton-Union EVD has lower average teacher salaries than statewide districts ($64,811.64 to $69,080.84 for the State) and has lower Administrator average salary than statewide districts ($83,731.28 to $89,019.66) all the while having a higher number of teachers with 10+ years of experience (65.22% to 61.20%).
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What this means is that we are fortunate to have teachers who care about our school enough to continue to work in it, even though it may not be as competitive with other districts financially. The discussion that we are overpaying our teachers or administrators is incorrect. The discussion that we can pay them less and it would solve the problems, is also incorrect.