The Texas Classroom Teachers Association recently distributed this advisory (edited for length) concerning several major changes passed by the Legislature under Senate Bill 8 in teacher hiring, firing and setting of salaries. Read the entire advisory here.Salary
– Your district can lower your salary below current (2010-11) levels. The current state minimum salary schedule remains in place, so your salary cannot go below the state minimum for your salary step.
– Most likely (although it will probably be subject to litigation) any reductions in salary from your 2010-11 compensation will not happen for the upcoming (2011-12) school year, since the law will not go into effect until this fall, after teachers are working under the terms of an existing contract.
– Your district can choose to implement a furlough program, which is another method of lowering salaries. A furlough program would mean that the district could reduce your required days of service by up to 6 non-instructional days, unpaid; a 6-day furlough would have the effect of lowering annual salary by 3.2%, for a teacher on a 187-day contract.
– Any reduction in salary under the furlough program must be equally distributed over the course of the contract. If your district lowers salaries or implements furloughs, administrators and other professional employees must also be subject to the reductions/furloughs at the same level.
Legal rights/protections
– Your district can now wait until near the end of the spring semester – 10 days prior to the last day of instruction – to notify you whether your contract will be renewed for the upcoming school year. Under current law, the notice deadline is 45 days prior to the last day of instruction, which is generally in mid-April.
– If your district declares a “financial exigency” (for which there is no definition in law), it will be much easier to terminate teacher contracts mid-year. Under current law, there is a higher level of teacher due process because the district is essentially breaking the contract (and a teacher doing the same would be subject to certification sanctions).
– The revised law makes it as easy to terminate mid-year under a financial exigency as it is to nonrenew a contract at the end of the term.
19 comments:
Any senior public school teacher who doesn't want to be subjected to this bogus economic scapegoating SB - because the State should be taxing the energy and natural resources corporate sector and the elite who runs these companies (who have seen their business income and revenues rebound above pre-2007 levels), can consider this option:
If you are only a few years away from retirement, consider contacting TRS and buy the years of service you need to acheive the optimal retirement benefit. You can use money tax-free from your 403b/TSA plan or an IRA rather than your after tax savings. And with SBs like this, the US stock market is headed downward anyway.
If you want more information on this very viable and integrity saving early retirement option, contact me at arrowbiz@texasorp.com. I will help you determine if this is a viable option AND walk you through the necessary steps without any charge whatsoever.
My son benefited greatly from these teachers and it is simply the right thing to do for valued workers being ripped off, cheated and discarded by their elected (mainly Republican Party) representatives.
And pass this link on to any educator colleague you think this early retirement option could help.
Here is almost the saddest outcome, to me, of the passage of this SB 8:
Everyone - government, parents, the public - has been blaming teachers for years because students' scores on standardized tests have been falling. Never mind that parents let their children --from the day they are born - watch whiz bang cartoons and then, violent Transformer-type movies, thus making most children incapable of having the attention span needed to watch something so mild as a teacher teaching him or her to read; forget that the kids stay up late watching said movies, making them want to fall asleep in class next day; disregard that many parents hated one of their teachers along the line, and have now patterned their own children to have little respect for teachers and education.
Teachers meanwhile are astonished that such wildcats - previously thoroughly undisciplined -- are given to them in great numbers to educate. Most parents wouldn't be able to stay in a classroom for even one day with 22 little monsters, let alone for 187 days. Each parent can't keep his own
child under control, but somehow they all expect one lone teacher to be able to do that with 22 rowdy children.
So, the scapegoating theme that it's all the teachers' fault may actually come true in the near future. There has never been any money in teaching, but at least there was some respect and appreciation for teachers. No more. And so the good teachers who are young enough to retrain for better jobs (i.e., almost ANY job) will leave teaching. (In Texas almost half of new teachers quit after one year already-- and they are young and full of energy!) No one who wants to earn a decent living or have a reasonably sane workplace will go into teaching in the future, and then, finally, it may become true that the trouble with education WILL be the people who choose to go into it -- no sane or self-respecting person will become a teacher.
I'm a retired teacher myself, and I am sad to say that I discourage anyone who tells me that s/he plans to be a teacher.
P.S. - The only group of college graduates which makes less money than teachers is social workers.
Some of the most essential people in our society, in other words.
Teachers who want to teach in a supportive environment often go to a private school after a hair-raising year or two in public schools.
In private schools, children who are disrespectful to adults or who disrupt class are booted out. Most of those students behave, though, because Mommy and Daddy are paying big bucks for their private education -- in addition to paying taxes to support public education. Mommy and Daddy will back up the teacher who is trying to educate their child.
The state will force teachers to leave teaching and enter the regular work force. Teaching jobs are as competitive and as rare as jobs in the working world, but they will get paid more.
As stated by someone else here, teachers may also opt to teach in private schools, but pay is usually low as well.
Having a long summer off is usually not the case for many teachers who use the time to prepare lessons or opt to take summer jobs, which are now a rarity and/or are extremely competitive.
The main point is that the State of Texas and its wealthy special interests continue to hurt hardworking and hardly working Texans and their children.
I always have believed that school districts and teachers need to have the "cajones" to file lawsuits against the state. Only via the court system may they find a more positive resolution --- or not, but it's worth a try.
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The info regarding Social Workers is not completely true.
If a social worker opts to get an 'R' number and start his/her own practice, (they) can earn around 100K per year in a successful practice. FYI, the 'R' number is needed to get payment from Medicare, Medicaid and some other insurances. Many social workers also use a "sliding scale" to charge patients according to their income.
Peter,
What do you mean by "The state will force teachers to leave teaching and ENTER THE REGULAR WORK FORCE? Teaching jobs are as competitive and as rare as jobs IN THE WORKING WORLD..."
Teachers already are in "the regular work force," and they definitely are "in the working world!"
In states like Texas, one reason SB8 even got hold was because TCTA and other educator associations spend more time hawking income producing products they endorse such as supplemental insurance and other sub-contracted member services than fighting for their constituent's salary and employment rights.
Don't be fooled by the "business of professional associations." They are really sales orgs for the insurance and publishing industry.
First thing (not the only thing) I'd do to improve education -- and this will never happen because public schools are mainly used as a babysitting service -- is to allow schools to expel students who are disruptive. Teachers can't teach in a classroom of unruly kids--many of whom don't want to be there. Schools can put disruptive kids in special classrooms, but the parents (who can't/won't handle the kid themselves) resist that measure, and so it takes practically an act of God to get the kid out of the regular classroom.
The first and second things I would do is remove coaches from the classroom who don't know how to teach/manage correctly if their lives depended on it, then cut the salaries of administrators, and finally impose accountability standards on every member of the school board beyond just the number of votes they can collect from the local booster clubs.
Public education as we know it today is a farse. When you view it from afar what you see is internecine warfare between students, classroom teachers, administration, parents and tax payers, the school board and the state.
There is nothing innocent about it except for those very few exceptional students who wish to learn and very few exceptional teachers who love their jobs despite all the odds against them.
Happy Independence Day.
"Publik Edukation" is the holy grail of the Socialist left in this country. We need more Governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey who has exposed the public education system for what is, the bastion of the insatiable, selfish, tax dependent, pseudo intellectual left. The so-called teachers are the first to demonstrate and even recruit their students to the same when they feel their little world is threatened. Remember Wisconsin? Notice how the lefties on this blog (and there are many) come to the rescue of the troubled socialist education system when there is any truth put forward to expose it.
To "Been There, Done That,"
Amen to getting coaches out of the
classroom. Most of them teach social studies (history, geography, "civics") because they
can't pass enough college courses to teach English, math, or science. That' why U.S. kids rank so low on knowledge of geography and history. Most U.S. kids couldn't find Iraq or France on a globe if you told them you'd give them an iPod if they did.
Michele Bachmann is a perfect example of a product of U.S. public schools where history is taught by football and basketball coaches. Here are some of her sayings:
"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until
slavery was no more in the United States."
The founding fathers (Washington,
Jefferson, others) HAD slaves! Slavery wasn't outlawed until Lincoln was president, almost 100 years later.
"I don't know where they're going to get all this money because we're running out of rich people in this country."
Well, no, we're running out of middle class people -- who pay the great preponderance of taxes --because the middle class is falling into the ranks of the poor. The rich, who pay relatively little in taxes because of tax loopholes and subsidies, are doing fine.
"And what a bizarre time we're in, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but that you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it."
I seriously doubt that any teacher has said to any child -- little or older -- that the child should go try ANY kind of sex.
Another Michele-ism:
"If we took away the minimum wage -- if conceivably it was gone -- we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."
And those jobs wouldn't pay a living wage.
Anon, 12:11 PM:
Yes, there are "lefties on this blog," and hurray for them!
But there are as many, or more, in the other camps.
Peter-You are speaking of social workers in private practice, and yes, they can make significantly more than some of their colleagues. Private practice requires an advanced license for which at least 5 years experience is required. The vast majority of social workers are in an agency, hospital, or school setting, in which salaries are nowhere near those of private practitioners. Suffice it to say that Social Work is not a field one enters to earn "the big bucks."
Take it easy, HRT, I didn't mean to insult you or other teachers. I referred to "working world" meaning the business sector and that more potential teachers will opt to work there rather than in education.
Jwinggins, that was my point as well. However, those in social work have the option to make those dollars as there are many who do.
The advanced degree is an MSW or Master of Social Work and a special license may be a CSW or such. The field also recognizes a lot of burnout from working in the social work field.
You are correct that "most" social workers get little pay and work for agencies, hospitals, VA, etc.
Rocky, it is great that you would work with teachers to do this.
What does SB 8 mean for classroom teachers? It means that teachers continue to be everybody's whipping boy. For my property taxes, I agree that coaches have no business in the classroom. Their salaries should be cut in half and do what they are trained to do and that is coach and oversee PE classes, period.
Good comments for the most part. And folks, Peter is on the teacher's side here, not against. Even though clarification is good, lighten up a bit.
That said, I never thought I would see the "public" - especially the right wing - turn against educators so callously and so ignorantly as now.
The politicians - yes, from both parties, are playing political games with public service careers and lives that already sacrifice income and often free time to help our children grow up and be independent, something the lying politicians and the fanatical tax haters are simply too vengeful to understand.
What is so pathetic now is how so many of the middle class right wing voters (and sadly, more and more patronizing and cowardly Democrats) are willing to trash their children's future by supporting these draconian budget cuts for education while at the same time thinking tax cuts for the corporate elite and rich are going to somehow save their asses from the expanding lower middle class black hole we now call American capitalism.
Sadly, many Americans are clearly willing to sell out their children and grandchildren for red herring gun rights and a few dollars in tax savings so you can wave your flag and try to convince yourselves how free you all are. How gullible can you be.
The reality is lowering your taxes a pittance does not at all mean you are free. You are free when you can earn a fair wage and take control of your life and provide for your family with food and health care and some leisure time and donate money to the church or charity of your choice.
Hopefully, when you finally see the lie many of you are living -essentially as sheep of the upper income corporate welfare elite, it will before you have become totally fatigued, depressed, and defeated. You think there is no good reason the drug companies have all these lifestyle drugs to keep your pain under wraps?
In reality, if those of you who are willing really want to admit it, you are there now. But instead of turning your anger at the pathological liars you vote for and the big box and online retailers you buy from when you should be mainly buying from local businesses, you turn it against teachers, government workers, and people who tell you the truth about your desparate beliefs and fake freedoms.
So now, are you going to do what you do best? Shoot the messenger; blame liberals, blame teachers, blame government workers, blame the EPA, blame Obama, blame independent thinking conservatives, blame me for being anti-corporate welfare and anti-corporate totalitarianism.
And while you are at it, are you going to once again passively sit back and allow your State neoCON politicians pass another big government anti-family planning bill that makes you and your family go without knowledge of your choices so you are forced to have children you don't want so their right wing paymasters can keep you on the welfare rolls while they foster a lifelong dependence on credit cards and fee overcharging "too big to jail" banks for the rest of your life?
Stop believing the lies. Start looking at the truth. Economically and politically, is your life better off since the end of the 20th century? If the answer is NO, you may want to re-evaluate your political and economic beliefs.
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