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With regard to the caller who seemed to think teacher salaries were the cause of deferred  maintenance because the only large salaries in a school district are teacher salaries, I would suggest examining the local school district budget.  It is true that teacher salaries are more easily accessible by the public than administrative salaries.  Time to change that.

It is also true that when I talk to legislators about the subject of administrator salaries, I hear that my complaint is true in many other districts.

I live in a district where teachers worked days for free in the last recession--don't tell me that teachers don't live in the real world!
But after times got better, administrators got a raise and teachers didn't. The school board did not understand why anyone would be angry about that, but that public anger led eventually to a new superintendent and a new school board.

We now have a new supt. and a new school board ---and a new recession. And school board members who can't understand why they should have had a recorded vote on the last promotion to asst. supt. and pay increases at the asst. supt., deputy supt. etc. pay level.

No school administrator is worth over $120,000.  NO public administrator in the state of Oregon deserves a car allowance ---unless it is a job with constant statewide travel putting lots of miles on a car. Why not just reimbursement per mile like outside sales people?

I was a school substitute in 2 counties over 15  years in over 60 schools.  For 10 of those years I had a weekend retail job to have predictable income. I understand what real work in the real world is like. And I am tired of hearing teachers bashed for costly salaries and administrators never mentioned. What on earth does an administrator do to earn that kind of money?

Or is it a Wall Street-style "what the market will bear" situation, and some people think bashing teachers as overpaid will distract from that fact?

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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What did Dancer mean by "comingling of funds"?
Is that language from a Sizemore measure, or does he mean outlawing pass throughs?

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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Glad to hear someone say this should be a professional model, not an assembly line model. As has often been said, manufacturing plants can reject raw material, schools must educate all students.

The front page of the Oregonian has the Prineville teacher who was named National Teacher of the Year. One way to evaluate the issues being discussed today is whether any system (Merit Pay, Class Project, etc.) would have rated that teacher highly.

More than 30 years ago, I knew someone who was teaching in one of those old rural one-school elemengtary districts. Young, committed teacher who would give extra help during recess and other times to students who needed help. But the principal didn't like him. Half the parents thought he was wonderful, the other half agreed with the principal. So he only lasted one year in that district----and went on to a long career in another district. How would any of the systems discussed have evaluated him?

I was a substitute teacher for many years. Some teachers were wonderful, some were not. Some left complete lesson plans, others did not.
Some administrators were very helpful, others were the kind who would proverbially dump someone in the deep end of the pool and expect them to swim. There were subs who would gladly work in a supportive school with great working conditions and a lower hourly rate than in non-supportive schools with high hourly rate.

There are lots of teachers who can't really be evaluated by standardized tests, incl. kindergarten teachers, PE/ Music/ Art teachers, librarians, special ed teachers, etc. Such discussions rarely mention them.

What about evaluating administrators? There are some people in this debate who think teachers should be evaluated very rigorously but administrators know what they are doing. The best teachers working under an incompetent or bullying administrator are not going to do their best work. The best teachers I ever had didn't fit into a mold.

Finally, kids are not widgets. Many teachers have had the experience I had subbing in a middle school---one year the 7th graders were more mature for most of the year than the 8th graders.

Do students have a responsibility to learn? Do parents have a responsibility to help students?
Some proposals (like Sizemore's over the years) imply teachers have a responsibility to cram that knowledge into students' heads, but students have no responsibility to learn.

This is a complex subject. How is Denver's approach to something similar ---merit pay system agreed to by both teachers and administrators--working out?
The late Wes Sullivan of the Statesman Journal once wrote about a system years ago in Salem which was put into place, failed miserably, and was dropped. And yet this idea is a hardy perennial--often floated by those who oppose unionized public employees but never mention the salaries of publicly funded administrators.

Being around groups of kids in any setting (school, sports, child care, etc.) can be exhausting. People who think they understand "the public schools" should spend a whole day in a classroom or other child-centered activity.

Gov. Huckabee, when he was running for President, said the main problem with teachers in Arkansas was burnout within 5 years due to lack of support. When asked about problem schools, he said "If the state had to take over a failing school, first we fired the supt., then we told the school board their services were no longer needed".

In other occupations, there are people who say that front line workers need excellent management, and if they don't have support from management they shouldn't be told they are incompetent. But too often, there have been people in Oregon who want to ignore evaluation of school administrators (supt. on down, all publicly funded) and claim if only there was no teachers union schools would run smoothly.

posted 5 years ago
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