As you can see from the table below, Wayland got $244,512. They have 195 teachers as measured by Full Time Equivalents (FTE's).
The link to the actual Mass.gov spreadsheet is here. The tab is aid436 and the cell is Cell 329:BE. Some people might suggest that $1,250 for our hard working teachers doesn't seem like much but that's not what the money was supposed to be for! The Federal Department of Education defines what an LEA (Local Education Authority) can spend stimulus money on in Guidance Document released last August.
D-1. For what purposes may an LEA use its Ed Jobs funds?
An LEA must use its funds only for compensation and benefits and other expenses, such as support services, necessary to retain existing employees, to recall or rehire former employees, and to hire new employees,(emphasis added in order to provide early childhood, elementary, or secondary educational and related services.
Their new contract says that any stimulus dollars aka Education Jobs Funding grants received will be paid out in a one time lump sum to each employee. (emphasis added)
Below is a link to the Town of Wayland's new agreement with the Teacher's Association (a union) for the contract term 2010-2013. Click on the link "Wayland Teachers Association (2010-2013)" and it will download the entire contract in PDF format. Pay particular attention to page 30 where the salary schedules begin. In between years 2010 and 2011 they very smoothly stuck in the following …
For the 2010-2011 school year, in addition to the above, any funds received by the Committee from the Federal Education Jobs Funding grant shall be divided equally by the number of FTEs, and each bargaining unit member shall receive a one-time lump sum payment equivalent to that FTE amount, apportioned according to the bargaining unit member?s full-time equivalent status, within 30 days of the Committee?s receipt of the Federal Job Acts grant.
Wayland Teacher's Association (2010-2013)
So in Wayland not a job created. Not a job retained. Just a straight out $1,250 cash giveaway to public union members.
Maybe this is why public union supporters don't want tax payers voting on union contracts.
Back in January I posted Public Employee Unions. Let's level the playing field in which I suggested that tax payers should have the ability to vote on such contracts. In the comments that followed there were the predictable protestations in favor of representative government. (Not hearing a lot of that about what's going on in Wisconsin but I digress.) Well that only works if our elected officials are actually representing the tax payers.
So when does 11.5% equal 1.5%?
When the unions and their enablers in government tells us it does!
In this news report from WickedLocal/Wayland states…
WAYLAND — The following was submitted by the Wayland Teachers Association and the Wayland School Committee:
The Wayland Teachers Association (WTA) and the Wayland School Committee are pleased to announce a new three-year labor agreement has been reached.
One of the major points of the agreement within the new contract involves salary increases. For the 2010-11 school year, each teacher will receive a one-time payment funded exclusively from the Federal Education Jobs Funding program. In addition, for the 2011-12 school year, each teacher will receive a salary increase of 1 percent and a 1.5 percent one-time payment. For the final year of the contract, the 2012-13 school year, each teacher will receive a 2.5 percent salary increase.
Note that the statement was issued jointly by the Teacher's Association AND the elected School Committee. I think most tax payers in Wayland would look at the report in their local paper and think to themselves that a 1.5% to 2.5% raise for the average teacher would seem reasonable. There's only one problem with it. It is a flat out, bold faced LIE!
No mention of a pay increase in the 2010-2011 school year. But a close look at the tables from the contract (and a little handy work with a calculator tells a much different story.
Here is a screen shot from the contract as posted on the Wayland website.
In 2010-2011 a teacher with a Bachelor's degree and 3 years on the job is receiving $46,548 in salary. Now according to the schedule for 2011-2012 school year that same teacher will receive $51,900 because they now have 4 years experience. The 1.5% that the Unions and their city government enablers are claiming, is the difference between the salary for teacher this year with say 3 years on the job versus what a teacher next year with 3 years on the job will make. Of course the teacher who had 3 years experience last year will have 4 years experience this year and will "step to the loo my darling."
Some might say those are simply "step raises". They're still raises and a lot more than one or two percent. I would suggest Wayland teachers are "stepping" in it. I'm pretty good at math and the difference between $51,900 and $46,548 is $5,352. $5,352 divided by $46,548 equals a raise of 11.497%. Not too shabby in a tough economy and certainly not a raise that many if any in the private sector are being granted.
Perhaps the current pay increases are to make up for the beating teacher's salaries took in the 2008 and 2009 during the economic recession. Not so much. According to the Massachusetts Department of Education website, the average salary for a Wayland teacher jumped by over $6000 or 8.3% between 2008 and 2009.
Am I saying that teaching children isn’t important? No. Am I saying that a Wayland teacher isn’t on average worth $79,000 a year? No. (Of course that is $12,000 more per year than the average teacher in Massachusetts.)
What I am saying is “Stop lying to us saying that teachers are only getting a 1.5% to 2.5% a year raise and stop lying to us that stimulus money is being used to create or save jobs!”
I am taking silence as agreement.
That we don’t run after every post by every frustrated conservative? Sorry I didn’t have “reply to Brad Marston about what he wrote” in my schedule the past 18 hours. There are a few questionable things in your post I’ll address as soon as more important business is taken care of. Until then, please keep patting yourself on the back; just be careful of getting a hernia.
in documenting this abomination in Wayland you would have been on it fast. This is indefensible and I look forward to your attempt at defending it.
It was a poor use of stimulus funds. They should have used them to hire more teachers, not pay current teachers more than they would have in a normal year.
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p>Should there be popular elections on union contracts? Absolutely not. Direct democracy is hard enough on simple issues, it would be a disaster on complex issues like contracts.
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p>The larger point Brad is making with this post is rubbish.
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p>Wayland may have done something improper, but that does not mean every school district did. You have no evidence to suggest this issue went beyond Wayland. Stimulus money did go to create and save jobs, even if one small town in Massachusetts used it for different purposes.
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p>I won’t defend what Wayland did (assuming that Brad’s number crunching is correct), but the extrapolation made from an isolated case isn’t backed up at all.
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p>Is this what passes for conservative fiscal responsibility these days? Hiring more teachers with a one-time payment is incredibly irresponsible — it’s like hitting the lottery for $12,000 and buying a new house that costs $1,000 more per month in mortgage payments.
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p>It seems pretty obvious that the Wayland contract was structured to take advantage of available stimulus funds, funds which probably had some time limit on them. So instead of doing a 2-3% contract increase each year (I wonder what their last contract increase was — if it had low or non-existent increases, this new one might be designed to make things up a bit), they did a lump-sum payment, and then had lower increases.
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p>The lump-sum payment is a one-time payment, and does not continue year-after-year. The town did OK here, because the salary increases were 0%, 1.5%, and 2.5%, with one-time payments of (variable percentage, estimate between 1.5 and 3%) and 1.5%. The bonuses do not compound the way salary increases do. And even though individual teachers got more than those percentages, what was the overall cost to the town, due to retirements and new hires? That’s the number that taxpayers should worry about.
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p>I don’t know how stimulus funds were allocated. It may be true that Wayland really didn’t need the money — but why? Because they’ve been paying their teachers less over the years? So maybe it makes sense to give them some money too, you know, rewarding their efficiency?
Hiring people with a one-time payment was the intention of the stimulus. If people did not use it as such, its effects would not be as great. You may disagree with the purpose of the stimulus and think it is irresponsible, but a one time payment was the whole purpose.
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p>The stimulus was not supposed to be sustainable funding. It was designed to have people hire workers. The hope was that it would kickstart the economy and that a strengthened economy could sustain those jobs in a year or two.
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p>Salary increases are still stimulative, but to a much lesser degree, especially if the increases went toward things like paying down debt rather than consumption.
The intention of the stimulus is right in the rules:
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p>Every community receiving it has different needs, it had a wide latitude of permissible uses. I would submit that in a community that had its books in order and did not find itself in a deficit situation, giving raises is a reasonable usage, and makes more sense than overextending, especially if the need for more teachers wasn’t there.
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p>If the money was given to communities facing layoffs, I bet your cohorts at RMG would be crying about how it wasn’t fair that it was penalizing the communities that had their books in order.
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p>That means a one-time payment so that they don’t have to be let go in the next year. You could interpret that to mean giving raises to have these people stay for the long-term, but if the purpose of the stimulus was to increase employment, that would not do it.
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p>Also a one-time payment.
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p>Also a one time investment to hire new people for the short-term. A stimulus is just a short term investment, hence its name.
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p>And for the record, I would never call myself a fiscal conservative. I think we needed a much larger stimulus, one that would have added much more to the deficit, in order to increase economic growth. Your analogy about the lottery and the apartment is not how stimulus is intended to work. You hire people with that one time bump so that economic growth and tax revenue increases enough to sustain those jobs within a year or two.
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p>He’s the one who said it.
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p>I don’t know if he’s a fiscal conservative or not.
The world doesn’t revolve around you. My questions were in reply to DoubleMan, not you.
to point out that most of the teachers are getting raises between 6% and 20% and not the 1.5 to 2.5% that the town and the union claimed.
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p>Also, I am not extrapolating anything. This is $245,000 in stimulus spending that didn’t go to save or create a single job. Even the state doesn’t claim it did according to Mass.gov/recovery.
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p>Finally, since the $204 million in stimulus money awarded to Massachusetts under the Education Jobs Funding grants was intended, or at least sold to people as desperately needed to stave off layoffs, I am curious why, again according to Mass.gov/recovery less than $20 million has been spent.
If you were trying to make a narrow point about Wayland stinking, that’s fine, but I don’t think you were.
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p>I have a hard time believing that your post was simply about Wayland’s use of funds only and not trying to make a larger point about stimulus funding in the state and nationally. That’s the extrapolation I am talking about. Wayland’s use of the funds did not save or create jobs, but spending in other communities definitely did.
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p>If we haven’t spent the stimulus money then we’re wasting a huge opportunity. That’s a separate question than whether stimulus spending saved or created jobs (which it did), that’s a question of whether we could have saved or created more (which I think we could have).
You said it yourself, the teachers with 12+ years of experience are not getting any step raises. So how are “most” teachers getting “raises between 6% and 20%”? Are most teachers in Wayland under 12 years of experience?
I choose not to respond to this garbage just as I don’t bother responding to Creationists who challenge me to “prove” evolution.
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p>Mr. Marston joins the Creationists, the Climate Change deniers, and looney-tunes like Bill Hudak in embracing the Gish Gallop rhetorical tactic.
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p>I decline.
…and figured it wasn’t worth commenting on:)
See the smiley emoticon at the end of the comment? It was meant in jest so lighten up!
had the attitude that you were too good to discuss many a topic. Again, sorry.
Brad is attempting to make two points:
-The EdJobs grant was misused.
-The press release was a lie.
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p>To the first: As Brad helpfully highlighted, one purpose of EdJobs is “to retain existing employees” — not positions. A crucial difference, as anyone with private-sector experience hopefully understands that one of the best ways to retain existing employees is to give them more money. Thus this lump payment does not contravene the grant. Brad tries to rephrase “employees” as “jobs”, but the grant thankfully sees the value of a consistent set of employees.
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p>Brad is similarly trying to redefine the concept of “raise” as part of his statement. A one-time payment, similar to managerial bonuses (perhaps enshrined in Brad’s “Managers’ Rights Bill'”?) isn’t a raise. If I win the lottery, I didn’t get a raise. So conflating this possible lump-sum with a raise is inaccurate.
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p>By the way Brad — the press statement says baldly that EdJobs funding was used for this one time payment, so all your spreadsheet sleuthing seems to have been beside the point.
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p>That’s the first half of Brad’s writing. I have some questions out about the second half. Rather than accuse and suppose in the best tradition of FoxNews, I like to know.
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He’s saying that the press release lied when saying that there was only a 1.5% raise. It was a raise across all steps. But every teacher under 10 years moves up a step until the reach the 10 year mark. So their raises are more than 1.5% now aren’t they.
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p>Are you saying step increases aren’t raises, cause that’s a stretch.
just saying.
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p>5K increase for someone making 30K and someone making 70K will give you wildly different percentage increases, that doesn’t provide much.
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p>Cherry picking data aside, no explanation for the one time salary bump in Wayland, there we a lot of towns that were laying off teachers, maybe the money could have been better used than and one time payment? Is this accurate? That’s the real question here.
because that is the term 1) most often used in general parlance regarding and 2)used in official reports.
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p>Regardless of whether one says an employee was retained or a job was saved, if the point of the grant was to give lump sum payments one would assume that the spending would result in a job saved or created and reported as such.
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p>However that is not the case. The Mass.gov/Recovery website lists Full Time Equivalent Jobs 0. http://arraprweb1.itd.state.ma… Click on see more details.
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p>The state doesn’t even claim it created or saved a job or retained an employee.
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p>I am not sure how my pointing out going from being paid $46,548 one year to being paid $51,900 the next in anyway “redefines” the concept of a raise. Getting more money in your paycheck from a salary increase (even without the lump sum payment) seems like a raise to me.
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p>Even the Mass. Teachers association refers to these increases in salaries as “step raises.”
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p>As for the wording of the press release:
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p>it says each teacher will get a 1% salary increase. Really? From the example directly above teachers with bachelors degrees and three years of service will be getting an 11.5% raise.
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p>Perhaps the press release would have been truthful if it had said that “all teachers will receive a 1% raise. For teachers still within their step raises the 1% is in addition to the 7% to 12% automatic raises previously negotiated and the 20% raises for teachers in the final year of their step raises.
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p>Any chance there might have been a different reaction from tax payers if the press release had told the truth?
The law says you can use EdJobs to retain employees. You pretended that it said to retain jobs. That’s either dishonest or erroneous. Then again, you’re on the team that has redefined “patriotism” to mean “shut up when we’re in charge, stockpile weapons when we aren’t” so no surprise there.
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p>As for your other issues, Mark Bail et al have thoroughly discredited most of your attack.
First out, you cherry-picked the step between 3 and 4 — from your spreadsheet (not including the contract raise), the step jumps 9.3% there, but look at the other years:
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p>1 to 2: 5.1%
2 to 3: 4.8%
3 to 4: 9.3%
4 to 5: 4.2%
5 to 6: 4.1%
6 to 7: 3.9%
7 to 8: 3.8%
8 to 9: 3.6%
9 to 10: 9.7%
10 to 11: 1.1%
11 to 12: 14.9%
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p>Average step increase is 5.9%.
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p>The step increase system is designed for an organization that expects its workers to work entry level to retirement, with a lower entry salary but higher-than-inflation annual increases. This is a reasonable system, because as everyone knows, the rate of inflation does not keep up with people as they move through life — a single 22-year old has a different set of expenses than a 50-year old preparing to send his kid to college. Take your entry level salary, add 2-3% to it for each year you’ve worked, and then tell me that you are willing to take a pay cut because you’re being paid unfairly.
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p>A major difference between teaching and the private sector is a lack of title changes; Wayland’s structure seems to reflect that, with big bumps occurring infrequently. The 3 to 4 mark probably reflects getting past the point where a teacher can be dismissed without reason in the first 3 years of employment; the 9 to 10 mark probably reflects a reward for a 10-year milestone. I’m not sure the reasons for the weird 10 to 11 and 11 to 12 breakdowns, probably a historical thing.
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p>A secondary difference is that private sector title changes are not based on number of years of seniority, they are based on promotions, although anyone working in the private sector these days knows how that goes: “well, you’re doing a great job this year, but I can’t promote you because I just don’t have the headcount from corporate”. I also have seen far too many mediocre people promoted to believe that it is much better. Now although it may seem unfair that “below average” teachers are compensated the same as “above average” teachers, realize that this is a fallacious view of things — by definition half the teachers must be below average. Teachers are also highly credentialed. So as long as they are performing in a satisfactory manner, they are all qualified and should be compensated as such.
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p>Now the private sector does have increases that are seniority based — additional vacation. Each additional week of vacation is like a 2% raise; these often come at 5-to-10 year intervals (with a cap). All teachers get the same vacation, so it makes sense that additional step raises would compensate for this.
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p>Another thing to consider that the step increases do not correspond to the amount of money spent on compensation. As older teachers retire, younger teachers are hired. It’s like a conveyor belt. So even though people are picking up 5.9% step raises, the systemic cost is much lower.
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p>It’s interesting that you picked Wayland. Wayland has incredibly high test results. In other words, they are getting the job done very well. Their teachers are highly qualified. In 2007 (last available year I could find easily) 76% of 10th graders were advanced in math, 95% were advanced/proficient. 49% were advanced in English, 93% were advanced/proficient. None were failing. Wayland teachers are “performing”, in conserva-speak. So why shouldn’t they be rewarded for this? Doesn’t the market say that in order to attract top talent, you need to pay for it?
I would have used years 9-10 for someone with a BA or the roughly 20% increases for higher education levels in year 12.
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p>The reason for the 20% increases is it’s the final step raise so it basically works out to a 2% guaranteed raise for the next 10 years in addition to any annual raises negotiated.
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p>Also, your numbers are wrong. To calculate the total increases you have to look at each years step raise levels and compare the level of a teacher with X years experience for 2010 with the salary level of that teacher with now X+1 years experience in 2011. The information is in the link above (Wayland Teachers Association 2010-2013).
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p>Your suggestion that one can’t compare private sector with teachers because of title changes is also off the mark. If you go to page 33 of the contract you will see that teachers with leadership titles and responsibilities get additional stipends of roughly $7000+ a year. I think it’s sort of like the private sector where you get paid more for taking on more responsibility.
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p>Please find me a school system whose total compensation has dropped with the same number of teachers year to year.
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p>Finally, I make no argument regarding the actual level of teachers pay either that they are overpaid or underpaid.
Hmm. I’ve thought about what you said, and I’ve come to realize that your position doesn’t really add up.
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p>What are the alternatives to seniority-based pay? Everyone paid the same, regardless of experience? Really, Komrade? OK, so maybe you support “merit pay”, whereby “the best” people get higher raise amounts than others depending on their “performance”. Just like corporate America.
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p>So how exactly would that work? I assume that the non-best people would still get raises to keep up with inflation, right? So maybe they’d just get those 1.5%-2.5% contract raises. And maybe the “best” teachers would get the contract raise plus some kind of additional raise, maybe in the 5-10% range, just like corporate America.
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p>Another approach would be to go to some kind of merit-based title-based promotional system, similar to the corporate America. “Teacher, Senior Teacher, Lead Teacher, Master Teacher”, etc., with higher pay raises associated with each of those steps. It would be more subjective — plenty of favoritism being played in the schools, as any teacher will tell you. And it would mimic the corporate world, where people are held back because “we only have funding for 5 Lead Teachers, and those positions are already filled”. But it is not impossible to do.
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p>But here’s why your stated position doesn’t add up — you claim that your main complaint is that the reported 1.5% contract raise amounts do not reflect what teachers are actually receiving as raises. But if some teachers are getting merit raises that will still be true. So what’s your complaint really about?
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p>You say that you are not saying that teachers in Wayland are overpaid. But what do you really think about that subject? (perhaps we can gauge your position based on your report of their pay being higher than the state average…).
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p>I think your position is that you want the general public to be outraged that some teachers on some steps get a 10% raise, because “no one in the private sector gets 10% raises”, as they say. Of course, that is not true — people get raises when they change companies or change titles — things not available within a school district.
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p>See, the step system is simply a way to compensate people who do the same job over an entire career. Teachers start out low, when they are young and green, and they get more money as they gain experience, which coincides with their life requirements (like buying a house and having a family). They max out because after a certain number of years, you really don’t get any better.
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p>If you really think that a 12-year teacher with a Masters is earning a fair amount at $85,784, and you don’t want to give raises of more than 2% per year, then you’d have to start new teachers out at around $69,000 so that 12 years of raises get them to the $85k figure. But instead, I suspect that you think that teachers should start out at $46k, so that after 12 years of experience, they’d be paid just $57k. Which would mean you think they’re substantially overpaid.
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p>So why don’t you tell us what you think, so that we don’t have to speculate?
If Wayland teachers were paid for performance, they’d have to be paid a lot more, with results like these.
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p>http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/m…
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p>http://www.boston.com/news/spe…
your new-found wonkiness. Your research is much appreciated, at least by me. Your reasoning, however, is problematic due to your using Wayland as a case study. See Hasty Generalization.
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p>So the Wayland School Committee bargained with the union local and decided to pay the teachers’ raise with stimulus funding?! Hey, Wayland is elected its school committee and it’s freakin’ Wayland! One of the richest communities in the state (Average tax bill: $11,471, Per capita income: $52,717). I bet half the people there feel bad for how little the teachers make. They’re hardly typical of the state, even if Wayland were dysfunctional and hurt your feelings with its use of stimulus funds.
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p>Check out raises in other school districts, and you’ll see there is a lot of variance. The increases seem to larger in the Boston area. Here in Western Massachusetts, the average teacher salary in my school system increased less than $1000 between 2008 and 2009. In the neighboring community of Longmeadow, the richest community in Western Mass, average teacher pay went down by less than $1000.
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p>Of course, the average is affected by the age of your staff and their level of education. Older teachers with more degrees make more. Replacing retirees with young, inexperience teachers can lower the average salary without changing the other variables.
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p>The suddenness of your discovery of the salary table for a teacher contract is common, but it’s been going on for decades and decades. It’s only a dirty little secret when conservatives to confuse a cost-of-living raise with steps in a contract and think teachers are getting away with something. Contract steps are set up to delay the day when teachers make the maximum amount. That’s why some communities negotiate to ADD steps to the salary schedule. Yes, that’s add steps. Some contracts have 12 or 13, others have 19. Want to get rid of steps? Pay everyone the top amount. Oh wait…
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the teachers who are lower on the salary schedule received a larger percentage. It sounds like the Wayland School Committee used stimulus money to pay for teacher salaries rather than use local tax money. It also sounds like that was a legal thing to do. Did Brad or anyone in his office contact the Wayland School Committee for an explanation?
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p>I realize that since Wisconsin, Republicans now consider it an evil thing, to pay worthless public employees, like teachers, (driving around in their pimped up Subarus) for the work that they do. Maybe Brad could file a bill to take away their Union rights here in Massachusetts.
This is a one time lump sum payment, your statement about persons on the lower part of the salary scale doesn’t make much sense.
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p>It’s a bonus.
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p>Yes, more information will be helpful. But nothing posted has addressed the question thus far.
It’s a negotiated salary increase. The reason it’s a one time deal is that the School Committee likely didn’t want this increase to add to the teacher’s base salary. In this way when the stimulus money went away they don’t have to use local tax money to continue to pay it.
Massachusetts distributed the education stimulus funds using the chapter 70 formula. Without the funds, there would have been larger gaps between the state’s calculations of funding needs and available funds, by about $200 million in FY11, and that would have resulted in fairly chaotic cuts from previous year aid levels for a number of districts.
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p>The chapter 70 formula, IMO, was the best way to allocate the federal funds; it already measures needs and ability to pay, and attempts to balance those over time for a lot of school districts. Any emergency program outside Chapter 70 would have needed a huge new program to administer, make judgements, and allocate payments. Chapter 70 could do that with very little new overhead and probably with better judgements than a new emergency program. So the bottom line is, federal funds allowed cuts to ed spending made for the past two years to be about $200 Million less than they would otherwise have been, and in a way that was fairly consistent with the state’s long term analysis of needs and ability to pay. And at the time, that was a reasonable use of federal money; we were concerned the banking system and real estate would go into a leveraged, deflationary default spiral, states and localies can’t borrow money but the federal governent can, so stabilizing state and local governments and millions of employees for a couple years rather than compounding the deflationary environment was a fairly well targeted idea for stimulus funding.
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p>As for the specifics of Wayland, cherry picking one small suburban district and embelishing information available on the Internet with spicy and imaginative hyperbole doesn’t impress.
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p>As a fiduciary, I think use of stimulus funds for a one time bonus payment, while having zero increase in the permanent wage structure, was a smart use of funds. At the time of negotiations, edujobs was still theoretical and it was not certain anything would be passed or how much it would be. Thus it was a smart option for those concerned about committing more funds than might be available for salary increases, and one that did not make any long term increases in Wayland’s obligations as any salary increase would have.
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p>Regarding Wayland’s exorbitant 8% salary increase, I think if you were to ask their fiduciaries why reported salaries increased by that much, you would find that two things happened. One, in a restructuring that closed an elementary school, some central office special ed staff was moved to the school teaching staff, special ed teachers generally have higher salaries than classroom teachers. Two, Wayland laid off a number of staff in that restructuring, and layoffs probably affected the newest hires most. Taking out the lowest step employees would increase average salaries even if nobody got a raise of any kind.
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p>As for who is being more honest, Wayland or this op-ed, step wage structures were not invented by Wayland and certainly were not a new addition to the particular contract. It is quite likely that the steps tables did increase exactly as the summary reports said, by zero the first year, and one or two percent in later years. Wayland’s transparency appears higher than average for MA districts, and you’ll find a summary of the step increases in the budget reports each year.
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p>So, while Wayland does seem to be trying to match Lincoln, Sudbury, and other neighboring districts in its schools, and that’s some pretty wealthy competition to keep up with, I suspect most Wayland taxpayers are not as concerned about Wayland’s honesty or step wage structure as you are, and they’d be satisfied that the overall wage structure had a 3.5% increase in three years of a contract, with a fairly intelligent choice to use the federal funds as a one-time payment instead of building it into the wage structure.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe that events in one context, and neatly mirrored in another, are mere happenstance… I do believe, as my friend Will once put it, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will.”
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p>Despite what is happening in Wisconsin more scrutiny is employed, in the media and among many of my associates, to the details of that OTHER collective bargaining agreement: the NFL and the NFLPA. Here’s the rub: it’s mostly an approving view when it comes to the NFL/NFLPA and mostly a disapproving view when it comes to the public unions. Why izzat, do you think?
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p>Do you get your knickers in a twist over the billionares vs the millionares? ‘Cause they’re most frightfully twisted over a rather piddling sum involving teachers. In sheer dollar terms, so much more is at stake with the NFL… yet you’re mad at teachers? And don’t tell me that the NFL is strictly a private capitalists concern when A) most players training was subsidized first in public high schools and later through state schools and athletic scholarships and 2) most owners receive a great deal of state and federal aid to build their gigundo-behomass stadiums and are granted land-rights and right of way exceptions that ordinary people probably couldn’t get if they tried…
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p>I mean, if unions are ever and always evil and collective bargaining is always bad, why don’t you don’t you get into even higher moral dudgeon over ALL collective bargaining? Why are you not apoplectic with rage over the situation in the NFL/NFLPA bargaining when nearly every facet is merely a greater degree of the bargaining done in Wayland…? Or, put another way, why is Hines Ward any more special than Joe Random Wayland Teacher??
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p>The stakes couldn’t be more clear and an exquisite degree of media scrutiny is directed at the collective bargaining between the NFL and the NFLPA. If one were really and truly opposed to unions and collective bargaining… well, here’s your chance!!!… What more could you ask for?
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p>I’m certain that, if you looked as closely into the NFL/NFLPA negotiations you’d find even more perfidy and double dealings as you would in a dozen Massachusetts school districts… you might even find one or two BOLD FACED LIES. Have at it. Go for it. Here’s your chance to reveal collective bargaining for the bald socialism it so clearly is. Stand up and be true to your ideals.
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p>That’s your opportunity and what do you do? You tilt your head sideways, squint real hard and try to make like Wayland school teachers are…what? getting more money?
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p>shock. horror. gasp.
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in a single post as opposed to trying to answer each individually.
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p>As I see it the comments seem to fall into 3 main categories:
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p>1) Ascribing to me arguments I have never made or motives I do not harbor;
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p>2) That this was an effective use of funds and/or somehow in keeping with the intent of the legislation and the justifications given at the time it was passed; and
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p>3) The rest are so far off-topic as to really not justify a response beyond “The NFL? Please” just as an example.
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p>One commenter referred to me as Komrad and suggested I was in favor of all teachers being paid the same. It’s not an argument I made but it is in fact what private sector unions have long advocated for their members. However as my post wasn’t about pay levels I’ll leave it at that.
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p>Also, I didn’t “choose” Wayland. Rather Wayland, or at least the upset city official who sent me the initial information, chose me. I actually applaud Wayland for it’s transparency in putting the contracts online. While I did not conduct an exhaustive search, it is the only municipality I found which does so.
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p>Unfortunately I am reasonably certain that too few citizens avail themselves of the opportunity to really look at the contract. In offline discussions most people I have spoken to had no idea that most public sector contracts call for automatic step raises.
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p>It requires a special kind of rhetorical gymnastics to suggest as some have that a nearly quarter million dollar in bonuses was an effective use of funds. This $10 billion national expenditure was justified/rationalized as being necessary to avoid the impending layoffs of thousands of teachers. That certainly wasn’t what it was used for in Wayland. As I have mentioned above, to date educational districts in the state have spent less than 10% of the money. Not much of an emergency in my mind or certainly a delayed response at best.
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p>For those still confused as to the argument I actually made I will repeat myself:
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Wow. Feel free to back that one up!
http://www.ueunion.org/stwd_tw…
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p>Or here:
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p>http://www.bizjournals.com/mil…
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p>Wow. That was easy.
First of all, I’m a public school teacher and I have no idea what your first link is supposed to prove. The “UE,” whoever they are, have nothing to do with me, my negotiated contract, and what I want in wages and benefits as a public school teacher in the Commonwealth. So, as both a sitting school committee member (with seven years’ experience) and as a public school teacher who has served on several contract negotiating committees, I can say that your first link is irrelevant.
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p>Second, as soon as I saw “factory worker” in your second link, I stopped reading. I am not a factory worker. I don’t know what factory workers need or want; I don’t know what factory work has to do teaching students to read and write.
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p>Let me give you a tip: when you provide links to “easily” back up your assertions, make sure they are relevant and within context.
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p>That said, I will say that what you claim as “proof” of your assertions is revelatory. Unionized workers are not all the same. All unions are not all the same. What I demand in fair wages and benefits may or may not have anything to do with what a factory worker in Milwaukee demands. In short, your simplistic, reductive, and self-serving treatment of unionized workers and unions as monolithic entities reveals much about you, none of which is positive or encouraging.
benefit system. It’s a salary schedule. All teachers are on the same schedule. Everyone makes the same progress over time. When we max out on steps, there is a longevity bonus.
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p>People who don’t work in the public sector are probably unfamiliar with salary schedules, though they’ve been used by the federal government for at least 60 years. It’s not surprising you aren’t aware of the schedule; however, I’ve heard your accusation that steps are raises many times before, including in teacher contract negotiations.
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p>Wikipedia–the place where we hide things we don’t want people to know–has an entry on the general schedule, the federal pay system.
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p>I’d tried to figure out the name of your last fallacy, and I hurt my head. I’m going to call it a faulty syllogism.
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p>Your “argument” goes like this:
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p>1. Salary schedules have multiple tiers.
2. A two-tiered salary system has multiple tiers.
3. Salary schedules are two-tiered salary systems.
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p>The problem is that what you cite doesn’t not refer to salary schedules, which all teachers are on. So they are treated equally based on education and on longevity.
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Mr. Marston is not interested in learning about the esoteric details of teacher compensation. He is a man on a mission, a mission about unions, a mission that tells about badness, badness of unions, and people in unions, who are bad, and lazy, like public school teachers, who are lazy and belong to unions, which are bad and pay people too much money, like public school teachers who make too much money, because of unions, which are bad.
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p>You’ve not been paying attention, Mark.
My last comment was in answer to David’s request to back up my assertion that private sector unions have long fought against two or multi-tiered wage structures as it violates the principle of “equal pay for equal work.”
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p>Given that the comment that David was referring to was regarding private sector unions, I believe a link to comments and statements by private sector unions is entirely relevant.
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p>As for this little tantrum:
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p>…I would suggest you reserve getting your undies in a bunch over something I have actually said.
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p>Mark I am sorry you hurt your head. But if your brain is still functioning I welcome you to explain how one teacher getting paid $44,000 to teach while another teacher gets paid $74,000 for the exact same job fits the private sector union idea of equal pay for equal work.
What are you advocating for?
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p>Do you think that two teachers (with different years of service) should be paid the exact same salary?
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p>Or do you think that two teachers with different years of service should be paid different salaries?
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p>You seem to love to dodge taking a position, and what you do say is inconsistent with what you later deny.
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p>This appears to be your only point:
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p>After all this discussion, it is now pretty easy to counter.
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p>1) Career-track teachers are on a salary scale that brings them from a low entry level salary to a higher salary commensurate with their experience. This is practical because it fits the applicant market — younger teachers with lower life expenses are willing to work for less money, older teachers with higher life expenses need more money. It also fits the traditional American model of getting raises each year that allow you to do more than just “keep up” with inflation (which, most people can tell you, is understated because it presumes that as prices rise, you will stop buying steak and will buy hamburger instead — which sounds like a bleak existence to me).
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p>I think that reporting the average amount that teachers receive in yearly increases would be a misleading figure and would lead to the public fixating on keeping the raise figure down to inflation levels and eliminating steps — which would ultimately mean paying everyone the same amount, from the novice to the veteran. Given that people have different salary needs when they are 22 versus 50, that would ultimately mean raising the salary level for everyone to the highest level. Doing otherwise would result in higher turnover and/or lower quality applicants because people would need more money but could not achieve it without leaving for another job. Given that we have increased the credentials necessary for teaching but haven’t really raised the salaries that much, I think that our applicant pool is shallow as it is (lots of non-certified teachers in systems due to necessity), which means that the salaries are too low to attract proper talent.
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p>2) The stimulus money was distributed to every city and town in this state using the Chapter 70 formula, and there was a wide range of permissible uses, from preventing layoffs, hiring new employees, or retaining existing staff. Some towns, like Wayland, evidently did not need it to prevent layoffs — but that does not mean it was unnecessary. Wayland used the money to retain teachers by giving them something higher than 0% in raises from 2009-10 to 2010-11. That does not indict the stimulus funds across the nation, it means that life isn’t perfect and the stimulus was not perfectly distributed.
There are multiple “steps.” Two teachers may, in fact, be making $44,000 and $74,000. And thus be on separate steps.
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p>But this is not a two-tiered system on which one set of workers would proceed on Tier 1 and one set of workers would proceed on Tier 2 forever. If you read the UE site, then you know surely understand this. They’re talking about employees hired after a certain date will start at a lower rate and pay more for benefits than someone who started 5 years earlier. The second set of employees will never catch up.
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p>Let’s say teachers on Step 4 earn $44,000, and teachers on step 15 earn $74,000. The step 4 teacher will eventually reach step 15 and make $74,000 or whatever that step pays then. One assumption of the salary schedule is that more experienced teachers, while filling the same position, are more effective than less experienced teachers.
What are we going to do with you.
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p>See, the thing is, that wasn’t your original assertion. Your original assertion was this rather more startling one:
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p>Maybe it’s just me, but favoring everyone “being paid the same” and opposing “two or multi-tiered wage structures” seem rather different. I was reacting to the first, which seems extraordinarily unlikely; I know nothing about the second. What you are doing is trying to retroactively change your argument, but I’m afraid that’s a blog foul, and we’ll have to ask you to back up 15 yards from your computer.
Here are a couple of suggestions…
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p>Stop with the smug, sanctimonious tone typical of liberals which screams “You disagree with me so I must be more intelligent than you are.”
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p>Stop attributing to me arguments I never made.
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p>David. Perhaps you would be better off leaving your comment at “I know nothing.”
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p>Just sayin.
As several commenters have noted, including NoPolitician, you did the typical rhetorical trick of cherry-picking your data as part of an ideological argument.
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p>First of all, you picked Wayland teachers specifically to make a broader point about public sector unions. Sorry, but you’re going to have to bring in a lot more data before you try and make generalizations about public sector unions in order to push poor policy ideas (in this case, your highly flawed idea about letting people vote on public contracts).
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p>Secondly, you cherry-pick the step between year 3 and 4 in the Wayland contract to exaggerate your point. Don’t give me any of this “well, I COULD have cherry-picked year 10 to 11 instead…!”. The fact is that you cherry-picked a particular year, in a particular town, in order to use your data in a misleading way. As NoPolitician noted, this is the year that a teacher moves from the probationary period to the tenure period, so it makes sense that the increase would be larger in this one specific year.
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p>Thirdly, you use average teacher salaries through your frequent broadsides against the level of teacher salaries, but then when making your point in this post, your unit of analysis suddenly shifts to the individual teacher. In other words, you look at the raise of an individual teacher moving from step 3 to step 4, rather than looking at the average increase for all of the teachers in the school system. If you’re going to use average salaries to slyly insinuate that teachers are overpaid, then just as a honest mathematical matter, keep your unit of analysis consistent.
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p>(And, despite your denials, you are suggesting that teachers are overpaid. You state, for instance:
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p>Again, you use misleading data to make a point by shifting back to the average, and not adjusting for cost of living between towns in the Commonwealth…another consequence of your cherry-picking.)
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p>Finally, I found this comment amusing:
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p>Huh. Wall Street begs to differ, since their raises and bonuses have been just fine — over 20% in a single quarter of last year (and 7% every year on average from 1990 to 2007), in fact. Why aren’t you outraged about that?