One would hope that the Knox School Board could aspire to a level of honor equal to their mascot "The Redskins". Ironically the School Board demonstration of honor is more akin to that of "The Whiteskins", General Howard and the Government treaty-breakers.The Knox teachers belong to a union that negotiates a contract with the School Board. The last agreement reached was for 2 years, last year and this year. The teacher’s accepted a very low pay increase: 1% increase the first year and no increase the second year. Given that the cost of living keeps increasing about 3% or 4 % per year this was a reduction in pay in constant dollars. There was a reason that the teachers accepted this poor pay package. The School Board pleads poverty and at that time the revenues were reduced and the budget was stressed. Perhaps you remember the local headlines? There was a few hundred thousand dollar decrease in revenues. The situation seemed dire so the teachers sacrificed.
The teachers’ negotiating team had seen this situation in the past. What happened in the past was that the missing money later showed up. So there was a clause added to the contract that specified that if the administrators later got a raise, then the teachers would get a matching percentage raise. Seems fair enough doesn’t it?
It turned out that extra money did appear. Of course there were not any headlines to correct the earlier headlines. So you never heard about that, did you? But suddenly there was a nice surplus. So the School Board decided that they really wanted to give the administrators a raise, but they really didn’t want to honor their agreement with the teachers. The answer was that the administrators all got an extra contribution into their 401k-retirement plan equal to 4.5% of their annual pay.
Now, I ask you, I this honest or honorable behavior? I think this is cheating, dishonest, and dishonorable. I suppose the School Board thinks that they have pulled off a clever deal. If so, their joy is that of the crook, the con artist or the thief. Is this the way that we want our School Board to represent us?
Knox : Average Teacher Salary: $44,200
Kankakee Valley: Average Teacher Salary: $49,200
North Judson: 2006-07 Average Teacher Salary: $44,900
Oregon-Davis: Average Teacher Salary: $42,700
Winamac: Average Teacher Salary: $44,772
LaPorte: Average Teacher Salary: $47,200
Plymouth: Average Teacher Salary: $48,300
Valparaiso: Average Teacher Salary: $53,400
The only school in our area that has worse pay for teachers is the truly pathetic Oregon-Davis. Also O-D is the only school with a worse Real Graduation Rate than Knox. (See earlier blog, How’s the High School Doing? The 800 pound gorilla.) If a really sharp teacher wants a job, would they accept a job at Knox, or Plymouth, or Valparaiso?
It is interesting to break down the elementary, middle and high school pay differences.
Averages by school:
High School: Salary: $40,113 Age: 40
Middle School: Salary: $42,693 Age 42
Elementary School: Salary: $45,154 Age 45
As you can see the High School has a problem with teacher retention.
The salary information for school administration is not available on the web. I have emailed klane@doe.state.in.us for this public information. I will post this information ASAP.
Here is the information that I requested from the state:
Kimberly Knott $89,500
James Condon $82,232
August Gappa $67,036
Glenn Barnes $58,900
Joseph Carey $74,000
Stephen Cronk $74,420
David Miller $64,999
2 comments:
Okay, I'm not quite sure what point that you are trying to make.
That teachers deserve more money?
That better paid teachers result in better student and school performance? Please elighten me.
Your questions are interesting and quite worthy of discussion. However your questions are beside the points made in this blog. The teachers, regardless if they are overpaid or under paid or paid just right, had been cheated and deceived in their negotiated pay package. This is horrible labor relations and will certainly not contribute to more dedicated teaching. It is a serious ethical lapse that has not been reported in the regular press. Somewhat more subtly I meant to show that the Knox pay scale is falling behind other systems. I do believe this will leave Knox at a competitive disadvantage in years to come. However, I have made no claims whatsoever regarding your 2 questions. These questions are national in scope and really don’t directly pertain to my Knox subject area. All that being said, I don’t know if teachers deserve more money. The word “deserve” in relation to anybody’s pay is really awfully complex. Do better-paid teachers result in better student performance? Yes, with a big “IF”. If the administration uses the better pay to get better teachers. That, of course, can be said of nearly every human economic enterprise. And it is the big IF in all pay decisions. Of course, raising pay, with nothing else changing, simply means that teachers are less likely to quit and work somewhere else. I don’t know if that is sufficient reason to raise pay. Maybe it is.
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