When comparing salaries, don't forget to apply the many vacation days for Christmas, spring break and summer.
Indeed I don't. Don't forget to add in all the hours spent doing unpaid mandatory activities like sponsoring clubs, tutoring, attending events as ticket takers, etc, etc or the unpaid days at the ends of those vacations when they're expected to be at school, planning and preparing their lessons or catching up with grading, etc. Plus, I'll tell you, the 2 months of no pay are no fun for any teacher. I've felt that first hand!
its where the monies actually get spent perhaps?
If you want to hear complaints about where the money goes - talk to the teachers. Out here each teacher gets a stipend for their classroom to spend for supplies for the year. The amount? $200. That's for one year for supplying and decorating a room that's used by 120 students. Getting new books is a giant hassle - except of course when the district gets restricted funds and then goes off and buys a slew of books with no teacher input. Sometimes even getting enough desks is impossible and the amount of begging, cajoling and stressing needed to secure that is enough to put someone off their rocker. Forget ever getting enough funds to buy a set of new novels that might interest the kids more. Ironically, its probably easier to get a set of computers for a classroom than books since funds actually get reserved for them.
The games that districts play sometimes are indeed outrageous, but sometimes to get a bond approved that's what they'll need to do. Its not that different than the games I've seen local transportation boards play to pass road bonds. I imagine LA is due for some infrastructure bonds in the wake of all the water main breaks we've seen due to restricted lawn watering pressures.
I'm just trying to figure out how beer, eggs, trapped methane, teacher's salary's and The Muppets has anything to do with going green. Inquiring minds want to know. ![Grin ;D](http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
Yeah, we got off topic. I can't help it when teachers get involved though! I suppose we probably ought to shelve it though and I have to say that even in the midst of this heat we've done pretty damn well. I appreciate everyone's points and trust me I would love to cut the districts off at the knees and redirect the funds to the frontline. If I have to read one more story about district management spending tens of thousands of dollars on an executive bathroom (true story from years ago), I'll cry.