robot-heart-politics:

I’m not sure how much I trust that figure that the average salary was between $72 and $78K (reported by Gallo and I can find no other corroborating figures), because those are maxed out salaries. Does the school really have nearly 100% 30-year teachers? Either way, teachers are hired to work 10-month contracts, and their salary reflects that. It’s not as if they are being paid for the two months they do not work. The additional 25 minutes of instructional time (a cumulative 75 hours) would not be paid for, and the extra pay for tutoring was not guaranteed. It depended upon grant funding. Additional planning sessions after school and the loss of a lunch hour for required lunches with students? Also not figured in.

My guess is that when the average income in the community is $22K, that tells you a lot about why the school is so low-performing. Poverty has an incredible impact on academic achievement. Firing all of your teachers and extending the school day by 25 minutes is not sufficient to address the issues.

Yes, most of the teachers are in the top pay grade, and my only source is Gallo as well. However, this is information that the superintendent has access to, so I have no reason to doubt her. Also, it doesn’t appear as if the agreement for the tutoring was mandatory if the grants fell through. Only the +25 minute was uncompensated as part of the agreement. I wasn’t trying to make the argument that the teachers were somehow greedy, only that immediately dismissing the proposed agreement as unreasonable was itself unreasonable.

But I must admit that I am confused. Why should these teachers get more pay for bringing their day closer to full time? Is there some metric by which these teachers are actually accomplishing their jobs? Did the school previously perform even worse?

I’m not going to claim that there is an easy solution to the problem. However, I do find it telling that there were public gatherings of students to support the superintendent. I can’t think of a time when a mass firing of teachers has had that happen. Is it remotely possible that the mass firings are justified?

The costs of educating an individual student have risen faster than health care costs over the last 50 years. That was unsustainable, even without factoring in school performance. This particular school performs terribly and has limited options as far as the budget goes. Are the actions by the superintendent that unreasonable?