Friday, November 9, 2012

Kingston's Teachers are over-paid

A Bureau of Labor Statistics report (May 2011) for secondary teachers in the United States lists Kingston as the 3rd top paying metropolitan area in the nation for this occupation, with an annual mean wage of $74,970. The 2010 U.S. Census lists the per capita money income in Kingston at $24,368 and the median household income at $46,098, with both numbers lower than the New York State average.  Seriously, can this heavy-handed milking of the Kingston Taxpayer continue?
I don't think so.  What is the Kingston School Board going to announce in the latest teacher's contract?  Let's hear more protest from Kingston's Taxpayers.

3 comments:

Ralph Mitchell said...

I do not agree with the requirement that a Master's degree should be required become a career teacher in NY State. In my opinion, the emphasis on Masters level coursework at the exclusion of refining teaching and communication skills is a big detriment to the success of our teachers. As you may know, I am against any endeavor or industry that does not have competition. I am in favor of School Voucher systems where parents can use a state grant, such as the Pell Grants on the college level, to send their children to the competitive school of their choice. For example, our local Ulster County schools, public, private and parochial, would all be on equal footing. They would all be funded by the vouchers of parents who choose to send their children to the
public, private and parochial school of the parent's choice. This way the teams of teachers, staff and principal at each school would be more efficient, more creative and more successful in educating children in order to stay in business, to thrive and to advance the lives of the children. As an analogy, before when Ma Bell, AT and T had a telephone monopoly, there was virtually not telephone innovation and improvement for years in the USA. After deregulation of the telephone industry, look at the fantastic innovation we have in telephone technology with Iphones, Blackberries, Galaxies, and others. Long term, I don't think it is wise to hold back the competitive advantages of School Voucher systems in order to protect the employment gains of the NY State Teaching profession.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Mitchell,

Total teacher costs as a percentage of the Kingston Schools Budget for this year is about 35% or the total budget and has decreased significantly in the last four years. So, teachers costs are not the reason for increasing school budgets.

The reason is a top heavy and incompetent school administration and a school board that is not conerned with decreasing total school costs.

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 2:14pm,
Teacher costs have fallen, since school boards are dismantling and closing schools in order to pay the average teacher salary of $70K+. Class sizes, school maintainence, etc. have been sacrificed in order to maintain high average teacher salary. There are many highly qualified young teachers who would work for much less just to have a chance to teach children. The present public school monopoly model is collapsing under the weight of unreasonable and unnecessarily high teacher compensation. Greed always ends badly.