This exceptional editorial should be repeated word for word by SFT Union leader Rose Bolan via bullhorn tomorrow in front of the administration building on the hour, EVERY HOUR!!!!!
While well written, this too rings of the same 'you're not telling the whole story' as you accuse the school board and administrators of. Teachers absolutely deserve to be fairly compensated, but please define what fairly is.
The range for Scranton school district kindergarten teacher is $34k to $78k. While the starting pay may not be much, it does go up dramatically and is still coupled with fantastic health and pension benefits. Raises were offered by administration in the summer contract offer, but the sticking point was the health insurance and hours. With regard to the health insurance, please find any private employer that has anything close to comparable. High Deductible plans are the new norm with families paying a minimum of $6k a year deductible before anything is covered. There is no demanding better because if you don't like what you have, your option is to find another employer (which offers the same or worse). In terms of hours, Scranton has one of the shortest school days in our area (6 whole hours, which includes lunch, recess and the 'free period' they are upset have been taken away). All of this for 185 school days (in-service and virtual included) minus sick and vacation time. So to take the example of the Chewy employee who is starting at $15 per hour, working a back breaking 40 hours a week for 260 days a year, and has to pay out the nose for medical insurance, you may understand where the lack of sympathy comes from.
There is no doubt teachers have an incredibly hard job, which many would not go near with a 20 foot pole. But the same can be said for 1,000s of other professions that none of us would want. We can't all go on strike and go in the circular firing squad of 'they have more than I do'. Reasonable adults from both sides need to sit down and come up with a solution that is fair both to the teachers and taxpayers. I'm not saying administration is being fair, but the talking points/tactics coming from the Union are not going to rally the public around the teachers and the stalemate will just continue.
What's this? A nicely worded, well-reasoned rebuttal that doesn't resort to name calling and ad-hominem attacks?
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE INTERWEBZ? LOL
I appreciate the comment. I think Scranton teachers, to start, are some of the lowest paid in the state already. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. And "collective bargaining" is just that....some may already be in a good position. Others not so much. The union exists to raise the bar for everybody. That's how it works.
Regarding insurance, I continue to reject out of hand the argument that "I don't get that so why should they?" It needs to be framed "why DON'T I get that?"
It's like that argument "why is methadone free and insulin isn't?"
Just say "why isn't insulin free?" Why does the fact that others are getting something bother people?
True, if most of us don't like our insurance, or anything else about our jobs, we have no options. But that's because most of aren't aren't in a union. If we were, and they were willing to fight for us, maybe we'd be on the picket line too.
Also, teachers start work before classes start and end work long after classes end. So the "6 whole hours" comment seems a bit weak in comparison to other points well made.
TLDR: you really don’t know jack and you’re comment is either that of a misinformed person, or a plant to make us look like the unreasonable ones.
I had to shorten this reply to post. I wanted to take my time and give your comment the reply it deserves.
Yours is, indeed, a well-written comment, so I feel that you must have had a wonderful teacher, or two, at some point in your life. However, it is apparent that you don’t have one in your life anymore. If you did, you would know that so much of what you said about teachers, what we do, and how long we do it, is absolute rubbish. Let’s commence, shall we?
First, you state that, while the starting salary for a kindergarten teacher “…may not be much, it does go up dramatically…”. That $78,000 “dramatically” higher salary would be at the high end of the salary schedule, meaning the teacher making that amount would likely have taught for at least 16 years. (If you really want accurate numbers, go to https://govsalaries.com/salaries/PA/scranton-school-district. I can attest to the accuracy of the teachers’ salaries. Melissa McTiernan’s salary, however, is not accurate. She started in 2019 with a salary of $150,000. She HAS gotten raises of 2.5% each year. Her salary for 2020, therefore, was $153,750).(https://www.scrsd.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=2235669&type=d&pREC_ID=2132470)
Now, I assume that you have never taught Kindergarten. If you have a bachelor degree, I invite you to go to Kelly Services and tell them you’d like to be a substitute teacher. They’ll help you get an emergency certification. Once you have that, please start taking any and all kindergarten jobs in the Scranton School District. Do this for a year, then get back to me. I’ll wait.
I did teach kindergarten for 3 years. They were the most exhausting 3 years of my 21 year teaching career plus the year of student teaching (which I completed during my third trimester of my third pregnancy).
Next, you assert that we can simply go to another employer if we don’t like what we have. Well, SSD teachers have been doing that - in droves. If I worked at my home district (Forest City), I would have comparable insurance and make a lot more money. The starting salary for a first year teacher with a bachelor degree there is over $50k. By contrast, I am currently (read have been stuck, because when the contract expires, we get frozen in place) on step 13 (should be 18) in the bachelor degree +24 column and I’m barely over the $50k mark. That’s why more than 100 highly qualified teachers nave left the district in the last couple of years.
When I applied with the SSD in the early 2000’s, this was THE district to teach in and had hundreds of applicants. Fast forward to 2021. Now they literally cannot even get enough applicants to fill openings. Generally, that means that the highly qualified teachers that left are either being replaced with “teachers” who aren’t really teachers and have only emergency certification.
Now, you may not have children in the SSD, so maybe having quality teachers isn’t a priority for you. Good for you, then (I guess), but that’s honestly short-sighted. I prefer that the children where I live be well-educated, so that they have a solid future. It benefits the entire community, therefore, it benefits me.
Continuing on, you spoke of the raises that were offered during the summer and state that insurance and “hours” were the sticking points. First, these were not “raises” in the traditional sense of the words. Teachers and paraprofessionals move on what is called a step schedule. Each year we move up a step and earn a slightly higher salary. Scranton’s starting salary is the lowest around by a considerable amount (about $20k), but on step 16, we receive what is called a bump step, where we move to the highest step. After that, there is no more salary movement, just a slight “bonus” each year ($500 if memory serves me - I haven’t had a contract in 5 years after all). The district was not moving us to where we should be for years of service. They do not want to pay salary that we have legitimately earned - for years we have already worked. This is in stark contrast to superintendent McTiernan’s $3k+ raises in 2020 and 2021. Wait, though, because Missy’s raises were paltry compared to those of Pat Laffey (business manager), John Castrovinci (Director or personnel), and Sharon Baddick (director of special education). In April of this year, THIS year, those Mr. Laffey received a $25k raise (25% of his salary), Mr. Castrovinci received an $18k+ raise, and Dr.Baddick received a $6k+ raise. These were called “historical corrections”, though I’m not sure how historical they could be, considering Castrovinci and Baddick have only been with the district for 2 years. They also have 2.5% raises coming over the next couple of years, like McTiernan.
Speaking of insurance… the “plan” the district wanted us to take isn’t actually insurance. Lawyers would negotiate with healthcare providers an amount of payment for services. PA state senator Marty Flynn called it a “Ponzi scheme”.
You asserted that a private employer would not offer a comparable plan. I have family members working for private employers. Did you know that some companies offer their employees a choice of plan levels, with varying coverages and deductibles, based on how much the employee is able and willing to spend for their contribution? One such plan (as an example) offers a deductible that is very comparable to that of our current plan. However, we are not private employees. Let’s look at the medical offerings for state employees. They have 3 options. There’s one very comparable and it costs them far less than we’re paying now. And none of these other employers were pushing an option that gives lawyers control over their healthcare.
Then you started talking about our hours. Oh… now I know that you don’t have any teacher friends.
Yes, the students are with us for a little over 6 hours a day.
Yes we have a lunch period (don’t you?). I usually work through my lunch.
What is this “free period”? Do you mean our prep period. This is by no means a free period. This is when (on the rare occasion we don’t actually have to cover classes) we prepare lessons, grade students’ work and tests, catch up on paperwork, make the copies and the calls we couldn’t get done on our lunches… Our main issue with the district wanting to add another teaching period to our HS teachers’ schedules is that it will result in the furloughing of teachers - a loss that this district can ill-afford.
Six hours? Ma’am, if it’s a school day and I have only worked 6 hours, it was an early dismissal day. We don’t wander in with our students and we rarely leave with them. There have been many days when I walk out that door at 6 pm because I’ve been trying to do everything that there isn’t time to do while the kids are there. I don’t get overtime for that. Heck, I technically don’t get paid for that at all.
You mentioned virtual days. I strive to be professional here, so I won’t say it the way I want, but B, please! I work my butt off every day, but i will tell you that teaching virtually required us to work even harder than we’ve ever worked before. I can personally say, that I went to students’ homes to show them how to access Google classroom, as well as the other websites we needed to use. I delivered materials to my students. Heck, I dropped off food for some of them. I received texts at midnight and beyond. If I was awake, or if I got up to use the bathroom, I answered them as well. I’ve talked parents through assignments at two am. I did not have to do any of this. I did this for my students. I did this for their stressed out, overwhelmed parents. I was not alone, either.
As for our summers off - well, most of us complete some sort of professional development class during this time. Some of us tutor, or teach summer classes. Usually, I spend a lot of time planning whatever can be pre-planned. I buy, with my own money, resources that I find that might be helpful or fun for my kids (students, my own children are grown).I go into school a couple of weeks each summer to reorganize and rearrange my classroom.
I see you also mentioned sick time and “vacation time”. First, we get 10 sick days per year (sick days aren’t exclusive to teachers, many places give their employees sick days). I’m confused as to what you mean by “vacation” time. Are you talking the holidays that we get off? Those aren’t included in our 185 contracted days, so if you’re talking about those, you are incorrect. Are you talking about our personal days? We get two of those per year. We can bank 1 per year. I guess we could probably accrue quite a lot, if we tried. It would not matter, though. We are prohibited from taking more than 3 personal days in a row no matter how many we have accrued.
Oh the pension. I almost forgot about that. Yes, a good portion of the money in that sweet pension comes from our paychecks. We do not set the amount we contribute and we cannot borrow against it in an emergency situation (my husband, in the private sector, can do both). I have absolutely know idea what my account is actually worth because I can only see my contributions and interest.
You say that “reasonable adults from both sides” should come together. I’m more than confident in the reasonableness of those that we chose to represent us. The teachers have made concessions and offered compromises. Our negotiating team has made every effort to work with the district. Unfortunately, negotiation requires give and take on both sides, and the other side of the table seems to have missed that fact.
This exceptional editorial should be repeated word for word by SFT Union leader Rose Bolan via bullhorn tomorrow in front of the administration building on the hour, EVERY HOUR!!!!!
An absolute bullseye, Tom Flannery!
~ Thank you
While well written, this too rings of the same 'you're not telling the whole story' as you accuse the school board and administrators of. Teachers absolutely deserve to be fairly compensated, but please define what fairly is.
The range for Scranton school district kindergarten teacher is $34k to $78k. While the starting pay may not be much, it does go up dramatically and is still coupled with fantastic health and pension benefits. Raises were offered by administration in the summer contract offer, but the sticking point was the health insurance and hours. With regard to the health insurance, please find any private employer that has anything close to comparable. High Deductible plans are the new norm with families paying a minimum of $6k a year deductible before anything is covered. There is no demanding better because if you don't like what you have, your option is to find another employer (which offers the same or worse). In terms of hours, Scranton has one of the shortest school days in our area (6 whole hours, which includes lunch, recess and the 'free period' they are upset have been taken away). All of this for 185 school days (in-service and virtual included) minus sick and vacation time. So to take the example of the Chewy employee who is starting at $15 per hour, working a back breaking 40 hours a week for 260 days a year, and has to pay out the nose for medical insurance, you may understand where the lack of sympathy comes from.
There is no doubt teachers have an incredibly hard job, which many would not go near with a 20 foot pole. But the same can be said for 1,000s of other professions that none of us would want. We can't all go on strike and go in the circular firing squad of 'they have more than I do'. Reasonable adults from both sides need to sit down and come up with a solution that is fair both to the teachers and taxpayers. I'm not saying administration is being fair, but the talking points/tactics coming from the Union are not going to rally the public around the teachers and the stalemate will just continue.
And to be fair, source for compensation are here: https://www.teacher.org/school-district/scranton-school-district-2/ and https://www.openpagov.org/school_payroll.asp
What's this? A nicely worded, well-reasoned rebuttal that doesn't resort to name calling and ad-hominem attacks?
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE INTERWEBZ? LOL
I appreciate the comment. I think Scranton teachers, to start, are some of the lowest paid in the state already. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. And "collective bargaining" is just that....some may already be in a good position. Others not so much. The union exists to raise the bar for everybody. That's how it works.
Regarding insurance, I continue to reject out of hand the argument that "I don't get that so why should they?" It needs to be framed "why DON'T I get that?"
It's like that argument "why is methadone free and insulin isn't?"
Just say "why isn't insulin free?" Why does the fact that others are getting something bother people?
True, if most of us don't like our insurance, or anything else about our jobs, we have no options. But that's because most of aren't aren't in a union. If we were, and they were willing to fight for us, maybe we'd be on the picket line too.
Also, teachers start work before classes start and end work long after classes end. So the "6 whole hours" comment seems a bit weak in comparison to other points well made.
Again, I appreciate the feedback. Truly.
TLDR: you really don’t know jack and you’re comment is either that of a misinformed person, or a plant to make us look like the unreasonable ones.
I had to shorten this reply to post. I wanted to take my time and give your comment the reply it deserves.
Yours is, indeed, a well-written comment, so I feel that you must have had a wonderful teacher, or two, at some point in your life. However, it is apparent that you don’t have one in your life anymore. If you did, you would know that so much of what you said about teachers, what we do, and how long we do it, is absolute rubbish. Let’s commence, shall we?
First, you state that, while the starting salary for a kindergarten teacher “…may not be much, it does go up dramatically…”. That $78,000 “dramatically” higher salary would be at the high end of the salary schedule, meaning the teacher making that amount would likely have taught for at least 16 years. (If you really want accurate numbers, go to https://govsalaries.com/salaries/PA/scranton-school-district. I can attest to the accuracy of the teachers’ salaries. Melissa McTiernan’s salary, however, is not accurate. She started in 2019 with a salary of $150,000. She HAS gotten raises of 2.5% each year. Her salary for 2020, therefore, was $153,750).(https://www.scrsd.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=2235669&type=d&pREC_ID=2132470)
Now, I assume that you have never taught Kindergarten. If you have a bachelor degree, I invite you to go to Kelly Services and tell them you’d like to be a substitute teacher. They’ll help you get an emergency certification. Once you have that, please start taking any and all kindergarten jobs in the Scranton School District. Do this for a year, then get back to me. I’ll wait.
I did teach kindergarten for 3 years. They were the most exhausting 3 years of my 21 year teaching career plus the year of student teaching (which I completed during my third trimester of my third pregnancy).
Next, you assert that we can simply go to another employer if we don’t like what we have. Well, SSD teachers have been doing that - in droves. If I worked at my home district (Forest City), I would have comparable insurance and make a lot more money. The starting salary for a first year teacher with a bachelor degree there is over $50k. By contrast, I am currently (read have been stuck, because when the contract expires, we get frozen in place) on step 13 (should be 18) in the bachelor degree +24 column and I’m barely over the $50k mark. That’s why more than 100 highly qualified teachers nave left the district in the last couple of years.
When I applied with the SSD in the early 2000’s, this was THE district to teach in and had hundreds of applicants. Fast forward to 2021. Now they literally cannot even get enough applicants to fill openings. Generally, that means that the highly qualified teachers that left are either being replaced with “teachers” who aren’t really teachers and have only emergency certification.
Now, you may not have children in the SSD, so maybe having quality teachers isn’t a priority for you. Good for you, then (I guess), but that’s honestly short-sighted. I prefer that the children where I live be well-educated, so that they have a solid future. It benefits the entire community, therefore, it benefits me.
Continuing on, you spoke of the raises that were offered during the summer and state that insurance and “hours” were the sticking points. First, these were not “raises” in the traditional sense of the words. Teachers and paraprofessionals move on what is called a step schedule. Each year we move up a step and earn a slightly higher salary. Scranton’s starting salary is the lowest around by a considerable amount (about $20k), but on step 16, we receive what is called a bump step, where we move to the highest step. After that, there is no more salary movement, just a slight “bonus” each year ($500 if memory serves me - I haven’t had a contract in 5 years after all). The district was not moving us to where we should be for years of service. They do not want to pay salary that we have legitimately earned - for years we have already worked. This is in stark contrast to superintendent McTiernan’s $3k+ raises in 2020 and 2021. Wait, though, because Missy’s raises were paltry compared to those of Pat Laffey (business manager), John Castrovinci (Director or personnel), and Sharon Baddick (director of special education). In April of this year, THIS year, those Mr. Laffey received a $25k raise (25% of his salary), Mr. Castrovinci received an $18k+ raise, and Dr.Baddick received a $6k+ raise. These were called “historical corrections”, though I’m not sure how historical they could be, considering Castrovinci and Baddick have only been with the district for 2 years. They also have 2.5% raises coming over the next couple of years, like McTiernan.
Speaking of insurance… the “plan” the district wanted us to take isn’t actually insurance. Lawyers would negotiate with healthcare providers an amount of payment for services. PA state senator Marty Flynn called it a “Ponzi scheme”.
You asserted that a private employer would not offer a comparable plan. I have family members working for private employers. Did you know that some companies offer their employees a choice of plan levels, with varying coverages and deductibles, based on how much the employee is able and willing to spend for their contribution? One such plan (as an example) offers a deductible that is very comparable to that of our current plan. However, we are not private employees. Let’s look at the medical offerings for state employees. They have 3 options. There’s one very comparable and it costs them far less than we’re paying now. And none of these other employers were pushing an option that gives lawyers control over their healthcare.
https://www.employment.pa.gov/benefits/Documents/benefits-summary.pdf#page8
Then you started talking about our hours. Oh… now I know that you don’t have any teacher friends.
Yes, the students are with us for a little over 6 hours a day.
Yes we have a lunch period (don’t you?). I usually work through my lunch.
What is this “free period”? Do you mean our prep period. This is by no means a free period. This is when (on the rare occasion we don’t actually have to cover classes) we prepare lessons, grade students’ work and tests, catch up on paperwork, make the copies and the calls we couldn’t get done on our lunches… Our main issue with the district wanting to add another teaching period to our HS teachers’ schedules is that it will result in the furloughing of teachers - a loss that this district can ill-afford.
Six hours? Ma’am, if it’s a school day and I have only worked 6 hours, it was an early dismissal day. We don’t wander in with our students and we rarely leave with them. There have been many days when I walk out that door at 6 pm because I’ve been trying to do everything that there isn’t time to do while the kids are there. I don’t get overtime for that. Heck, I technically don’t get paid for that at all.
You mentioned virtual days. I strive to be professional here, so I won’t say it the way I want, but B, please! I work my butt off every day, but i will tell you that teaching virtually required us to work even harder than we’ve ever worked before. I can personally say, that I went to students’ homes to show them how to access Google classroom, as well as the other websites we needed to use. I delivered materials to my students. Heck, I dropped off food for some of them. I received texts at midnight and beyond. If I was awake, or if I got up to use the bathroom, I answered them as well. I’ve talked parents through assignments at two am. I did not have to do any of this. I did this for my students. I did this for their stressed out, overwhelmed parents. I was not alone, either.
As for our summers off - well, most of us complete some sort of professional development class during this time. Some of us tutor, or teach summer classes. Usually, I spend a lot of time planning whatever can be pre-planned. I buy, with my own money, resources that I find that might be helpful or fun for my kids (students, my own children are grown).I go into school a couple of weeks each summer to reorganize and rearrange my classroom.
I see you also mentioned sick time and “vacation time”. First, we get 10 sick days per year (sick days aren’t exclusive to teachers, many places give their employees sick days). I’m confused as to what you mean by “vacation” time. Are you talking the holidays that we get off? Those aren’t included in our 185 contracted days, so if you’re talking about those, you are incorrect. Are you talking about our personal days? We get two of those per year. We can bank 1 per year. I guess we could probably accrue quite a lot, if we tried. It would not matter, though. We are prohibited from taking more than 3 personal days in a row no matter how many we have accrued.
Oh the pension. I almost forgot about that. Yes, a good portion of the money in that sweet pension comes from our paychecks. We do not set the amount we contribute and we cannot borrow against it in an emergency situation (my husband, in the private sector, can do both). I have absolutely know idea what my account is actually worth because I can only see my contributions and interest.
You say that “reasonable adults from both sides” should come together. I’m more than confident in the reasonableness of those that we chose to represent us. The teachers have made concessions and offered compromises. Our negotiating team has made every effort to work with the district. Unfortunately, negotiation requires give and take on both sides, and the other side of the table seems to have missed that fact.