Dear John,
Although I am, generally speaking, a fiscal and social conservative, and thus more often than not agree with you on a range of other issues, after several years of seeing you put into print the salaries of those in the higher range of pay in our school system, I must finally offer my objections.
I want first to address my own view of your reporting of the names and salaries of these emplyees. In doing so I am going to deal primarily with teachers.
The manner in which Guilford County schools pays teachers is established by strict formula. This is published on their public web site. Anybody can find it out. There is a dismally low starting salary for a starting teacher with a college degree, and then salaries increase slowly based upon years of experience, advanced educational degrees, and certain approved extra certification processes. There is no mystery here. But to publish names and salaries as you do is, to my way of thinking, just nosiness and bad form. It would be better, if you just had to make your wrongheaded point, to publish the pay scales themselves, and perhaps the number of teachers who fit into each range of pay, say $30-40,000, $40-5000, etc. There is just no point in putting names to salaries except to create ill will, usually misguided, between people of our community and our teachers. You aren’t reporting the whole truth nor the appropriate context, so you are only half informing the public anyway. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
And, in fact, what you have published, at least regarding teacher salaries, proves the exact opposite of what you intend. We have a county of almost 450,000 people with one giant unified school system. That system has thousands of teachers (maybe you could come up with that number for us). Of these thousands, the very highest paid of all of them who is not an athletic director, is a person with 35 years of experience, a Ph. D., and National Board Certification. And she gets paid only $70,000. That is pathetic! What does that mean about the rest of the bell curve? Yes, that it is low, too low, way too low. Thank you for proving my long held contention that we pay our teachers way too little.
Look at the lower end of the scale. The entry salary for teachers, given that a college degree plus teacher certification is required, is abysmal. It is no wonder that it is hard to get college graduates to go into teaching. Yes, there are other things that contribute to teaching being a difficult field of work and which keep people from pursuing it. Again, these conditions argue for more and not less pay for teachers who must endure many indignities and much abuse along the way.
I was a public school teacher for five years back in the 1980’s. I taught physics, chemistry, biology, and physical science. My starting salary was $13,000. I had six years of college education when I started. I was rolling in the dough.
I can personally attest that teaching, if a teacher seeks to do it well, is exhausting work from morning to night. Standing up in a room and engaging five or six classes of students a day, even in good school conditions, is incredibly draining. I do not think most people have any idea what it requires in terms of energy and stamina. Then there are often conferences or tutoring times before school, and the inevitable dealing with parents who are upset because little Johnny made a C on a paper. Teachers live under a constant cloud of lawsuits in our litigious society. You would have no idea how often parents threaten court if they don’t get their way. There is endless paper work. Then one has to prepare for one’s classes. For any conscientious teacher this means hours of work at home every night, and the constant fear of not being totally on top of things. There is much anxiety and stress related to this issue of daily readiness, which accounts curiously for the almost universal nightmares that teachers have. Then of course there is the task of correcting and grading papers and often taking night classes to try to upgrade one's standing. There is pressure that never lets up. There are issues of safety, of threat, and intimidation. OK, so some readers say that I am describing their lives. Well, then they should have sympathy for our teachers.
And of course, in our system teachers must work now under the indignity of EOG’s being the be all and end all. This is sapping the motivation and energy and creativity of our best teachers, forcing them into being automatons rather than the caring creative intelligent people that most of them are.
But rather than creating good will in the eyes of the public, you are causing people, due to the lack of full reporting, to draw false conclusions about teachers who already are insufficiently paid, and in some cases causing people to draw false conclusions about particular individuals. This will only sap public motivation to provide the resources our schools and teachers desperately need. You are doing the general public good a great disservice. I do not believe that it is in the public good to continue to put together names to salaries before the face of the public as you do. There are other and more honoring ways of making your very poor point.
Add the idea that teachers have two months off is such a total joke that is does not become a man of your otherwise high intelligence. Because of their generally low pay, teachers constantly have to find work in those periods of time when they are not due in the classroom. I did this for five years. Having a ten month contract was a burden in my mind, not a blessing. What, do you think they are using all their extra money from their inflated salaries to sit on beaches in Aruba? Come on John. That “time off” is no holiday. In addition to needing to find work in the summer, many teachers must spend the two months of summer taking classes so that they can get to a higher grade in the pay scale, or, in some cases, so that they can continue to teach what they teach - or so as to have their contracts renewed.
Yes, many government employees are paid inadequately. Rather than this being an argument to lower teacher pay, maybe it should be an argument to raise general government employee pay.
John, I just don’t think you have enough appreciation and gratitude for the myriads of public servants who work hard day in and day out to make your life better and safer.
On one point I agree. We have too many assistant superintendents draining away too many resources. There is a bloated bureaucracy above the teachers. If we could eliminate jobs there, we could pay teachers a little more. I would be all for that.
And I admit to the fact that it is easier than it should be to be slack as a teacher. We have all known slack teachers (and slack lawyers, accountants, doctors, and pastors). It is hard to find a formula or a procedure for measuring true effectiveness and thereby increasing true accountability. That is an area that still needs work, but I am describing a small minority of our teachers.
Back to the one non athletic director you singled out, just listen to yourself. We have a person with 35 years of experience, a Ph. D., and a demanding National Board Certification, and you’re complaining that she makes $70,000. Let’s compare similar years of experience, education, and certification with people from dozens of other professional vocational areas. Why don’t you do that, John?
This teacher who is the highest paying non athletic director is also my friend. She is a great teacher, and she has paid her dues in 35 years of educational experience. She earns her salary. She loves her work and her students. She is a good and faithful public servant. So are the thousands of teachers below her in the salary scale, many of whom also are my friends. I wish you would find another way to make your misguided point, a way that is not intended to embarrass and disparage individuals. It is beneath you.
Joel Gillespie
I particularly like this picture of Dad, taken in the late 70's I would guess. He would have been a little younger than I am now. He is sitting behind the counter at Gillespie Cleaners in Columbia SC. We had to suck up to all kinds of SC sports fans, as you can tell from the wall behind him. Dad himself was a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. I have his old Chapel Hill mug on my desk right here. He would have loved too see two of his grand daughters there! I can't walk Franklin Street without thinking of him.
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