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Common Dreams reports
Colorado's teachers' union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that's planned for Monday at the state's Capitol in Denver.
[...] Englewood School District, outside the capital city, announced on Sunday that schools would be closed the following day as 70 percent of its teachers had indicated they wouldn't be working Monday. It was unclear on Sunday whether more school districts would be closing.
"We are calling Monday, April 16th a day of action", Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association (CEA), told KDVR in Denver.
[...] According to[1] KMGH in Denver, "The CEA estimates that teachers spend on average $656 of their own money for school supplies for students." The state's teacher salaries rank 46th out of 50, with educators making an average of $46,000 per year.
Public schools are underfunded by $828 million this year, Dallman told the Post, and lawmakers have said they could inject at least $100 million more into schools--but they have yet to do so.
[...] The planned protest follows a trend that was seen in West Virginia and Kentucky before moving west this month to Oklahoma and Arizona as well as Colorado. In all the states where teachers have walked out and rallied at their Capitols, teachers have reported paying for school supplies out of pocket, working second and third jobs to make ends meet, and coping with funding shortages while their legislators hand out tax cuts to corporations.
[1] For a laugh (or perhaps a deep sigh), check out all the whitespace in the source code of the page.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 17 2018, @01:18PM
Consultant / contractor
As a young recent grad, two times at one small employer I ran into a former instructor helping out with some short to medium term project over the summer. Kinda weird. When instructors are out of "instructor mode" they seem more chill at the workplace. I vaguely remember going out drinking with my coworkers with the guy who taught me 68hc11 assembly language as an elective class a couple years previous; kinda weird.
That of course is assuming EE code monkey stuff, teaching future EE code monkeys, teaching kindergarten and teaching high school gym class are all at the same identical level of professionalism.
My SiL is a kindergarten teacher, a long tail survivor near the end of her career, and she did sub work for day cares when she needed cash. Note that some employees "careers" at day care are only a couple weeks, so her working there for two months makes her a lifer. Although again, hard to say if elementary school teacher OR day care worker is a professional job. I'd say "no" to both.
All the tech ed / shop teachers had summer jobs in their fields and saw it as a valuable way to make contacts for their students; I had a CAD teacher in high school trying pretty hard to recruit me into a couple of his favorite employers. Is CAD draftsman a professional job? I donno.