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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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:22PM (2 children)
46k is enough for a single person to live on but it won't afford any luxury and building up the minimum amount of savings will take a long time. This of course assumes the teacher has zero student loans from the bachelors and credential programs.
The various breaks teachers do get is well overshadowed by the non-stop 8+ hour days, grading/prep taking away from the home life, and the never-discussed emotional toll of trying to steer hordes of young humans.
Toss in teachers needing to worry about basic school supplies, paying out of pocket and dealing with shithead parents whose precious little johnny/jane would neeevverrrr do anything wrong and is nothing less than an A student and you have a REALLY stressful job. Low pay is just a nice bonus that make many teachers walk away to find better pay with less stress.
The icing on the cake is hearing smug jerks tell teachers to stop whining because "those who can do, those who can't teacher." I left teaching for private industry, got a massive pay bump and less stress even though I don't get summers off. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Monday April 16 2018, @07:38PM
And on top of that, the gun and ammo special interests groups are demanding teachers carry while in school, with all the attendant training, red tape and aggravation that carries. No doubt on their own dime and time, of course.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday April 17 2018, @04:17PM
Yeah about that, by the time you leverage Teach4America and Americorps benefits against the Teacher Forgiveness Program for Stafford loans I think you might be able to run a profit; not sure if that's either legal or realistic.
My SiLs description of those orgs, including gossip from her coworkers, sounds very much like my dealings with the VA WRT the GI bill program, in that what should take pages of paper instead takes dozens of pages and what should take days ends up taking months, but eventually you get every penny promised... eventually.
With a side dish where if only the top third or top half or whatever of grads can get a job in the field, then that's the third or whatever who are most likely to get scholarships and grants. Or given the usual disparity where parental financial status correlates with child school performance, the few grads who get teaching jobs, assuming they're selected by GPA and not looks, (assuming GPA isn't based on looks, LOL) the top few with jobs are exactly those most likely to have parents pay their way. Kind of like how if you can get into an ivy league school you're almost by definition not going to have trouble paying for it, because the hurdles to reach that level are expensive.