L.A. Teachers approve reduced pay

H

Horn6721

Hook'em
Very interesting article on a union of teachers in Los angeles that voted to take reduced pay for a shorter school year but that would keep 4.000 teachers from being laid off.
The really interesting part comes from the Union rep and talks about some of the very waste discussed here in the ' when you make a test harder"
from link
"“Teachers have begun to worry—justifiably—that by sacrificing and putting the needs of our students and our communities first, we educators are enabling the school board and the superintendent to continue year after year to eliminate dedicated teachers, to shorten the school year for every student, and to further undercut the value of an LAUSD education,” Fletcher said. “This vote puts the superintendent and school board on notice.”
and here
"In an interview, Fletcher accused the school district of sending out more potential layoffs notices than necessary. It sent out well more than 10,000. He also said the school district was spending more money than it should on a new evaluation system, standardized testing materials and consultantsThe Link

for all the unions who keep raping the taxpayer here is a Union that seems to understand reality.

and a ISD that does not.
 
Interesting that LA's school district it seeing such a decline in enrollement. I wonder what is behind that, kids going to charter/private schools? People moving out of LA? Decline in birth rates? More dropouts?

I would think most school districts are getting bigger and bigger.

I also find it interesting that the pensions and healthcare benefits are not on the table, but they are willing to scarifice their pay for less work.

Interesting situation. This is just LA and not the whole state......
 
I don't know any specifics on the $150 million dollar high school in LA but I know it can easily cost 70 million to build a school in a cow field in Texas. Factor in the higher cost of land and labor and they probably still spent too much but it might not be as far off as people think.
 
Also wanted to add that it seems to be standard for districts to cut more than they need to with layoffs. They will then go back and rehire who they want once the final budget comes in. I know my district was forced to do this during the last budget cycle because they were only working with estimates from the state until about two weeks before kids walked in the door. We were able to hire a few people back but the vast majority of people that lost their job never were hired back.
 
Just out of curiosity, I looked up the LAUSD teacher salary schedule for last year. Very difficult for a reguar classroom teacher with just a bachelor degree to break 60k. On average LA teachers make about 5k/yr more than Texas teachers. With their cost of living - no thanks.
 
larryT?
How much did your distric spend in new concepts/ on the news tests? on consultants or admin people with inflated titles and salaries?


it is refreshing to see a union vote to save jobs and i hope the Union presidents point about admin waste sinks in to taxpayers
 
My district cut 25% of admin building payroll before cutting any teachers. The only noticeable difference is that it takes forever to get something fixed (technology or otherwise). My district has its issues but seems to at least spend money in the right places.
 
That is because she was the only person interviewed and was making $50K in the same job at her previous employment. She also was working for new DISD Administrator at her previous gig, who is the one who interviewed her for the DISD gig. Just more DISD crap....Talk about an ISD that should be taken over by the state.
 
In unions, out of unions, well paid or overworked, most tea chers care a lot about kids and helping them learn. If you didn't give a damn, I can promise you the money wouldn't make the job worthwhile. Sure a few teachers get burned out and stopped caring, but if you talk about a group of people who have to put their heart and minds into their work everyday, you are talking about teachers. If you think they only care about their pensions and summer vacations you've been talking to people who don't know teachers and likely don't give a damn about education.
 
While I am happy lots of folks kept their jobs, lay offs are good over the long-term. Poor performing workers need to be redeployed in more productive ways. It also creates a sense of urgency to perform better than your peers.
 
That would make sense if the layoffs were based on performance instead of years of service. Instead of taking their chance to get rid of older, under performing teachers, many districts took the "easy" route and got rid of their most recent hires. Districts really neutered principals on that one.
 
And at the local level, much of the re-shuffling is going to be about internal politics rather than actual performance issues. At least that's what I've found to be true so far. Publicly, the battle cry is "What's in the best interest of the kids?", but the real reasons for the moves that get made seem to be more along the lines of "Who is an enemy to the administration in its bid to justify its decisions, and who is an ally?"
 
Lay-offs based on seniority is so dumb for so many reasons. No wonder our kids are falling further and further behind. The folks running their education system are clueless.
 
Deez, and any others. There is another option, charter schools. I taught for an ISD for 9 years, and the scene is much cooler here at this charter school.

The school doesn't completely have a choice, but the parents appear to be on notice that if their child doesn't tow the line, the child is out and has to go to DISD, in my case.

Uniforms for students, teachers have the freedom to teach without someone breathing down their neck, plenty of staff development support, etc.

No place is perfect, but this place is head and shoulders better than the ISD where I worked.

The weird thing is that in some ways we're so far behind the "modern curve" that the instruction is something that is appealing to most teachers.

For example, by the time I started teaching in 2001 it was basically against the rules to have the entire class read a novel at the same time. "Whole class novel sets" were totally out of favor, because you were to teach guided reading, literature circles, etc.

Well, guess what I started teaching at the charter school last year and we're allowed to use novel sets, so I ran around town last year buying used copies of Bridge To Terabithia for my 5th grade class.

This year I moved down to fourth grade, and bought a class set of one of the Hank Zipzer novels for my students. Now, for 12-13, the school has bought several different novel sets for several grade levels, at least 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.

btw, the students love reading the novels, especially my fourth graders this year. When we read a novel in class you can hear a pin drop.

I guarantee you if you were to try to teach using whole class novels sets in an ISD, you would be barbecued, and THEN tarred and feathered.
 
yes they take the tests.

We were quite a team this year. Our math guru, a young man in his early 30s, figured out that the rigor of STAAR meant that we would need to go higher, so he finished teaching his fourth grade math TEKS by the end of December. He utilized a computer program very extensively, and old materials as well, and started the fourth grade TEKS the second time around in January.

By February and March, he was teaching the 5th grade math TEKS. This guy used to teach 5th grade math, and he really likes math. He stole time from other subjects all year. By early April he was using 5th grade material in both reading and math.

The bilingual teacher pretty much went right along with him for the reading, but not the math. She felt like her students needed more time for more depth of understanding, and I agreed with that.

I, the ESL teacher, was a little apprehensive about going up like that, but I did end up using a few 5th grade reading passages and at least one 5th grade released TAKS math test for the students to work on.

Our results came back much, much higher than the 3rd grade, but we didn't get to look at 5th grade.

We took the raw scores and calculated the percentages for each student.(ex. 44/53 = whatever %)
Then we averaged the percentages for each class. His class had the highest average in both reading and math, about 78% for math and a little lower for reading.

Mine were second, about 70% for both reading and math.

The bilingual class was right behind mine at about 68% for both.

One advantage the bilingual teacher had was a smaller class. She had 14 students, compared to my ESL class of 24, and his regular class of 22.

So, what does this mean, re: Exemplary, Recognized, etc?

First, we have no idea how many of those questions were field test questions, my example is the rectangular prism ?, we practiced big time counting the number of vertices, edges, faces, but we always had a picture to look at. The dang STAAR test asks the students the number of vertices, edges, or faces( I dont' remember which) without showing a picture of the prism. (caveat, I did not view the test, the only reason I know about this question is that a student called me over to ask me what to do, because she didn't know what a rectangular prism looked like)

I think the passing standard will be somewhere between 45 and 55%. If so, I think all but 2-3 of my students passed.

In spite of his going higher much earlier, I think his numbers of students failing would be about the same. I simply had more students in the 60s-80s, but he had more students in the upper 90s. I only had two or three students score above 90%.

If this were TAKS, i would have had 3-4 students with a perfect score on at least one subject.
 
Orangecat,

Charter schools are great. In fact, they have some of the advantages private schools have. The problem is that we don't have enough charter schools. Of course, a lot of charter schools are non-union, so if there was an effort to greatly expand them at the expense of traditional public schools, you'd get a lot of flack from the unions.
 
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