October 10, 2019
This past week, Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis shared his recommendation to bring the minimum salary of a public school teacher to $47,500 in his 2020 budget proposal. The present average starting pay for a teacher in the state is $37,636, which the National Education Association says ranks 26th in the nation. I have been advocate of teachers at all levels; from early childhood to high school, I value our educators tremendously. Without teachers, our academic foundation of learning multiple subjects, social skills and exposure to understanding the world outside of our own, is at best nonexistent but more often absent. From my preschool through my graduate school years, I personally was blessed with more than my fair share of great public school educators. Their excitement and passion of their knowledge and teaching was contagious and made learning fun. This, blog of mine; memorialized two of my top teachers who recently passed away. Both left a huge footprint on who I am today. I applaud our Governor in taking the step to move our beginning public school teacher salaries higher. This is a good start despite the vocal opposition of those who have been part of the school system for much of their professional careers.
Teachers will never be paid enough in my book. They are the most important adults in a child’s life to help build foundations of a good life. Second only to a set of good parents - and considering many children don’t even have that - teachers take on this role. It was not your choice to devote your life to teaching, but it was a higher calling, a gift you have that very few have. Like those in the nonprofit community, your position will never be fully valued in your paycheck. During the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, most everyone was in panic, what will happen to our youth. The educators and nonprofit leaders ability to adapt lessons and activities to a new, unprecedented virtual model literally overnight exemplified the professionalism and devotion each of had for the youths in schools and those served by nonprofit agencies. Together, they made sure learning and activities would be available and continue albeit differently.
When others say teachers have it easy with all the holidays, vacations and half days, I am one remind those not in the field of education of the countless hours of grading papers, creating lesson plans and preparing for the next day. The go beyond the hours of a typical school day. Many of those in the nonprofit sector carry the jobs of two people and work additional hours on site or take work home with them as well. The only difference is summer, teachers are often given a much needed break and can free themselves to take on a summer job, travel somewhere out of the US for more than a week or two’s time without coming back to chaos or just simply have some down time. Nonprofit leaders are often have very little time to transition from one season to the next, they make seasonal transitions appear seamless to the community.
I am saddened, hearing so many teachers who still cry it’s not enough and those with tenure in years will have a smaller gap in their salary to a beginning teacher. I fully understand tenured teachers being upset with new teachers starting at salaries closer to what took them their entire careers to achieve. The occurrence of new employees coming in at higher salaries than the loyal employees with tenure employees who chose to remain with an organization is prevalent in both the social service and nonprofit sectors. This sore thumbing phenomenon continues to be an issue as organizations struggle in moving the salary minimums higher to attract new, fresh employees. Often they fail, by either unwilling or unable to pay the existing workforce the increases on top of merits, to keep them competitive in salary of the new employees. It is often demoralizing for the existing employees to remain loyal when a newly hired employee’s starting salary is near or surpasses the current salary of existing employees, which took their careers to build up to.
I too, am the one with tenure in years, as I start seeing new employees in same pay grade making salaries close to my own or some even more I can choose to be bitter and call foul, but it would all fall on deaf ears. For most of my 35 years in the nonprofit sector, I saw years without any raises, for full year’s work compared to starting teacher with summers off. How about the building better communities for all and putting on a brave smile when you were just told there will be no raises, since finances are getting tight and funding is being cut. In my many years in the nonprofit sector, there were times as professional staff we have taken pay cuts to save the organization from folding and saw more years without raises than raises exceeding 2%. I’ve seen with this pandemic many of my co-workers who are like family not recalled from furlough that I’ve known 10, 15 and even over 25 years. I personally endured forced pay cuts and job changes to stay with the organization, as I wasn’t in a position to job search or relocate due to being a caretaker for either one of my parents at one time or another. I was not prepared to learn a new position, adapt to a new culture or take time to understand a new boss, who in turn hasn’t gotten to know me either. It was to my advantage to stay within my comfort zone and either take on lateral promotions with little or no increase in salaries.
My point is you can look at it as our governor hasn’t done enough or instead of criticizing our governor, perhaps we need to see he is the first one who has started the ball rolling and maybe made this generation of teachers the catalyst for change. It’s not until teachers become valued by others, the position will never be competitive in pay. I find it bewildering, to think as nation, the lack of outrage of paying celebrities and athletes such obscene extraordinary wages doesn’t cause these same people to speak up about this. I am left to assume they think it is acceptable to pay someone an annual $25M contract for what amounts to nothing but a gig or game compared to those individuals building the foundations of our next generation or building a better community for all of us.
This is the time to use your unions and large numbers in educating our communities and leaders of the importance of teachers. Tenured teachers may not benefit by these increases as much as they hoped, but the teachers coming in are seeing change and hopefully one which will continue. Remember, perception is reality and if you complain about it - many will look at it as you didn’t appreciate even the little increases received and start the undervaluing by looking at how easy teachers have it with weekends off, loads of days off, work six hour days and get eight weeks of summer vacation etc. People don’t see what they don’t see, the countless hours grading papers, reading papers, preparing lessons and trying to find ways to make 25 students engaged in a lesson you do for 4 hours or more for 180 days a year.
Unlike the public sector, nonprofits struggle to be mission relevant and keep up with salaries. The latter becomes problematic when a full time entry level manager starts at $35,000 to $40,000 with similar educational backgrounds as of a teacher. As the demands of the job continually increase, bar of expectations rise and threshold of work-life balance diminishes, the nonprofit faces a continued revolving door of turnover. Even worse are the salaries of early childhood educators who teach the social and school readiness to the youngest children are with them 9 or more hours a day – year round often earn less than half of elementary school teachers and nonprofit leaders and have very minimal benefits but often hold the same education credentials.
In many ways public school teachers are fortunate. Most working outside of the public sector and a very few select for companies and organizations currently provide employees benefits of cost of living adjustments (aka COLA), paid holidays off, tenure or years of service bonus and salary adjustments to remain competitive. Too often this hidden paycheck, or the total compensation package of their position is forgotten about when talking salaries. This hidden paycheck often includes the costs of employer subsidized health insurance, pensions, paid time off and other employer paid benefits. This contributes to an entire package, not just the take pay taken home each pay day.
Ask family and friends in other fields and the realization how many pay more out of pocket for these benefits or lack them all together. Many employers have reduced or even eliminated pension plans, health care and some don’t even get paid time off. Imagine what it would be like if all these deductions would be taken off your paycheck. Almost daily, news reports of corporate America continuing to cut employer sponsored pension and/or health benefits and reducing annual increases for the line employees. Yet, high level executives get astronomical bonuses for saving the company or even worse receive a golden parachute upon separating employment from a company.
I realize over the years, educators are often paying more out of pocket for classroom necessities to provide the best possible learning environment for their students. Nonprofit leaders too, put in their own dollars but continually work long workdays during the week with countless hours on weekends. What nonprofit leaders show is their passion for their work is just as strong as the educator and they too work hard to get meaningless praise, but do it, to get the job done. In my case, my entire organization of 2000 plus people count on me to do my job without fail every two weeks and to do it without fail. I have asked more times than I care to say, for the need of a part-time person to be hired to support and assist, me, the one person payroll department. I am continually reminded there are no funds in the budget to hire a PT person despite seeing high level positions continually being hired and seeing new college graduates starting with salaries nearing mine and all I get is an increased workload with new regulations, new laws and the growth of the organization which I must keep up with.
Have you heard the expression, “they’re not in it for the income, they’re in it for the outcome?” Society expects both educators and nonprofit leaders to earn less than corporate America because we aren’t in it for the money, but reality is we, too have bills to pay. Then there is the whole other argument of how health insurance policies continue to cover less while premiums and copayments continue to escalate. As adults many of us weren’t taught financial responsibility by either our parents or in our schooling. Staying within budget, how to buy a home or car, understand simple investing and saving, emergency reserves etc are financial responsibility often learned by trial and error and often for most create financial hardship. If most took as much responsibility to learn the basics of financial responsibility, as they do spending their time planning vacations, unforeseen events would not create such a financial burden.
Employees, much like myself, usually are qualified to find work elsewhere and could make better salaries but for varied reasons, remain with our organizations, to keep rooted and grounded in the familiar. For this reason, the turnover continues to be a steadfast problem of retaining loyal employees. I am not sure if the lack of appreciation shown for my 35 years of service demonstrated a lack of my employer’s ability to recognize and appreciate loyalty or was just innocently forgotten. Even though I do not like being the center of attention, a private personal acknowledgement would have been appreciated and would have been the right thing to do. In today’s job scene it appears the only way to increase yours alary is to move up in rank within the organization or to move on from the organization.
I guess for some, the lawn always looks greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe, it’s time to cultivate a garden with various colorful flowers to bring joy to what you may be missing out by only seeing your neighbor’s greener grass. Or in the end, you may realize you are left with nothing but many more complex questions with no simple answers.
Rant over, back to your regularly scheduled programming…
Teachers will never be paid enough in my book. They are the most important adults in a child’s life to help build foundations of a good life. Second only to a set of good parents - and considering many children don’t even have that - teachers take on this role. It was not your choice to devote your life to teaching, but it was a higher calling, a gift you have that very few have. Like those in the nonprofit community, your position will never be fully valued in your paycheck. During the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, most everyone was in panic, what will happen to our youth. The educators and nonprofit leaders ability to adapt lessons and activities to a new, unprecedented virtual model literally overnight exemplified the professionalism and devotion each of had for the youths in schools and those served by nonprofit agencies. Together, they made sure learning and activities would be available and continue albeit differently.
When others say teachers have it easy with all the holidays, vacations and half days, I am one remind those not in the field of education of the countless hours of grading papers, creating lesson plans and preparing for the next day. The go beyond the hours of a typical school day. Many of those in the nonprofit sector carry the jobs of two people and work additional hours on site or take work home with them as well. The only difference is summer, teachers are often given a much needed break and can free themselves to take on a summer job, travel somewhere out of the US for more than a week or two’s time without coming back to chaos or just simply have some down time. Nonprofit leaders are often have very little time to transition from one season to the next, they make seasonal transitions appear seamless to the community.
I am saddened, hearing so many teachers who still cry it’s not enough and those with tenure in years will have a smaller gap in their salary to a beginning teacher. I fully understand tenured teachers being upset with new teachers starting at salaries closer to what took them their entire careers to achieve. The occurrence of new employees coming in at higher salaries than the loyal employees with tenure employees who chose to remain with an organization is prevalent in both the social service and nonprofit sectors. This sore thumbing phenomenon continues to be an issue as organizations struggle in moving the salary minimums higher to attract new, fresh employees. Often they fail, by either unwilling or unable to pay the existing workforce the increases on top of merits, to keep them competitive in salary of the new employees. It is often demoralizing for the existing employees to remain loyal when a newly hired employee’s starting salary is near or surpasses the current salary of existing employees, which took their careers to build up to.
I too, am the one with tenure in years, as I start seeing new employees in same pay grade making salaries close to my own or some even more I can choose to be bitter and call foul, but it would all fall on deaf ears. For most of my 35 years in the nonprofit sector, I saw years without any raises, for full year’s work compared to starting teacher with summers off. How about the building better communities for all and putting on a brave smile when you were just told there will be no raises, since finances are getting tight and funding is being cut. In my many years in the nonprofit sector, there were times as professional staff we have taken pay cuts to save the organization from folding and saw more years without raises than raises exceeding 2%. I’ve seen with this pandemic many of my co-workers who are like family not recalled from furlough that I’ve known 10, 15 and even over 25 years. I personally endured forced pay cuts and job changes to stay with the organization, as I wasn’t in a position to job search or relocate due to being a caretaker for either one of my parents at one time or another. I was not prepared to learn a new position, adapt to a new culture or take time to understand a new boss, who in turn hasn’t gotten to know me either. It was to my advantage to stay within my comfort zone and either take on lateral promotions with little or no increase in salaries.
My point is you can look at it as our governor hasn’t done enough or instead of criticizing our governor, perhaps we need to see he is the first one who has started the ball rolling and maybe made this generation of teachers the catalyst for change. It’s not until teachers become valued by others, the position will never be competitive in pay. I find it bewildering, to think as nation, the lack of outrage of paying celebrities and athletes such obscene extraordinary wages doesn’t cause these same people to speak up about this. I am left to assume they think it is acceptable to pay someone an annual $25M contract for what amounts to nothing but a gig or game compared to those individuals building the foundations of our next generation or building a better community for all of us.
This is the time to use your unions and large numbers in educating our communities and leaders of the importance of teachers. Tenured teachers may not benefit by these increases as much as they hoped, but the teachers coming in are seeing change and hopefully one which will continue. Remember, perception is reality and if you complain about it - many will look at it as you didn’t appreciate even the little increases received and start the undervaluing by looking at how easy teachers have it with weekends off, loads of days off, work six hour days and get eight weeks of summer vacation etc. People don’t see what they don’t see, the countless hours grading papers, reading papers, preparing lessons and trying to find ways to make 25 students engaged in a lesson you do for 4 hours or more for 180 days a year.
Unlike the public sector, nonprofits struggle to be mission relevant and keep up with salaries. The latter becomes problematic when a full time entry level manager starts at $35,000 to $40,000 with similar educational backgrounds as of a teacher. As the demands of the job continually increase, bar of expectations rise and threshold of work-life balance diminishes, the nonprofit faces a continued revolving door of turnover. Even worse are the salaries of early childhood educators who teach the social and school readiness to the youngest children are with them 9 or more hours a day – year round often earn less than half of elementary school teachers and nonprofit leaders and have very minimal benefits but often hold the same education credentials.
In many ways public school teachers are fortunate. Most working outside of the public sector and a very few select for companies and organizations currently provide employees benefits of cost of living adjustments (aka COLA), paid holidays off, tenure or years of service bonus and salary adjustments to remain competitive. Too often this hidden paycheck, or the total compensation package of their position is forgotten about when talking salaries. This hidden paycheck often includes the costs of employer subsidized health insurance, pensions, paid time off and other employer paid benefits. This contributes to an entire package, not just the take pay taken home each pay day.
Ask family and friends in other fields and the realization how many pay more out of pocket for these benefits or lack them all together. Many employers have reduced or even eliminated pension plans, health care and some don’t even get paid time off. Imagine what it would be like if all these deductions would be taken off your paycheck. Almost daily, news reports of corporate America continuing to cut employer sponsored pension and/or health benefits and reducing annual increases for the line employees. Yet, high level executives get astronomical bonuses for saving the company or even worse receive a golden parachute upon separating employment from a company.
I realize over the years, educators are often paying more out of pocket for classroom necessities to provide the best possible learning environment for their students. Nonprofit leaders too, put in their own dollars but continually work long workdays during the week with countless hours on weekends. What nonprofit leaders show is their passion for their work is just as strong as the educator and they too work hard to get meaningless praise, but do it, to get the job done. In my case, my entire organization of 2000 plus people count on me to do my job without fail every two weeks and to do it without fail. I have asked more times than I care to say, for the need of a part-time person to be hired to support and assist, me, the one person payroll department. I am continually reminded there are no funds in the budget to hire a PT person despite seeing high level positions continually being hired and seeing new college graduates starting with salaries nearing mine and all I get is an increased workload with new regulations, new laws and the growth of the organization which I must keep up with.
Have you heard the expression, “they’re not in it for the income, they’re in it for the outcome?” Society expects both educators and nonprofit leaders to earn less than corporate America because we aren’t in it for the money, but reality is we, too have bills to pay. Then there is the whole other argument of how health insurance policies continue to cover less while premiums and copayments continue to escalate. As adults many of us weren’t taught financial responsibility by either our parents or in our schooling. Staying within budget, how to buy a home or car, understand simple investing and saving, emergency reserves etc are financial responsibility often learned by trial and error and often for most create financial hardship. If most took as much responsibility to learn the basics of financial responsibility, as they do spending their time planning vacations, unforeseen events would not create such a financial burden.
Employees, much like myself, usually are qualified to find work elsewhere and could make better salaries but for varied reasons, remain with our organizations, to keep rooted and grounded in the familiar. For this reason, the turnover continues to be a steadfast problem of retaining loyal employees. I am not sure if the lack of appreciation shown for my 35 years of service demonstrated a lack of my employer’s ability to recognize and appreciate loyalty or was just innocently forgotten. Even though I do not like being the center of attention, a private personal acknowledgement would have been appreciated and would have been the right thing to do. In today’s job scene it appears the only way to increase yours alary is to move up in rank within the organization or to move on from the organization.
I guess for some, the lawn always looks greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe, it’s time to cultivate a garden with various colorful flowers to bring joy to what you may be missing out by only seeing your neighbor’s greener grass. Or in the end, you may realize you are left with nothing but many more complex questions with no simple answers.
Rant over, back to your regularly scheduled programming…
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