The other day I spoke with a person from North Orange County who felt compelled to share some of their personal philosophy with me on public employee unions, fat pensions, and job security. The person, we’ll call them Jo, gave me some information I would like to share with you.
Jo opted out of the California Teachers Association (CTA) when she was hired by the local school district. She decided it was worth the payroll deduction to opt out rather than feed the union beast. You see, Jo isn’t your typical CTA dues-paying teacher; she is that inspirational teacher who lives to stimulate you minds.
Jo recounted for me several instances of lazy and incompetent teachers being shuffled around to various assignments and protected by the union rather than being fired. She has told district officials that she earns too much money when considering she has, in her opinion, the best job ever. That’s the spirit of a good teacher who isn’t just simply riding the gravy train of public education.
The economic disaster taxpayers have stepped in will soon force public employee unions to reconsider their position. The employees do not dictate who runs an agency or how it is run, although they certainly would like us to think they do. We, the People, run agencies by electing officials, who will be held accountable this November.
The apparent ineffectual leadership of our public agencies can be corrected November 2, 2010 by choosing candidates who hold the public’s trust paramount to the interests of the employees. But I have my doubts. There were several candidates who should have been tossed out with the primary election but weren’t. It seems common sense has succumbed to name recognition.
The teacher in question might want to go into the private sector. There she could grow her career and reach students motivated by their parents and the amount of money the parents are forking out. Sure she will be competing with people that offer their teaching for free or almost free as nuns used to do for the Catholic schools.
ReplyDeleteOf course private schools don't have to take students that don't do well. This often gives them a better reputation like hospitals that don't take difficult patients. The ones they do take do well, so they appear to be better hospitals when in actuality, the hospitals taking the difficult patients are the ones that are on the cutting edge. More people die at those hospitals because they take patients that are more likely to die in the first place.
I guess what I'm saying is, where is the cost effective model of a school that this teacher would like to work for that would pay here the salary a good teacher is worth? Can that be applied to public schools with their handicap of having to take students that don't speak the language or have learning disabilities?
I think that the hospital analogy is a good one as many conservatives would also argue that nurses make too much money and their unions are destroying the health care system.
One big difference is that there is a large demand for nurses these days and they can better call their own shots. Teachers? Our society doesn't put as much stock in teachers as law enforcement and armies. If people were better educated, they wouldn't be as prone to wars and prisons which by the way, are two industries that are growing by leaps and bounds in both the private and public sectors.
Apples and oranges. I understand your point but my point is simply that this public school teacher, "Jo", clearly sees how the public employee union feeds its own corruption.
ReplyDeleteHer district pays very well; she gets 6 weeks paid leave in addition to all major holidays, as well as 2 weeks of sick leave and a fat pension. And more importantly, it isn’t that she doesn't deserve the pay and benefits because she does. But the broken system that holds no one accountable is protected by the public employee unions which, in my opinion, have unrealistic expectations of funding.
Often, we set the bar very high only to find out we raised the wrong bar.