{"id":1945,"date":"2008-09-14T18:02:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T00:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2012-06-21T13:24:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T18:24:23","slug":"wauwatosa-teachers-doing-less-because-they-got-a-raise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wauwatosa-teachers-doing-less-because-they-got-a-raise\/","title":{"rendered":"Wauwatosa Teachers Doing Less Because They Got a Raise"},"content":{"rendered":"

You read that correctly. Wauwatosa, WI teachers are upset that they got an across the board 3.8% increase, so they’re doing less around the schools.<\/p>\n

Did you get a raise this year? How much was it? I’d put money on it that it was something less than 3.8%, but the teachers are still crying.<\/p>\n

I’ve written in the past about the lavish wages and benefits handed out to Milwaukee Public Schools teachers.<\/a> And teachers in Wauwatosa aren’t under any hardship either. Debbie Brent, president of the teacher’s union, made $60,051 in salary and $31,003 in benefits during the 2006-07 school year for teaching at Whitman Middle School. Over $91,000 for a part time job? Not bad.<\/p>\n

And then add to that the increase during the 2007-08 year. I can’t find the amount, so I’ll be conservative and estimate 2.5%. Then add this 2008-09 increase of 3.8% on top of that. Suddenly, Brent’s compensation for this school year totals $96,876. Underpaid? Hardly. But reason for her to do less for the students in her mind.<\/p>\n

You can check out the compensation levels for other teachers using this database<\/a>. But if you look at all the employees in Wauwatosa, you see that the lowest paid teacher made $45,883 in salary and $28,277 in benefits in 2006-07, for total compensation of $74,160. Add last year’s estimate of 2.5% and this year’s 3.8%, and that teacher is at $78,902 in compensation for this school year.<\/p>\n

And we’re supposed to feel sorry for these part-time employees? Before you tell me that I’m wrong about the jobs being part-time, take a look at this study<\/a>. At the most<\/strong>, teachers work 36.5 hours a week, and that figure includes all time (both in and out of school) and pretends that all breaks\/lunches are spent working. And obviously, we all know that teachers work about 9 months out of the year when you factor in summer and all of the breaks during teh school year.<\/p>\n

Let me just put this all in perspective for you. Teachers work 36 or 37 weeks a year, but I’ll use 40 just to be conservative. 40 weeks x 36.5 hours per week = 1,460 hours worked per year. Using 2006-07 compensation figures:<\/p>\n

$91,000 total compensation = $62.33 per hour<\/p>\n

$60,051 salary only = $41.13 per hour<\/p>\n

$71,000 total compensation = $48.63 per hour<\/p>\n

$45,883 salary only = $31.43 per hour<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, the teachers weren’t underpaid in 2006, and they’re not underpaid now. But their union, the Wauwatosa Education Association, hasn’t agreed to a contract with the school district. So in the absence of an agreement, the teachers get a default increase of 3.8%. That’s the way it works.<\/p>\n

What’s so bad about that? Nothing, in my book. In fact, I’d be in favor of no increase at all, so I think they should be happy with that increase. (Don’t forget that the teachers can get additional raises automatically by earning more college credits.) But the teachers apparently wanted more.<\/p>\n

How do the teachers respond to their raise<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Brent said a lot of teachers are cutting back on volunteering for after-school activities and writing letters of recommendation for students.<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/p>\n

Brent said during the first couple days of school teachers were not in the building past their contract times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure that\u2019s the way it\u2019s going to be for a while,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/p>\n

Teachers passed out pamphlets to parents during open houses warning them of the possible cutback in activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to communicate what we are doing and why we are doing it,\u201d Brent said. \u201cNo one likes surprises.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I looooove it when teachers cry about how everything they do is for the children. No, it’s not. It’s all about their personal benefit, and situations like this prove it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You read that correctly. Wauwatosa, WI teachers are upset that they got an across the board 3.8% increase, so they’re doing less around the schools. Did you get a raise this year? How much was it? I’d put money on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[872],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-fraud"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-vn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}