Good luck .... I doubt we'd would ever hear the teachers union asking to freeze their wages. Talk about greedy Wall Street execs. Teachers come out of the same mold. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.

SarahB1: My point is that their are not many jobs out there in which you start at less than 30000 with even a bachelor's degree. Including education! Your post stated teachers are complaining,if they are complaining it would be that they have to acquire a master's degree and are still paid substantually less that someone with equal education.

jqpublic: Maybe so according to one website, but others list it as being in the low, low thirty-thousand range. Now if you want, I can find several sources that list teachers starting at much higher rates than the $30,000 also.

SarahB: Many of the professions you listed still don't start under 30000 with even a bachelor's degree. For instance, an architect
fresh out of college makes around 40000. Far from under 30000.

http://architecture.about.com/cs/careers...

jqpublic: I did not make the statement "all inclusive" to requiring a master's degree; a bachelor's degree would also qualify. I looked at the site that Rocky referred to and it lists average starting pay for "education" much lower than other similar websites. When I tried to obtain from Rocky's website what the definition was for "education," it stated that the database was not available. I also looked at several other similar "salary" websites and found the following: Careers with starting salaries that are less than or equal to that for teachers include: newspaper reporters, biochemists, librarians, case managers, personal banker, systems support assistant (requiring bachelor's degree in computer science), bookkeeper (requiring bachelor's degree in accounting), consumer loan processor (requiring degree in finance), biologist, interior designer (not decorator and, yes, designer requires bachelor's degree), architect, copywriter, geologist, and school nurse (requiring bachelor's degree due to public health segment that is not typically taught in associate degree programs). There may be others; I don't know for sure because I quit looking at this point.

Are teachers really held accountible? How many teachers are fired every year in Wisconsin for sub par performance? How many in the private sector are fired?

"(or Ms. Knowitallandcommentoneverything..)"

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! LMAO!! That's funny right there!

Geez these things are fun to read sometimes!

Moron, that's all I can say at this juncture.

SarahB1: I have been doing the research you suggested. I have not found any field that requires a master's degree and makes less than 30000. Apparently you're not an expert on every topic.

I am waiting for the day any school district says they have too much money and they want to give some back! That will never happen! They always act like doomsday, no matter the economy.

Allowing individual negociation for pay starts a race for the bottom. It is the exact reason collective bargaining is the function of a union. You can wrap this in all sorts of flowery prose but what Mr. E and his ilk want is to shred the contracts for educators. As for someone with a masters and a JD, I have a really hard time imagining anyone with such wanting to "fall on their economic sword" to teach "the little ones children". Stay in law where you belong, you will be much more valuable as such.

Good point Carrisford.

I don't think the raises themselves are the problem; rather, it's that teachers are governed by a union that sets benefit levels and the pay scales for everyone (to be "fair"). Trouble is, that means there's no negotiating. I have a Master's Degree and a J.D....if I wanted to go back into teaching, they couldn't afford me now, and I can't negotiate a lower salary. Freezes wouldn't be necessary if unions didn't demand teachers with x numbers of credits and x number of years got x number of dollars. I should be free to bargain for a lower pay rate (after all, the benefits are still better than in most other professions). Administrators get to do some bargaining for their salaries...why shouldn't all district employees? That would save money for everyone.

According to the site:

http://www.studentsreview.com/salary_by_...

The only majors paying less than education at the BACHELOR's level (Emphasis added to mock the idea of all caps. btw....) are (drum roll)

----

Automotive Engineering
Performing Arts
Natural Resources

-----

Just about all of them pay better at the "professional" level.

Yeah Sarahb1, (or Ms. Knowitallandcommentoneverything to frequent readers of these comment boards) where is this long list of Masters degrees earning less than $30k?

Why does the Gazette continue to provide Mr. Eyster a forum for his rants? Why do we continue to read and respond to him? Not sure which is worse.

SarahB1: Still waiting for your response on my last question. Can you list some of these many jobs that require a bachelor's and master's degree and still make under 30000 a year?

SarahB1: Can you list some of these many jobs that require a bachelor's and master's degree and still make under 30000 a year?

bertnb--It is so annoying when people get on here and teacher bash and have no idea what they are talking about. YES, we do have to PROVE that we are good teachers--but not once a year---like, 12 times a year. Do some research on Professional Development. Maybe dig up a copy of our contract and see the crap we have to do in order to keep our jobs. It's even worse for new teachers! They have to not only do roughly 80 hours of additional work behind contract time for hours, but have to complete a PDP (check out www.dpi.gov) if you're unsure--which I'm sure you are. On top of that, pressure to get your masters. It's nearly impossible to juggle all that. Would you like to deal with what Teachers deal with on a daily basis? It's the administrators who walk all over us and gallop away with the money. Take it to the higher ups. We have no say over anything.

Why do teachers always think they are the lowest paid workers holding bachelor's or master's degrees? Do some research; there are many other occupations that require one or both of these degrees and where the average pay is under $30,000. I am undecided re: teacher pay raises vs. freeze during these economic times, but I am tired of teachers continually voicing that they make less than anyone else with a degree.

Okay Mr. E. You are a former educator now retired. Your call for the lowest compensated bachelors degree and masters degree holders to take a hit rather than explore other possibilities still reeks of the "I got mine forget you!" ethic that pervades a certain socioeconomic strata. In your world nothing would be fixed until we are all working at chinese labor rates. Good luck selling that as the economy swirls down the bowl.

Teachers are not the problem, capital costs are. Schools have buildings they must maintain whether there is one student in it or one hundred. We need to figure out a better way to deal with school expansions and contractions other than building more and more.

Pay freezes for administrators? Yes!

Pay freezes for teachers? No!

About the random cap locks comments, I totally agree how annoying it is. First, it is poor netiquette and equates to "yelling" and rude behavior (this is usually covered in Internet 101 classes.) I also find it annoying because it ruins the thought continuity of the message...like finding a period in the middle of a sentence. I find it condescending because it assumes I'm too ignorant to identify anything important so it must be POINTED OUT to me.

The drive-by use of the caps lock creates a horribly choppy article, and quite frankly, I'm disheartened that this poor quality writing style is coming from a former educator.

Do you people really think that if the teachers would take a freeze you would all be rolling around in extra cash? Do you even think this district will lower your taxes if they agree to the freeze? "So and so is out of a job, teachers should be lucky to have a job because I don't." Its the same crap over and over. I am suffering so should you. When did someone say, "When I am doing well so should you"

A pay freeze would only further encourage skilled educators to go elsewhere, and this type of column only helps to create an anti-education atmosphere that deters teachers from investing a career in this community. We must attract and retain the best teachers so that we give our kids the skiils and abilities they will need, and to attract businesses to this area. Mr. Eyster, it is hypocritical for you to have enjoyed the benefits (salary and insurance) as an employee in the Janesville School District (as well as the corresponding Wisconsin Retirement from which you currently collect) and then after your career is over call for pay freezes. Did you cry out for pay freezes when you were a teacher? It is sad to see a former educator raise his voice so loudly and consistently against education.

YeS, The capS THinG iNTErspeRSed tHRouGhout A meSsAgE doEs teNd tO Be kINd oF anNoYIng aNd diSTraCtinG. BuT whAT tHe HEck tO EAch hIs owN, RIght?

I actually do not hear many teachers complaining or "whining" as someone wrote - I don't hear this "on the street" or even on this very blog! I love how so many people have this miraculous "hearing". I have read posts that are supportive of teachers - what they do in terms of profession and a few that might support a pay raise. A handful of teachers seem to rarely post on this issue; I truly don't see a lot of teachers coming on here and saying "Give me money!!!!! Who cares about you and your unemployment! I am so much more important than you!"(Perhaps I did miss a post or two?) So why are so many people on here over-generalizing and actually putting words in teachers' mouths that have not, or rarely, been said? As I said on a different comment section, public school teachers are simply the scapegoats for everything that is wrong in society, and society expects public school education to fix all societal problems for less pay than ever. With the negative public attitudes towards education and the teachers, what young person in his or her right mind would even consider going into teaching at this point? And add to it, the fact that the pay most likely will go down. We will face an even greater issue of getting qualified and caring individuals in the teaching field if public ATTITUDES don't change along with the ECONOMY.

WhY do PeoPLe thiNK RanDOM caPS LocK MakeS tHEIr mEsSage RiGHT? If anything it deludes the message and causes readers to move on. Now it is spreading to comments. HelP US AlL and HeRE WE go!

bertnb - I would like to remind you TEACHERS are accountable to the school officials, in which they work and live! If a student is not passing. Teachers have a HUGE responsibility when it comes to teaching by the laws and regulations of our state and federal governments. I am not saying teachers should get a raise every year, but they should be respected for the profession they are in. It is the school administration who gets all the pay raises and bonus and are NOT ACCOUNTABLE for their actions!!!!!!

bertnb: What are you basing this on? At the University of Wisconsin - Madison, which is an R-1 school, instructor evaluations are given each semester. However, publications, research, and service matter much more than those scores, and instructor evaluations have relatively little impact on promotion and tenure decisions. In addition, first-year tenure track professors at UW may make anywhere from 55K/year in humanities to over 100K/year in business or engineering. While I'm sure that they still feel a 3% pay cut, it's very different than a first year teacher who may make 30K annually. Furthermore, while university faculty have Masters or PhDs, many, many teachers in Janesville have at least one or more Masters, since that is what determines advancement on the pay scale.

Wow I'm taken back by the continued brilliance of this blog! Who knew that government debt was due to the 3% cost of living increase we give the teachers each year? Teachers make a bountiful $34K a year salary. How dare they want more!
Once we freeze teacher pay, lets go after wages at WalMart.

I am SO SURE that you would be the first to take a pay cut IF you were still teaching!

Hypocrite.

The bottom line is that teachers are not held accountable. They do not have to prove each year that they are good teachers. Why should they get raises when other teachers in the state (university system) who have to prove each year that they are good teachers go without a raise and suffer a pay cut? This is the question that everyone is ignoring.

For Mr. Eyster and Bertnb:

I think you'd find a lot of teachers who are willing to take their lumps with the rest of us in this difficult economy. However - where were the calls for "economic equality" during the heady years in the 90's when the private sector and state were paying 4-8% annual raises and teachers were subjected to the 3.8% package increases and deceptive costing requirements of the QEO? (That translated to usually sub 2% increases, for those who wonder.)

----

This is why teachers are frustrated. When everyone suffers, they should suffer with us. When the rest of us prosper - they are still held down by artificial cost controls. Billnb said that "every time teachers demand raises the public pays for it". Look closely, Bill. The raises paid to teachers are a drop in the bucket compared to budgets. When those raises aren't paid, school boards still raise taxes the maximum allowed by law and keep the difference for "rainy day funds" and pet projects. Not one dime of taxpayer money is saved by denying these raises.

Kay13.....Applause! Applause! Well, said!

There are non-union JPS employees, including professional staff whose salaries are frozen. It's called taking advantage of those that don't have union protection. It certainly isn't fair to do this to only to the unprotected groups.

Upon reading John Eyster's most recent comment, I want to add this. If I had chosen to go into another line of public service other than teaching, I wouldn't have been trapped by the QEO and other efforts to cap teacher salaries. I could have advanced more quickly on the pay scale, and actually made enough to support my family. There is so much teacher-bashing that occurs in Janesville - and that is evident in these comments - and I think that it's an outright shame that it's coming from a former teacher.

As a former student of "Mr. E," I am appalled on several levels. First, his use of frequent ALL CAPS is both annoying and difficult to read. While the Gazette provides him a new forum to share his views (instead of the classroom walls), ALL CAPS aren't effective in the least, and frankly, serve to discredit his message. Second, after graduating from Parker, I went into the field of education. I then left teaching within 10 years because of the catch-22: if I wanted to go up the pay scale (and I did), I need to get a Masters and take another 30 credits. The cost of those classes - compounded with my undergraduate loans, supporting a family, and so on - was overwhelming. John Eyster should know that education has an incredibly high rate of attrition - and over half of new teachers leave the field in the first five years. Freezing salaries are only going to detract our best and brightest from entering K-12 teaching.

Right on, DiGriz. A fundamental flaw of democracy is this concept of simple 50%+1 majority rule. That is little more than a "tie". Trial juries are burdened with achieving total unanimity. Why not burden elective and legislative power with the requirement of an overwhelming 67% majority (two to one)? It wouldn't hurt to require this of SCOTUS rulings, either.

Again, for the record, WE THE PEOPLE readers need to be aware of the facts:

1. WI retirees took a CUT in WI state pensions as of May 1, 2009. Less for those on fixed and more for those with variable.

2. ALL WI State employees are under a 2-year pay freeze plus the 3.065% pay cut each year 2009-2010 and 2010-11. UW teaching faculty also were hit by a cancellation of the 2% adjustment which had been planned for June 1, 2009 when the Governor asserted that the state's fiscal situation could not allow that adjusment.

Let me clarify again, "COMMUNITY BLOGGERS" are VOLUNTEERS! We are NOT paid by Bliss Communications/The Gazette. I think this is important because we are INDEPENDENT and have totally free control of our own content.

I KNOW that I have taken cuts. I continue to assert that fairness needs to include ALL PUBLIC EMPLOYEES, including K-12 public educators (teachers and administrators). I continue to ask, "WHY NOT?"

Here we go... Mr. E./John

For the public school teachers who have posted here and think a pay freeze is a terrible idea, I would like to know why. Because you don't want one? Because you don't think it's fair? Because you think public school teachers are the only group of people who should never be touched by economic downturns?

Here are some points of reality for you:
* State professors and academic teaching staff have lost 3% of their pay for two years.
* Those people have master's degrees or terminal degrees -- which many of them need to pay off in student loans. Now their pay is cut, making that more difficult.
* Each one of those university teachers has an in-class evaluation every year to be sure that they are good teachers. (Perhaps we should implement this at the public school level to be sure the public is getting what it pays for.)
* Every time public school teachers demand pay raises, it is the public that has to pay for it. The public cannot afford it this year.
Please think of the greater good.

I have a better idea. Ship back the estimated 20 million illegal aliens here who are sucking the life out of assistance programs, and taxing the work load of others. It would free up jobs for the legal Americans, and take a load off of our tax levy. This way, legal Americans can keep their pay, and not have to make a sacrafice at the expense of somebody illegal.

My apologies John, I thought you were a Gazette employee editorializing. In any case, consider the advice and take a pay cut, if you're drawing a pension, send some back, or return some social security money back, and if you're investing, burn some money. It still is true-sacrifice is for the little folks.

Hey John, Why don't you take a cut in pay too? I'm sure your bosses at the Gazette would appreciate the gesture, and with the shape that print media is in, they surely could use the money. Even better, judging by the looks of you, you could consider early retirement. Since your asking everyone else to "take one for the team" why don't you belly up first and do it. Oh yeah, that's right, only public service folks and folks of a "certain socio-economic strata" should do the sacrificing. Sacrifice is for the small folk...

I'm curious to see how long the memories will be should there be concessions now, and a brighter outlook in a few years. I've been submitting budgets for nearly 20 years, and yet I've NEVER heard the top administrator or manager ever say, "Things aren't looking too bad for this year's budget; we should make up for some losses that our employees agreed to a few years ago."

John, the topic of pay freezes for nonunion employees was raised as a possiblity at the school board level last spring. From an April 25 story: "Schulte also is proposing a freeze in all non-union wages to be reconsidered no later than January 2010. Schulte said lifting the freeze would depend in part on the teachers' compensation increase."
-----------------------------------
See today's paper -- the board will have to fish or cut bait pretty soon on this and other budget matters, I would think.
-- Gazette reporter Frank Schultz

Agreed DKS. It's difficult to read his opinions.

I can't EVEN read this GUY'S posts because OF his overuse of ALL caps on THE words that don't even NEED emphasis. SERIOUSLY distracting.

In ours or any economy, we are all in it together. No segment of any economy can march to their own drummer forever. Market forces will win one way or another. The case in point for this discussion is government. Government at all levels including education have to yield to the same forces as the private economy. Mercury Marine simply shows that if folks in Wisconsin can't adjust the jobs will go elsewhere. When that happens: guess what? The teaching jobs will also move to a new location. And guess what happens there? They won't have the pay and benefits provided in Wisconsin. The net result is the same as it would be if government and education respected the forces of the economy. Once upon a time government, including teaching, was paid at levels below the private sector. The received alternate pay with great fringe benefits. That is no longer true. Government pays higher than similar private sector jobs and the benefits are still much better. Sorry folks: that will end. It is up to the educational establishment and unions to decide how they want it to end.

Shocking that YOU are STILL FIXATED on PAY FREEZES. Did you REALLY teach AP courses? Either you ONLY read the HEADLINES of the articles you cite or YOU just DON'T GET IT!
(By the way caps lock is annoying - how does a barely technologically literate guy end up with a blog?)
For those that care, it is only the administrators in the Stevens Point Area Public School District who agreed to a pay freeze for the 2010-11 school year (you do know what year this is, right?).
How much will this draconian cut save the good taxpayers of Stevens Point you ask? The move will save the district between $74,000 and $75,000 during the school year that begins in September 2010. In a District that size, I wonder if 75,000 even affects the levy rate.
By the way, the administrative staff in Point consists of 45 people and it's estimated that the average pay increase per person would be about $1,900 for the 2010-11 school year. Is that the kind of freeze Mr. E is in favor of?
I guess we can all just sit back and wait for all public employees to "take the initiative" and start clamoring for pay freezes - apparently, Labor Day is the new April Fool's?
If you are serious about pay freezes for public educators in Wisconsin, I suggest rubbing every lamp you come across and not wasting any of your wishes.

Horrible analogy. Mercury Marine is a private corporation whose sales have fallen and is in financial difficulty. If the workers didn't make that concession, they were out of jobs. It was that simple. The schools are public taxing entities that are not seeing a revenue decline - in fact they are seeing increased revenues. Freezing or reducing teacher or administrator compensation lines the pockets of nobody but the school district. The taxpayer saves nothing. Oh- it is a wonderful, symbolic, political move for the Boards to do this, but that is all it is. Just what was the SURPLUS (to (ab)use the all caps theme) in Milton last year? How much did Milton spend on parking lots? In every organization the most important assets are the people. When you start abusing them in favor of physical facilities, there is a problem of priorities.

In honor of the current state of the American labor union, this year's Laborfest parade will march backwards.