Governer Christie responds to a teacher.
I am uneducated about what he’s saying, but his response sounds reasonable. Is he wrong?
Comments
hutch, where you been for the last 9 months?
in a nutshell, chris christie proposed a cut in education of $820 million for the 2010-2011 school year. (this was several months ago).
alternately, he followed in the footsteps in what was proposed by jon corzine before he left office and that was to cut state aid at the end of the last school year, forcing schools to use their surplus funds (aka the money they’ve been saving.)
so schools last year were faced with the problem of way less state aid in their budgets for this year forcing them to cut programs and fire teachers and raising the school tax to get more money from taxpayers.
now, corzine done effed up by using obama’s ONE BILLION of stimulus money to offset taxes last year. guess his plan didn’t work because he didn’t even get re-elected and christie was stuck with this deficit.
so, however hard it was to do, he slashed the budget by so much to schools and what he asked of the teachers union was to encourage them to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries into their healthcare plans.
barbara kesheshian, the state union prez, stood on the steps of the gloucester conty courthouse and told me that christie is stealing from every teacher in the state.
wow, lady.
so no, chris christie is not wrong and i am by no means a republican. he made a promise and he stuck to it. then i had to hear my best friend complain that a perk of her job is to get free heathcare and if she has to pay $500 a year, that’s gonna suck.
but it’s $42 a month. don’t buy a coffee every day at dunkin donuts and save over $50 right there … all while not fucking up your jobs, your kids and your schools.
our state is broke. deal with it.
btw, i love sammy and jonathan to death. and all other teachers i know. and i’m not saying they are greedy people who just want to know they are taken care of. the kids come first. period. everyone has had to make concessions these past few years.
the teachers union in west deptford were TOLD if they didn’t make concessions, they would lose 28 teachers instead of 16. guess what? they lost 28 teachers.
I don’t disagree with what Christina said. But I think a lot of other people’s issues with it is the same thing that is going on at the federal level as well.
“The deficit is bad! It’s a huge problem and we all need to tighten our belts and deal with the pain. Therefore we can’t pay for teachers insurance/fund public worker’s pensions/extend unemployment benefits/etc.”
Hey, these tax cuts for the wealthy are expiring and if we extend them it will increase the deficit by massive amounts.
“No way! We can’t do that!”
Uh…what happened to all of us tightening our belts and sharing in the pain?
In NJ it’s the higher tax rates on the wealthy expiring and Christie just not renewing them, and at the fed level it’s the lower tax rates on the wealthy expiring and the republicans insisting that they need to renew them despite the deficit issue they care so much about or it will be financial armegeddon.
But the main component is the same. Rich people should not be forced to share in the pain of our budget deficits.
Also, I should note my town was I think one of the few (if one of the only) to vote for pay freezes and other concessions, in return for not having to fire any teachers. I guess there were a few dirtbag old timers who voted against it, but from what I’ve heard they’ve been heavily lambasted and shunned by their peers since.
well kev, the people don’t vote for that stuff. the way it works is that the school board opens up contracts and bargains with the district teachers’ unions.
but yes, people have the right to vote ON the school budget themselves. but there’s only a handful of people who know what the impact is on the schools and in my work in that, it’s mostly the parents who are involved in their kids’ schools. it’s rarely the people who don’t have kids in the district and it’s rarely the senior citizens. hey i don’t blame them. christie called for a freeze on the senior freeze program, which keeps their property taxes at bay. there’s seniors all over the place who live in houses with no furniture because their taxes went up suddenly.
this is all happening on a municipal level too. during all that nonsense, i covered seven towns in gloucester county. several unions gave concessions but only about three out of 27 schools districts’ teachers union gave concessions.
christina said:well kev, the people don’t vote for that stuff.
sorry i didn’t mean to sound almighty!
Yeah, that’s what happened in my town (when I said old timers voting against it I mean teachers voting on the concessions with the union, not the average Joe voter voting for it).
Prior to the town’s vote on the budget the teachers in the district voted and agreed to all the concessions and that fact was widely publicized. That’s why when the people went to vote, most of them knew this and voted to approve the budget.
I think a lot of it too was that our town’s school system has an unfairly negative reputation largely due to a lot of older teachers lingering much longer than they should have and it affecting the kids and the results (see Sammy’s tenure posts for reference). But over the past 5-10 years younger, and more hungry and willing teachers have entered the system and are great but unfortunately the reputation persists. So I think a lot of them made the effort to concede many things in an effort to turn the reputation around.
Christina, to answer your question, I’ve been not-commuting for the past 9 months. Which means a lot less listening to NPR. Which means a lot less news.
So I appreciate the both of you getting me up to speed.
christie’s been doing these town hall format meetings all over the state this year. i went to one in gloucester county and many disgruntled union reps or teachers said these same exact things. they just aren’t on the same page.
i, for one, love the fact that christie mentioned the whole union guy who prayed for christie’s death. the state union lady totally mishandled that and definitely gave christie some ammo to work with. this guy doesn’t mess around.
i don’t want to come off sounding unsympathetic in this situation. and i certainly don’t want to come off sounding biased in my writing. and i think i’m okay with the latter. it’s just that i sit in these school board meetings — that everyone can go to, mind you — and hear the wrath of teachers who might lose their jobs and residents whose taxes will go up.
most of the time, the super and the school boards hands are tied. this doesn’t mean they weren’t fiscally responsible, it doesn’t mean they messed up. it means they have to deal with it like a business when it comes time to doing a budget.
we all know art and music is important. we all know math and science is important. some districts had to resort to grade level schooling because so many teachers got laid off. back in west deptford, kids had to change schools, buses had to be rerouted and mayhem ensued. and in the midst of all this, the superintendent resigned. it’s a mess everywhere.
Christie is so amusing to watch in these videos, and in the small handful I’ve seen he seems so reasonable. He seems Jersey, but reasonable.
It’s a real shame, I’m pretty sure he’s a republican.
Yea, if we were greedy people, this would not be our career path anyhow. I haven’t made it into the public sector of teaching just yet, and I am thankful for it. Though every school ends up feeling the effect in some way, at least the private schools have to worry less.
As I’ve mentioned before, the state has created this problem by Governors and elected officials borrowing against our (public workers’) pension system and never paying it back. Now that the pension system is in danger of collapse, they’re calling on us to kick in more to offset the costs of trying to save the system by which we’re to be compensated.
That just seems silly.
In addition, the perks of benefits-coverage were bestowed (originally) as an offset for what was—as recent as about 30 years or so ago—seriously substandard wages for full time workers. Sure, that has changed in recent years, but people with Masters degrees in the private sector still tend to do better than I do, perhaps not initially, but certainly over time.
Also, private sector employees often say “I pay like 5% for health care. Man up.” But in reality, that’s 5% of your premium cost; we’re being asked to kick in 1.5% of our gross salaries.
Also, he’s proposing as of today we increase our own contribution to health costs to 30% from 8%. That’s including teachers that’ve been retired for years.
Also, he’s proposing to make all public employees contribute 8.5% of our salary to our pensions, up from 5.5% (except fire and police, who already pay 8.5%).
Also, he’s proposing an end to annual cost-of-living increases for retirees. (seems fucked up)
What do you think about this school choice bill? I’m telling you, if I lose my job fifteen years from now because my district doesn’t have enough kids to fill a school thanks to their ability to be bussed elsewhere, I’m putting a fucking gun in my mouth, and there’s nothing you can say to stop me.
You know, I knew I was getting into a job that wouldn’t pay well. I knew I’d never be a millionaire, and I was ok with that. I chose to be a teacher because I honestly feel responsible for the future. I don’t trust the future of my country, and the world, to people less intelligent than I am teaching the people that will one day take over. That being said, I always thought that I’d be the best help in a place where, statistically, good teachers were hard to find.
And that’s going to be my downfall.
Merit pay. I’m a good teacher, but I teach special education. By and large, my students (already in a failing school district) are less likely to pass something that isn’t designed with them in mind. For whatever reason, the current trend is to measure educational progress through one single, boring, four day long test in the beginning of summer, in un-air-conditioned buildings. I’ll never fucking see that money. On top of my special needs children, I’m typically given low-performing and retained students because I have a history of being able to somehow succeed in classroom management. Because I can handle the “tough” kids, I keep getting them.
People that can’t handle the “tougher” kids? You know, the weaker teachers? They get the honors classes. Regardless of their own level of intelligence or content knowledge. They’re going to get merit pay because their kids largely would have passed no matter who their teachers were.
Then there’s the issue of favoritism and class composition. Ever suck dick for coke? I might start giving handjobs to administrators that’ll give me higher-performing students. Friends with your principal? I can already smell that merit money.
Now there’s school choice. Great. Worried about how some Camden fuckup is going to drag down your wonderful honors prodigy? Too bad. You know what keeps me up at night? The idea that someone’s going to point out that when you remove a kid from my school and bring him to the “real” suburbs, he ultimately does better. No shit, it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. You take a kid from a culture of fuck-education and plop him down in a school that gives a shit, you know what happens? he fucking gives a shit and gets his act together. Then you say, “Well hell’s bells! Those teachers in that old school must be doing something wrong!” Thanks, cockface. I forgot amidst all my “Kill Whitey!” spray-painting in homeroom that I should actually teach anyone anything. Here I was content simply to get the kids writing.
It’s not the fucking teachers that are at fault all the time. That’s my point. Sure, there are shitty teachers that tenure protects, but I should fucking hope that anyone with any clout gets rid of those assholes before they get tenure. I pull into work an hour early every day and leave at least an hour late. I know a lot of people that do that.
Then, when I get home, I’m constantly thinking about how the hell to do my job better the next day, and grade papers giving every one meticulous attention to try to figure out what my kids are thinking when they make mistakes so I can try to give them as much personal attention as possible to correct their individual misunderstandings. And I only have about 40 kids, being in the elementary school. Imagine middle- and secondary-Language Arts teachers.
Imagine reading for content and ways to improve 60-80 essays depending on your class schedule, and getting them back in a timely enough fashion so that the lesson and revisions have meaning. Did I mention we’re not teaching the next Kurt Vonneguts? More like 60 shitty Holden Caulfield hopefuls, if you’re lucky.
So yeah, we have summers off. Fuck you. That’s a cool-down for the insane amount of work, planning, and thinking anyone good at their job does for the other ten. Besides which, most people I know, certainly the ones with families and mortgages, take summer positions doing something else… so sure, while it isn’t teaching, it’s not exactly a free two months for many of the people in the profession.
Think about that the next time your rich Governor (who is entitled to both state and federal pensions and benefits) lights a couple torches and sharpens the pitchforks for the rest of you working stiffs to come after us. It is our fault, after all: our existence availed a pension system for the breaking. Without teachers, firefighters, cops, and the myriad other public services you take for granted, we’d never have had a pension for those silly politicians to borrow from, deplete, forget to pay back, and then have to fix (at our cost)!
tl;dr: Being a teacher isn’t as easy as they say it is, nor nearly as lucrative. Also, I’ll likely commit suicide before reaching retirement age, largely as a result of the contemporary political position toward education.
What Sammy said.
Also, this blog is a pretty good point by point take down of a lot of Christie’s arguments, complete with links and data and background, etc.
i covered the governor speaking yesterday.
i think all this is happening because the state teachers union president supported a district union rep who prayed for christie’s death.
(kidding)
Christina, you’ve brought up the praying for Christie’s death incident twice on this thread. I think a lot of people like that the union president stood up for her rep after he made a private joke. Why are you still talking about this? Do people even remember this, beside Christie and his fellow humorless cronies?
alycia said:Christina, you’ve brought up the praying for Christie’s death incident twice on this thread. I think a lot of people like that the union president stood up for her rep after he made a private joke. Why are you still talking about this? Do people even remember this, beside Christie and his fellow humorless cronies?
Maybe it’s the irony of someone outside the Republican party praying against them. That or to point out the pointlessness of prayer. Dude’s still livin’.
In that one link I finally read what that “prayer” was. It’s pretty much the same joke thing as I see posted on any number of morons who I happen to be “friends” with on Facebook only with Obama in there instead of Christie.