News-Record.com

Morgan,

Can you find out if substitute teachers are getting a raise and how much for:

certified?

non-certified?

thank you

It is nice to see that the teachers are getting more than cost of living, but when you look at the salaried, it is amazing that anyone goes into education. A four year degree, without National Certification, or your masters, or Dr., and after 30 years you make approximately $50,000. That is not peanuts, but with 30 years experience anywhere int he business world and that money would be embarrassing.

I notice the vaunted 5% raise doesn't come close if one compares apples to apples: what someone would have made at their pay grade and what they will make the coming year. By that standard, the increases are more along the lines of 2%.

The Rhino reported the board is considering lowering the increase for subs from $95 to $89. As a former one myself with a master's (no certification, though), I remember the days of $45 and $50. And that wasn't all that long ago.

Even with the local supplement, few teachers with even those 30 years get to the $70,000 mark, unless they get extra pay as coaches, who routinely seem to get that number sooner than 30 years.

Priorities.

Everyone is happy that the teachers are getting a raise. However, what is not fair is tht their percentage raise is twice what the non-certified employees get. This is not fair. Dr. Grier should find enought money to equalize the percentage raises even if it means reducing slightly the local supplements giving to certified personnel. Fair is fair and you have to take care of the entire team.

Are the raises for non-certified employees being touted using a similar step-system? If not, look again at what I wrote earlier: the increases for teachers are being heralded as 5%, on average, but they actually are closer to 1.5%-2% or so over the raise they would have had simply from their step up the pay scale. Do we count levels of experience as an added raise? Apparently so.

Compare these salaries with Pennsylvania or other more northern East Coast and mid-Atlantic states. I think it is close to what is paid in southern VA, but otherwise we pale by comparison. And not all of PA or NY state are so far out of league for cost-of-living. If it weren't for climate, I think many Piedmont teachers would have moved already. I wonder if the few thousand NC teachers are mostly staying local. And we need thousands more to fill positions.

When comparing salaries of teachers and privately-employed individuals, it is important to keep in mind that teachers get paid for about 10 months of work. Some privately-employed individuals would freely take $35,000 pay for 10 months of work and just adjust their paychecks to receive them over a 12-month period.

You seem to wrong on this. The whole table shifts up by 5%. A teacher really does get a 5% raise and then the step increase. My daughter is certified in Colorado, and they pay about the same or a little less than Guilford County. Those that think there are big salaries up North, I ask them to investigate. Rhode Island has the highest salaries, but it is almost impossible to get hired. Graduates of schools in other states are not welcomed. What ever credentials they have, they will not suit Rhode Island. That is why my daughter-in-law lives in RI and teaches in MA. Anyone wants to go North, they should try it.

Yes, Jim: If you read the table again, the gains are more than 1.5-2% because you are comparing what a teacher would have made with the previous salary step to next year's approved salary step. For example, a who made 28,930 this year with one year experience will make $32,170 next year instead of $30,930. I think the state is defining the raise as what a teacher made in 06-07 and what they will make in 07-08, not what they would have made in 07-08 under the previous schedule with what they will make in 07-08 under the new schedule.

So, each teacher gets a raise averaging 5% by virtue of the step increase, but the state did not add 5% to the individual step base salary. So the state legislators are being awfully tricky implying they added a 5% increase. They did not.

It is true it is harder in New England than in Pennsylvania, I grant you. Connecticut, my home state, mainly hires only those with master's degrees, for example. Hence the pay differential, I suppose. It isn't apples to apples when you count those particular states.

Like the northeast, though, the housing bubble has hit Greensboro, and teachers now can't afford to live very close to many of the schools in which they teach. Ditto for NW Guilford. My wife and I finally may end up all the way out in Randolph County, and not very near the line. That allows us to have an 1850+ sf house where I can have space to work without getting sick from the paint, cheap construction and carpet fumes. It also will dent the paycheck for gas money. After 8 years, my wife won't rent anymore, what with a new child and more laundry than we've ever known in our lives. Convenience is nice, though.

She works year-round, by the way, with a few weeks off to spend with her infant daughter, and she continued all through summer prepping to teach at one of the best-performing elementary schools in Guilford County. She does get paid for an extra 20 days of classes than the usual 10-month scheduled employees.

By the way, does your doctor or lawyer get paid less than other professionals if they most all take one day off a week? Do professors have to put in 9-5 workdays, and still publish and attend conferences and maintain their knowledge of their specialty field? Do any of them have to wipe kids' noses all day and be professional, too?

We should be darned thankful for good teachers. As if anyone else would do this stuff for this pay. Just try it. Sure, there are great inatngible rewards, unlike most any other profession and virtually any retail or schlub job many people have fallen into.
But until we have an attitude honoring teachers and paying them as professionals in this country closer to that found in the great Asian societies, our children won't be able to keep up. The Scandavians, Dutch and others, too, will continue to outpace or young people.