IFF - Idaho Freedom Foundation

I don't think there is an attitude problem. A pay cut by 10% could easily mean delinquency on mortgage payments or medical bills that were otherwise budgeted for at current pay levels.

Teachers have every right to gripe about this. Sure, their benefits may seem enviable to you, and a scourge to some of our state's taxpayers, but the underlying issue still remains finding the right balance between incentives and preformance.

You can only get so much preformance out of someone for any given level of compensation. The threat of being fired is an incentive only to work at the bare minimum of what is required, which is absolutely what you are going to get by cutting pay. Even the best teachers would be likely to respond negatively to such drastic pay cuts.

Any new hires will be well conditioned to expect low pay and little respect from the ed department or the taxpayers. Even I realize that the $20,000 a year starting salary for teachers is hardly just compensation for the hours put in outside of the classroom, the disciplinary issues involving children and young adults, having to teach in a subject that is not your specialty, etc.

So instead of a knee jerk reaction, I offer my respect, and I call for innovative solutions, experiments, and discussions that can perhaps reduce the burdens now being shouldered by a workforce that is questioning how it should meet its deliverables requirements without the same tools that they have become accustomed to.

I just read your comment again and I can't believe I missed your comment about gratitude instead of attitude.

You might take a little piece of your own advice before shoving it down my throat. I worked for 4 years as a deputy sheriff in a local jail. I then became a school teacher for 2 years. After six years experience in dealing with inmates and students I would much rather work with societies delinquents than with your children.

Heres an idea, maybe you, and parents like you could teach your children your little lesson about gratitude and attitude each morning before you send the little innocents to school. Then maybe the teachers wouldn't need the summer off to recover from the 9 months of abuse they recieve at the hand of your perfect little angels.

It's no wonder children these days have no respect for teachers or school staff when they have parents who constantly prech to them about how overpaid and underworked teachers are and what terrible attitudes we have.

If being a teacher is such a great and wonderfully cushy job then why don't you go to college, get a degree, and start doing it yourself? You make it sound as if teaching is the greatest job in the world, that there are so many protections and bonuses associated with it. It's probably not prestigious enough for you....right?

I'll tell you what, I will give up my contract, take whatever paycut you want, give up tenure, work 12 months out of the year for the same pay, whatever you want. In return all I ask for is that I be allowed to mace your kid when he tells me to "F Off" in the middle of class, or tase him when he makes threats against me, or better yet throw him to the ground and beat him with a billy club when he disrespects me in my workplace day after day after day.

Are you o.k. with that?

Guarunteed raises? Are you serious??? I guess if by guarunteed you mean it's promised in the first year and delivered in the seventh then yes it is guarunteed, course by the time 7 years passes and you get the "guarunteed raise" you have already taken enough paycuts to negate any raise that you recieve. Was that the guarunteed raise you were talking about.