Bongo has been hearing a lot of whining lately, and it hasn’t been from the new puppy across the street.
It seems that some teachers in District 158 have been whining that the increases they have been receiving over the last several years have been inadequate. So Bongo did some digging, and looked at some salary histories for District 158 teachers. Bongo tried to look at the members of the negotiating team, and then chose a few random long time teachers so a long term perspective could be gained.
No, Bongo didn't cherry pick teachers who just got the biggest raises over the years due to earning advanced degrees. In fact, Bongo would invite others to do the same exercise and choose whatever teachers' salaries they would like to use. Bongo's guess is that the results would be similar.
Seems to me like the teachers who are crying “poor” are actually crying “wolf!” Those raises far outpaced the CPI, or cost of inflation. In fact, Bongo can say with 100% certainty that he has never received a raise in the range that these teachers have...
Click on the image above to see the % salary increase for a sampling of District 158 teachers during their years at District 158. Blank spaces mean that teacher was not yet employed by the District.
Bongo doesn't know why Christy Henderson’s full salary was not listed on state documents in three of the years, so her data is incomplete and not accurate.
So let's take a look at each teacher's average yearly raise. Bongo took the total increase and divided it by the number of years each teacher has been employed.
Average Yearly Salary Increases:
Kim Aschenbach: 8.808%
Janet Burkhalter: 9.362%
Jennifer Hueck: 9.22%
Christy Henderson: 4.92% (incomplete data)
Melissa Juergensen: 10.87%
Jane Kantor: 9.66%
Julie Lutter-Hunter: 9.25%
Ingrid Mullane: 9.06%
...Not exactly raises that would make the normal dog whine!
On Thursday, the Northwest Herald published another spanking of an editorial against the HEA leadership. The story pretty much states what Bongo has known for a while now: that the union's leadership is completely out of touch with reality. You can read the story here.
There was also a story about a counterproposal the HEA is supposed to present to the school board tonight. You can read that story here.
3 comments:
Taking the salaries of a few teachers out of context does not prove a valid point. There are many factors that come into play including obtaining advanced degrees and moving into positions (administration, team leader, department head) that can influence the pay scale.
The post explains how Bongo selected the teachers who are included on the chart. Bongo further feels that ignoring step and lane changes would be disregarding real income that most teachers are earning. Bongo would certainly hope that teachers would want to earn higher education hours even if those hours did not equate to higher pay. Step and lane is a real part of the contract and should not be ignored. It would be interesting to know what % of teachers are working toward advanced degrees. This was in no way meant to cherry pick a worst case scenario.
I’ve been reading Bongo for a few months now and I usually think he’s “spot on” but occasionally I disagree with him. But this post is spot on, because it provides a real and accurate look at what our teachers are really making.
I looked on Huntley Neighbors and can only assume its teachers who are crying foul over the Bongo post. Don’t we want to reward our teachers for taking steps to become better teachers? Don’t we want to encourage advanced degrees? Why would this money not count? Its all money from the same pot in the budget, set aside specifically for teacher salaries.
In my opinion, Bongo has done a very good job of showing a very enticing career path for educators. Those lane changes for advanced degrees and extra duty assignments are available to any teacher who wishes to take advantage of them. In what other career do employees have access to these types of raises if they want them?
Are teachers actually saying the money they receive from lane changes shouldn’t count toward what they make? I wonder if those same teachers would be okay, since the money doesn’t count, if the district didn’t give it to them?
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