Pay Teachers What They Deserve

This is Wiley Post.

It doesn’t take long for the GOP’s true colors to come out. And not much longer to see the true results of the actions of last year’s long session. The message from legislators is: We value the experience of our own employees, we just don’t value your experience in our schools.

Last year, state lawmakers removed the longevity bonus pay for veteran teachers and rolled it into their base salary. At the same time, they unveiled a new pay scale that boosted the pay of newer teachers in an attempt to be viewed to balance out the low pay raises of the long-term teachers. Others in state government, including state legislative staffers, kept their bonus pay as well as a raise of $1,000, plus five extra vacation days. Lawmakers also raised the pay by 5 to 6 percent for newer members of the Highway Patrol, but they did not take away longevity pay for the troopers, which is the same as what most state employees receive.

We have seen this strategy work in other states. Scott Walker did this divide-and-conquer to pit teachers against the firemen and police to beat back his recall election. Do we want to pit our teachers against our police and state troopers? Who will be next against law enforcement? Who will the public support? Why are more charters being approved? Because the GOP has successfully turned the public against public school teachers.

So who’s next? Republicans, in charge at the legislature since 2011, have looked to teachers’ longevity bonuses to pay the bills. Legislative leaders have created subsidies for lower-income parents to send their children to private schools, sought to eliminate tenure and are phasing out pay increases for teachers who pursue advanced degrees. To justify this, State Senator and Majority Leader Harry Brown, a Jacksonville Republican, said. “Those are tough-to-hire positions. The hours are as crazy as any hours I know because they are asked to work holidays and up till midnight, and you’ve got everybody in the world trying to recruit them, so most of those positions turn over a lot.”

The last time I looked, teachers were working student work days to catch up and prepare their classes, staying up late to grade papers or work ticket sales at sporting events, driving school buses, chaperoning student trips and mostly asking for money to cover class expenses or moving to Texas for better pay. You still want to claim that your staffers are overworked? Lawmakers spent $1.6 million on longevity pay for their employees in the last fiscal year. The average longevity bonus pay for full-time legislative staffers was $7,090. So remember: if you are a city, county or state employee, they value the experience of their own employees. They just don’t value your experience in our schools.