Monday, March 21, 2011

Frustration

Governor Rick Snyder wants me to pay 20% of my health care costs.

He also says that I make too much money "compared to the private sector".

What he doesn't say is that he is comparing my salary with my student that works 7 hours a week at Wendy's, without a high school education.

My parents TOLD me not to go into education . . . and as it turns out, as always, they were right. I don't feel that I make an insane amount of money. In three years, I will have twenty years in as a teacher. What do engineers with master's degrees make after twenty years of experience?

And I have worked for no money, in a private school . . . which would have provided free tuition for my children (if I had any), gave me very lovely free food for lunch and after twenty years, I would have had a subsidized place to live. And I hate to break it to Rick, but the private school had the same problem with finding quality teachers, if not more so . . . and an opinion column in the Free Press made a great point. If I'm paid like a private school teacher, will I get students like the ones I taught in private school? Parents who felt education was important enough to pay extra for it? Students who actually behaved and paid attention?

So let me get this straight . . . I have given my life to education. My fault really. But now I'm supposed to be paid like "the private sector"? What if I treated my job like people in the private sector? I'm sorry, Mrs. So and So. I'm off the clock.

I'm already concerned about some of my colleagues and their quality. What happens when teachers can't make even a living wage? Will there be any new teachers? Not any smart ones.

So my great hope is that Rick will buy me out of my pension. And I'll go get an engineering of law degree to be part of the private sector . . . the part with bonuses and six figure salaries. Or better yet, I can run for the state legislature, all who make more money than I do and have better health insurance than I currently do - nevermind that 20%. Oh, and staffs, car allowances, expense accounts and offices.

Oh, and I supposed to have a package from Amazon. Says it was "out for delivery" as of 9 am this morning. And it is still not here. And how much longer do people deliver? So much for those lesson plans for tomorrow. I would come up with Plan B but I'm pretty sure I don't get paid for that anymore.