Strike Blogging

A note in the MSD Commons has me a wee bit riled up. A teacher wrote this:

Yesterday I received the mailing from the district showing what I made on last year's salary schedule along with TRI. It provided a comparison to what I would make on the SAM. According to this letter I would make $881 more.

Not bad, you say? Keep reading...

It wasn't until well into the day that Mr. C pointed out to me that the district (I'm sure quite unintenionally) failed to include the 5% I have been receiving for my Masters in their representation of last years pay.

This is a typical Marysville school district tactic. In representing the teachers' salaries as compared to the state average, they included all the extra pay for Masters degrees and coaching and anything else they could throw in. But when they want to show what a teacher was making last year in comparison to what they'll make on the "new" salary schedule, they only include the absolute barest base salary.

Factoring this in I will experience a reduction in pay of $2,047.40 while the district insists to the media and the parents that NO teacher will have a pay reduction.

Gee, that $900 turns negative real fast when you actually do the correct math, doesn't it?

I'm anxious to be in my classroom; this will be year 31 for me. I resent people who say we shouldn't be teaching for money but because we love kids. I've loved thousands of other people's kids and plan to for years to come. Still, I will not let my love be used against me. I have no intention of working eight more days for $2K less.

Yet people keep insisting that teachers take less and less pay for more and more work... "do it for the kids!" they cry, ignoring that the teachers are people too and deserve better than to be treated like dirt.

I wish this strike was only about money. I wish it was a simple matter of disagreement on numbers. It isn't. It's about basic human dignity, and the fact that teachers aren't allowed to have any. What's wrong with a world where the people charged with the task of educating the next generation are treated like greedy scum when they just don't want a pay cut?