Dear reader Miss Eff brought to my attention a couple of tweets regarding the funding (allegedly) of the Volunteer Armed Teachers in Florida. I added the third one and still waiting for no answer or something along the lines of “Look it up yourself!”
Now, I am doing a bit of misdirection myself. I do not think the budget has reached the printing office yet or even left the legislature because it has not have been read by Governor DeSantis who needs to go with his pen and sign it.
But forget that and think that this has been the most contentious bill discussed in the Florida Legislature this season. Specially anything that had to do with arming the teachers was analyzed by 17 Democrat senators and 46 Democrat Representatives; a grand total of 63 elected Democrats and their staffs in a 2 month period never found or mention once the appropriation of $70 million for guns to be bought. But some activist from Detroit figures we will take his word and accept his statement.
And of course, an idiot from NYC need to push the manure car even higher.
If Twitter guano would actually fertilize the soil, we would get the Sahara desert fully green in less than five years.
The average teacher salary is $48,168 per year. Wait. That’s not per year, that’s per 10 months! OK, it’s actually per year if they don’t work over summer.
In those ten months they get 24 days off and 10 teacher planning days, which are essentially days off.
Where can I get a job with 66+10 days off a year and pays $48k?
I never hear them whining about teachers getting special rates for loans and mortgages either.
This “teachers don’t get paid a living wage” is some new talking point bullshit that the Left has come up with that nobody challenges. Across the country teachers make on par with the median income level for people with a four year degree. Dead solid median.
False. Teacher planning days are NOT days off. Teachers have to attend training, compute and enter grades, and actually PLAN on those days. Things need to be done like IEP compliance, ELL courses, required professional development, etc.
We are contracted to work 196 days per year. In addition, we are also required to be at school for events outside of the contract. Events like graduation, open house, and even to staff the different extracurricular events like sports, grad bash, prom, and school dances.
During those summer breaks, teachers are required to do things. One of them is training to comply with Federal and state law. For example, I have to attend 120 hours of training on educating students who do not speak English as a primary language. Last year, it was 60 hours on special needs students, and another 24 hours on school security. Once the guardian program is available to teachers, you can include that 144 hours of training to that.
I have to reapply for my job each year. If I fail to perform any of these tasks or if my students don’t do well on standardized tests, my contract won’t be renewed. How many jobs do that?
Orrrrr….let’s pay them “like college educated professionals” (think MFA/Barista) (Or OAC- BS-Econ [true on a couple of levels, amirite?]) for a benchmark of what a “college educated professional” gets paid.
Orrrr…mebbe pay ’em $60 K, for 2080 hours of work/year, less, say, 120 hours of PTO. Like RNs, almost everywhere. (And! THIRD SHIFT!)
Trying to find out how many hours the teachers put in during their less than ten months is like nailing jello to the wall.
It can be difficult because teachers are salary, and each school and teacher has different requirements. Every teacher has a contract of what they must do, at least here in Florida. Here goes:
We are contracted to work an 8 hour day for 196 days a year. That comes to 1568 hours.
Since we are also required to provide course materials like power points, worksheets, and tests. You either create them or pay for them out of your own pocket. Since 7 of those 8 hours a day you are working are spent teaching students, it has to be done on your own time. A new teacher spends about 4 hours each of the 180 workdays where we have students on this. More experienced teachers can do it in about 2 hours. There goes another 360 hours or so.
In addition, we are required to attend 5 events each year. Those events include prom, sporting events, etc. On top of that, you have to attend the awards banquet for your students. There are two of them (9th & 10th grade, and another for 11th & 12th). There is also graduation, baccalaureate, and others. In all, these events add up to another 40 hours or so.
Every teacher in the state has to attend a 120 hour class on sensitivity to illegal alien students. That was in addition to our regular in service training. Same goes for the 60 hour special needs training we did last year, and the Guardian training that will be required, if they ever establish that. If you want summers off, then you have to find a way to take those classes at night or on weekends during the school year. These trainings usually come to another 100 hours or so,on average.
Total it up: 1568 + 360+ 40+ 100. That is about 2068 hours. That pretty much equals the 2080 hours that you work in a 40 hour a week job. Either way, we spend FAR more hours working than what people think.
Did the FL legislation really budget $70 Million for this?
If it did , it is in a super duper in between the lines secret location written in invisible ink in the appropriations bill that nobody ahs seen.
This is probably where the number came from:
https://www.educationdive.com/news/doj-awards-more-than-70m-in-grant-funding-for-school-safety/538780/
They saw 2 + 2 nd came up with 22?