TIMES The Real Cost of a Teacher

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   www.SeniorLiving.Org

We need to stop so much money into out school system, Donald Trump said.

“We have to change,” said Trump at a Charleston, South Carolina, campaign rally. “We have to do like my campaign, I spent the least and I have the best results.”

Teachers aren’t valued when I comes to salary claimed Hilary Clinton, with teachers finding themselves near the lower end of the pay scale.

“A lot of people have been blaming and scapegoating teachers,” Clinton said at a CNN presidential debate. “Because they don’t want to put the money in the school system which deserves the support that comes from the government doing its job”

Hilary is right but that doesn’t have to be a partisan issue. Regardless of your party, the importance of a good teacher has no price tag. Sadly though it seems that we take them for granted each and every day. This can clearly be seen in how low their salaries are.

K-12 teachers begin at around an average of $45,000, give or take, and midrange teachers earn around only $65,000. How are we supposed to expect intelligent people to want to be teacher and teach our children when they won’t even make a good living?

Currently making about the same as a postal worker, teachers earn around $21 hourly starting. That means teachers living in California, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware aren’t even making a high enough wage to live in two-bedroom housing.

A teacher living in California, where you have to make $26.65 or more hourly, would require a dual income home, get a roommate, or make the decision to move to Arkansas, where it only costs $12.95 an hour to live.

To also take a closer look at California’s schools, they’ve slid to the bottom rank of all the states.  This decline may have come with the passage of Proposition 13, a property tax measure that limits funds to most schools and provides even less money to schools that need it most.

That fact that this proposition was passed though means that the people are voting for it. U.S. citizens speak with their money and their voice on education doesn’t look like it’s as strong as the areas getting actual funding.

In fiscal year 2015, the federal budget is $3.8 trillion treasury divides all federal spending into three groups including mandatory spending, discretionary spending and interest on debt. Mandatory and discretionary spending account for more than 90 percent of all federal spending, and pay for all of the government services and programs on which we rely.

Looking right at the military spending, 598.49 billion from the budget goes straight towards military spending with education receiving around 70 billion. That 528.49 billion difference is remarkable putting in perspective the priorities of our government.

The government need to start redirecting its priorities and direct it towards the to how are teaching our future generations. Teachers shouldn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck fill a job that people should be eager to fill.

 

Comments

comments