58 replies to this topic

[slice slice baby]

Besides just voting in the poll, please, as usual, comment to let us know your feelings & the reasoning on your decision......

[Osu4me]

So I take it everyone knows what Bill 5 is all about with all the press we have been getting about it. Any teachers, firemen or goverment workers here that
have a strong opinion about Bill 5? I'd like to hear your opinion!

[labatts69]

It is a crock, with my wife being a teacher this is one thing in their job that protects them. without it principals are not going to fight for teacher's after little johnny accuses them of doing something wrong just because they disciplined them. i understand the idea on some of the collective bargaining like with erectile dysfunction pills and taxpayers paying for that stuff. in the same token tho that also helps with wages, retirement, and unjust firing. i just don't understand how the government can tell them what to do when they can't even run themselves. just have kasich get pulled over again and call a cop an idiot again. we should just RIF a few of these worthless politicians and this would take care of some of the costs incrued to the unions of teacher's for years.

[slice slice baby]

I can't believe our resident political activists, cougsie, floundear & duh, have not posted on this issue since being posted..... ???

[cougarsno1]

I support it! Ohio is Broke and Ohio's Pension System is WAY past Broke! Plus IMO public employees should not be unionized

[labatts69]

I support it! Ohio is Broke and Ohio's Pension System is WAY past Broke! Plus IMO public employees should not be unionized

if we are so broke then let's stop with the ridiculous spending and all the money going out for new schools when we should be consolidating. schools have a hard enough time operating the way it is but the state keeps enticing them with new buildings or refurbishing the old ones that take sometimes twice as much to operate with declining enrollment in many schools. teachers have to pay to be in the union so it isn't like this is all coming out of taxpayers money. why do we want to change something that has not been a problem for years? many teachers have already taken pay freezes to keep their jobs, have you or our politicians? sorry, this just hits home here and strikes a nerve for me. especially when people who don't have teachers in the family to know how things really operate, just what they read in papers/media.

[DC/MS]

Teachers are already underpaid and have been for years.

[Old Man P]

if we are so broke then let's stop with the ridiculous spending and all the money going out for new schools when we should be consolidating. schools have a hard enough time operating the way it is but the state keeps enticing them with new buildings or refurbishing the old ones that take sometimes twice as much to operate with declining enrollment in many schools. teachers have to pay to be in the union so it isn't like this is all coming out of taxpayers money. why do we want to change something that has not been a problem for years? many teachers have already taken pay freezes to keep their jobs, have you or our politicians? sorry, this just hits home here and strikes a nerve for me. especially when people who don't have teachers in the family to know how things really operate, just what they read in papers/media.

Collective Bargining did not create this deficit nor did the unions working for these workers.

[Johnstown Benny]

For anyone interested, here is an interesting website that provides individual data
on public school teachers/administrators in Ohio for the last few years. . . .

Go to : buckeyeinstitute.org

Click on: Teachers Salaries ( on the left hand side )

Type in the name of the teacher or administrator

Put in the school system ( there's a drop down menu )

The annual salary is shown along with hours/days worked

Place the cursor over the Pension Calculator at the end of the line
and the amount of potential retitement benefits are shown for the individual.

Other searches for various types of related data are also available
on the website. Interesting information.



JB

[labatts69]

For anyone interested, here is an interesting website that provides individual data
on public school teachers/administrators in Ohio for the last few years. . . .

Go to : buckeyeinstitute.org

Click on: Teachers Salaries ( on the left hand side )

Type in the name of the teacher or administrator

Put in the school system ( there's a drop down menu )

The annual salary is shown along with hours/days worked

Place the cursor over the Pension Calculator at the end of the line
and the amount of potential retitement benefits are shown for the individual.

Other searches for various types of related data are also available
on the website. Interesting information.



JB

can't be accurate to tell how many hours a teacher works. i know for a fact that my wife does not have to clock in or clock out at school so this is bogus. also how do they take into account the time she grades papers, does lesson plans, and things of that nature at home? all they can do is have them down for time they are contracted to be at the school- hours per day, conferences, and meetings. some of the other info would be correct like salaries and such but can not give an accurate account to how much time a teacher puts in, sorry.

[Johnstown Benny]

can't be accurate to tell how many hours a teacher works. i know for a fact that my wife does not have to clock in or clock out at school so this is bogus. also how do they take into account the time she grades papers, does lesson plans, and things of that nature at home? all they can do is have them down for time they are contracted to be at the school- hours per day, conferences, and meetings. some of the other info would be correct like salaries and such but can not give an accurate account to how much time a teacher puts in, sorry.

labatts69,

I have no reason to doubt anything you say about your wife's work schedule, in fact
many of my best friends are teachers and I know they typically put in extra hours on
a regular basis.

Having worked in a management or administrative position for over 40 years until my recent
retirement in December, I was never eligible for overtime compensation either, never clocked
in or out, and it was definitely not a 9 to 5 job . I routinely stayed late at the office, came in on weekends
and worked on holidays on some occasions. . . .bottom line, as a professional this "goes with the territory".
As an exempt (salaried) employee, essentially I was paid to do a job regardless of the hours needed
to accomplish it. While my job description may have said full-time position, 40 hrs per week, there was
rarely a week that was ever less than 45 hrs minimum and often many more hours than that.

I'm sure your wife spends many more hours on the job than what the website shows, but for comparative
purposes a full-time employee based on a 40 hr work week will be considered to be paid for 2080 hrs a year
( 40x 52). I know the oft used comment about teachers saying the 3 best things about being a teacher are
June, July, and August is certainly not true with all of the CEU's required etc. Teaching is an honorable
profession and God bless our teachers as I would certainly not have the patience to deal with little junior
in the classroom today.

I completely understand your argument about the number of hours the chart shows and, in fact, I can
even relate to it as I have already stated. I think what some salaried employees lose sight of sometimes
( myself included) is the fact that working long hours without additional compensation is considered an expectation
from anyone with a strong work ethic, which I'm sure your wife has. Students today are fortunate to have
those teachers/educators willing to make those sacrifices and I commend your wife for possessing these
qualities.

Actually, the part of the website that I found the most surprising was the potential retirement packages available
on a "30 and out" basis. I have 3 retired teacher friends that are all younger than me that have taken the 30 yr
retirement offerings and are now re-employed in other school districts and I believe the term for this is "double dipping"
and we have had numerous discussions aka debates/arguments about this as we look at the pros and cons.

In any event, I wish your wife continued success in her teaching profession and hopefully the website didn't get
you too upset. . . . remember not to kill the messenger,I only posted the site, I didn't create it.


JB

[labatts69]

nope totally understand but wanted to make that point about the hours. many people may look at that and then have another thing to complain about teachers not even working 8hrs a day as they have my wife down for 6.75. the one thing tho is check many other jobs that require your masters and continued education every I believe 5 years and see what the salaries are. this in turn makes up for them not working the whole 2080 hours thing. most teachers, in a qualified position, make less than someone with their GED who works in a factory like say GM or BF goodwrench make 20+/hr.

i know about the messenger thing and never wanted to get down on you, just state that some of the facts are a little mis-leading while others are right on. i believe this year the whole 30yr thing changed and you have to go about to 35yrs now to get a decent amount of your pay for retirement. double dipping is bad, and our last 2 supers in c-town both did this. one coming from another district tho but the other retired from here and then got rehired. that i feel is wrong and can argue against for sure but this is not one of the problems with issue 5.

[JackCord4]

Totally against Bill #5. People should have the right to unionize if they so please and to Collective Bargain their wages and benefit packages.

[Duh Huh Dull Sucks]

I have two brothers who are both part of unions - one in Ohio and one in Indiana. They are both hoping the bills pass. They hate the unions because of what it does to people who feel they are "invincible" because of it. Boss wants you to do something that "isn't part of your union job description"? Run crying to your union rep and the job doesn't get done. Both have said the unions protect the laziest, most incompetent employees working with them and those who try hard and just want to earn a living all have to suffer in a union because of the lazy and incompetent. One brother got in trouble because of doing a job outside of his job description that needed done simply because he didn't want to watch the issue linger. So, instead of doing what is RIGHT and correcting an issue that could cause an injury to someone, the union gets on his case because he was doing something outside of his union job description. Pathetic.

Further, forced union membership is a sham.

Union busting or whatever you want to call it, it is LONG overdue!

[white_shadow]

I am a State of Ohio employee and I see both sides of the argument. Duh Huh makes valid points in that "bad" employees do get protected where in a non-unionized private sector job they would be fired. There is no doubt alot of waste because of this issue.

On the other side, being a political entity where I work, when the democratic party was in over the last 4 years the guy in charge would have gotten rid of every republican in the place for the "crime of being a republican". I'm not a big union guy, but I was thankful to have protection from this guy. In a perfect world, you shouldn't have to worry about such things......unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.

As for Senate Bill 5, I am very disturbed by what went on in the Ohio Senate today. The bill was still in committee and did not have enough votes to pass to get into the full senate for vote. The senate president replaced a republican senator (Bill Seitz) who was opposed to the bill with a republican senator (Cliff Hite) who was in favor of the bill and got it passed by a vote of 7-5, ultimately moving it into the full senate where it passed 17-16. That just reeks of corruption to me. Why even vote if you are just going to fix the vote. The point of committee was to try to tweak the bill to make it a working compromise for both sides but why tweak when you can just ram it down the oppostions throat.

As a State of Ohio employee, I think I got a glimpse of how we are going to be dealt with by this new administration. John Kasich made no bones about it early on, get on the bus or get run over by the bus......today proved he was not kidding. Pretty scary in my opinion.

[Duh Huh Dull Sucks]

I can't argue that their are some "shady doings" going on in regards to these union bills. Both sides of the aisle.

Obama essentially sent in people to protest and picket (courtesy of the Huffington Post) and showed himself as a giant hypocrite by talking about how it isn't right to villify a public employee...yet isn't he the one who referred to a police officer as a "stupid cop" or something for arresting a friend of his. Yeah...and after the shooting in Tuscon, Democrats all over were preaching about how harsh the political language has been and claiming it led to the shooting. Now with these union bills, Democrats are spewing some pretty hate-filled and threatening messages. Apparenlty it isn't an issue if they're doing it?

I guess what is funny is Walker (Wisc. Gov.) essentially said during his campaign that he was going to do this! He won the election. Now he is doing it. Where is the surprise? And the majority are in support of it happening.

And let me ask - have all these union workers used every last vacation and sick day they have to protest? Or how are these folks NOT going to their job and NOT getting fired for it? Hmm...maybe failure to show up to a job isn't a fireable offense if you're in a union?

Or maybe they're just the Obama cronies sent in to protest and don't have to worry about it...

One way or another, they aren't helping their own cause regardless of which end of the spectrum they fall on.

Edited by Duh Huh Dull Sucks, 02 March 2011 - 11:04 PM.

[Old Man P]

Most of those ppl are taking personal time either through vacation, personal time, comp-time (OT saved to use for personal time) or taking an unpaid day off to protest all of which, at least in my office, has to be requested before hand. Just an FYI.

[tigerball13]

For anyone interested, here is an interesting website that provides individual data
on public school teachers/administrators in Ohio for the last few years. . . .

Go to : buckeyeinstitute.org

Click on: Teachers Salaries ( on the left hand side )

Type in the name of the teacher or administrator

Put in the school system ( there's a drop down menu )

The annual salary is shown along with hours/days worked

Place the cursor over the Pension Calculator at the end of the line
and the amount of potential retitement benefits are shown for the individual.

Other searches for various types of related data are also available
on the website. Interesting information.



JB

I did this with my mother's name...I found it absolutely laughable that she works "7.5 hours daily" I didn't really working her ass off from 7 to at least 5 every night is 7.5 hours. And this bill is an absolute crock of *******.

[Courtdad1998]

Teachers need to get paid on merit, not longevity. It's sad how many horrendous teachers there are in the system making $50k+ per year who simply hand in the same curriculum every year for 15-20 years. The dinosaurs need to go extinct.

[labatts69]

Teachers need to get paid on merit, not longevity. It's sad how many horrendous teachers there are in the system making $50k+ per year who simply hand in the same curriculum every year for 15-20 years. The dinosaurs need to go extinct.

well you can blame that on the state as they keep changing the amount you get for retirement by your years of service. many teachers were able to get out at 30yrs and get around 80-90% of their pay. now i believe it is at 35yrs to get that. not saying that some of the teachers that have been there awhile don't need to go but why would you retire when you can not draw enough? this is why you see alot of "double dipping" with teachers retiring and then either getting rehired at a lower rate or going to a different district.

how do you pay a teacher on merit? what if they have a terrible class and the students don't want to do the work and learn one year and say get a 70% on testing. The next year it is totally different and they score a 85% and kids come from good homes with parents who are willing to work with their kids and not expect everything to be learned at school. Did the teacher do something different to get higher scores? Probably not, but that is what they deal with. They don't have the choice of picking the kids to teach like say a foreman at a shop who can hire and fire until he finds the person to do the job. If teaching was so easy everyone would be doing it. It takes a special breed to put up with kids and some parents. Try having a parent teacher conference with a parent who doesn't speak english and you have to have the 8 year old student try and be the translator. I could go on and on with some of the experiences my wife has been thru over the years.