Teacher Pay in Ohio

What are Ohioans talking about?  In telephone chats, neighborhood meetings, after church, at PTA meetings, in the coffee shops across the state, people are talking about the disgusting plans that Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have for the state's public employees.  Not only are people upset about the Republican proposals about collective bargaining, seniority issues, and the rights of workers, they are talking about the lack of respect that Kasich and his GOP crew have demonstrated toward teachers, fire fighters, police officers, nurses, public workers, and others. Most people are just plain troubled by the entire agenda being pushed by Kasich and the Republicans, while not one new job has been created.  By putting the blame on Ohio's public employees, Kasich has tried to wash his own hands of his time in investment banking at Lehman Brothers.  If not for the risky investments causing the fall of Lehman in 2008 and the resulting avalanche of bank failures, Ohio and the entire country would never have had a recession.

Why are Republicans blaming public employees for the screw ups of investment firms and greedy bankers?

A commentary in the MiddletownNews provides info on how the push for outsourcing and privatization has limits:

 “Anything requiring face-to-face contact is hard to outsource,” said Gregory M. Saltzman, chairman of the economics and management department at Albion College in Michigan and a labor researcher at the University of Michigan. “You can’t easily outsource kindergarten instruction to a video conference with a teacher in Bangladesh.”

Nor can mayors easily bring in firefighters and police officers from China.

Kasich talks about lessening demand for public employees by privatizing more of state government, such as the prison system. That will take time....



Would Kasich like to outsource teaching?  Are the rumors circulating about a salary schedule designed by Kasich true?  Does he want to pay teachers the same amount of money that teachers make in private and charter schools?  Since beginning teachers in charter/private schools make far less than public school educators, you wonder if Kasich's strategy is to match the lower salary schedule of those charter/private schools.  If such a proposal passes, teachers and their families might be forced to get public assistance, and food stamps, and the quality of public education would hit new lows.

Of course, people know that you get what you pay for in life. 

Here is an excerpt from a 2003-2004 newsletter (p.3)  from Worthington Christian Schools and how they justify the compensation they pay their teachers:

..The WCS faculty has been fortu-
nate to receive minimal annual increases
in salary; however, the base salary for a
beginning teacher is $25,500. Each year
our teachers lose ground in comparable
compensation. The goal is not to match
the salaries of local public schools.
Instead, my goal was to help our faculty
maintain a modest lifestyle without having
to secure a second job or full time summer
employment.....

As someone on another blog suggested, some Republicans want teachers to live a genteel form of poverty.  Are Kasich and the GOP using these types of examples of where they want to take teacher pay?  Do they think that by removing teacher unions, paying teachers poverty level wages, and taking away worker protections that teachers will work harder for less? 

I know I've raised a lot of issues, but with Kasich and the GOP's threats on public employees, I think it was worth bringing up the questions.