For PRU readers interested in a recap of last night's District 207 School Board meeting, the Daily Herald has the following report -- District 207 approves $15 million in cuts, lays off 137 employees
February 2, 2010
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28 comments:
Here's the tribune's story from last night with some running public commentary:
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/02/suburban-school-district-oks-cutting-135-teachers-workers.html
Rorschach is very happy.
District 64, here we come.
Tax cut, anyone?
Happy!! Yes, let's all be happy!! Less teachers teaching our children!!! Yippie!!! I have an idea. Let's all meet for a celebration tonight. We can all dance under the lights at the football field.
Get over yoruself 1:17...if the tenured teachers weren't so damned selfish, they wouldn't throw their colleagues under the bus just to save their salary increases.
Take a look around - people in private industry in this difficult economy are happy to take a salary freeze if it means saving jobs. But not the almighty teachers union - nope, they know better than the rest of us mopes - the people who pay their salaries via taxes.
I am glad to see that the District 207 Board has a spine after all. Let's see if they have it when the next teachers contract has to be negotiated.
$100,000 for 8 months of "office" work with zero chance (once you get "tenure") of being fired, off work every day your kids are, health care and a great guaranteed pension.
Anybody who bitches about that deal is just plain GREEDY.
1:17 PM
If you don't like the teacher pupil ratio that the rest of us are paying for your kid, home school the little bugger.
4:44 PM – it is not that simple; the pupil to teacher ration has a lot to do with why families move to Park Ridge. Why would anyone choose to pay such high property taxes for a low performing school?
Anonymous @ 10:27,
Maybe the stats function differently at the H.S. level, versus elementary school...but the last time I remember anyone looking at the effect of student/teacher ratio was when D64 Brd. members Christina Heyde and Joe Baldi researched class size during the time "their" board was looking at cuts, and increasing class sizes...
What I recall (from back in 04? or 05?) they found is, under somewhere around 18 students, smaller class size has an impact on student performance (as measured by...wait for it...wait...TESTS!)...and somewhere after 22 to 28 students in a class, there isn't much of, if any, impact on student performance.
If my memory has failed me, I apologize to all in advance...but especially those former D64 Brd. members.
Anon at 11:12 PM
Very creditable information and it makes sense, but the 22 to 28-student performance stability must represent a more academic study. What I was referring to are those comparative charts produced for distribution by realtors to perspective buyers that measure one high school (or elementary school) against another using any and all measurable tools. It has been a few years since I was planning my escape from Park Ridge and I don’t remember who publishes these comparisons and ratings. My point is perspective homebuyers will use any tool available to determine which school is the best.
Fred:
Interesting comment on the home schooling. I actually tend to look at it a bit differently. With all the comments from folks on this blog about the selfish teachers and "training kids", I am absolutely amazed that you all would let you kids be educated (or maybe even brain washed) by these horrible people. "You are a rotten, selfish scumbag who does not care about your fellow man!!!! Now here. Teach and insure the safty of my kid(s) for 9 months a year!!"
Anonymous @ 12:07,
Regarding what realtors offer prospective buyers...true enough.
However, "determining which school is best" is not the only factor (nor, necessarily, the determining factor) home buyers consider...if they have the "luxury" of being able to consider a community such as Park Ridge.
If finding "the best" school was the only determining factor, Park Ridge would quickly become a ghost town, since none of our schools seem to make any of the "Best Of..." lists floating around out there.
Bean:
I do not think that the poster said it was the only thing. I can tell you that in the case of my family it was one many things we looked at but, with a school age family, it was an important thing. The economic issues that PR faces are not unique. There are local school systems cutting back all over Chicagoland, Illinois and the country.
What makes matters worse is looking at some of the other things that people might include in their decision to move or not move to PR. Things like PR being broadcast all over the news for flooding everytime it rains. Things like a new casino going in 1 mile from a school. Things like a new runway. Things like a "state of the art" pool and recreation system. Things like empty stores all over our business district......etc ......etc.
I moved from Chicago to Park Ridge because of the schools. "Best" must be considered relative to personal resources.
What wealthy parent would want to have their child indoctrinated by someone outside of their own class? Teachers are role models for students. The attitudes and values of teachers are adopted by students. What wealthy parent would want their children indoctrinated on a daily basis, year after year, by someone who falls on the wrong side of an economic class divide?
The values of the wealthy side of the class divide are best communicated by a member of their own class; by one who does not suffer the consequences of the economic inequality that interferes with the proper inculcation of District 207 students with the motivational ideology of the American Dream.
Spokespersons for all social institutions best represent the interests of the elite of those institutions when they share the interests of that elite. Teachers and television network newsreaders must be highly paid in order to avoid inadvertent communication of society’s economic inequality in a light unfavorable to their elite. Highly compensated spokespersons are less likely to need external discipline to present themselves as celebrants of a failed free market ideology. Poorly compensated spokespersons are unlikely to properly represent the wealthy class ethos despite external scrutiny and discipline.
Anon@10:45 --
Is that a threat? It sounds like a threat. Or a weasely attempt at blackmail.
-- notwithstanding, the inherent contradiction vis-a-vis a failed free market ideology
The decline of unions and wages over the past decades is an indirect cause of city revenue decline and beyond the city’s scope to remedy alone. When wages are reduced, demand is reduced, along with tax revenues. The inequality resulting from a many decade’s long national trend of higher profits taxed at lower rates, and lower wages with the resultant lowered demand and lowered tax revenue, has brought us to this present dismal economic condition. The new normal is highly concentrated private wealth and public service impoverishment.
Alan Greenspan’s repudiation of Ayn Rand’s ideology will not deter his former acolytes while they are shielded from its economic consequences by federal bailouts.
Anon@11:17 --
As I originally suspected -- a weasely attempt at blackmail.
Enjoy wallowing in your libtardation.
I can honestly say I have no idea what either one of you are talking about.
Anon@11:56 --
As briefly as possible, the opening comment to the conversation threatened that if teachers are not paid wages approaching the level of the hegemony -- the elite -- then teachers could or would become subversive in their instructions -- possibly imparting lessons steeped in socialist and communist ideology. Therefor, it behooves the community to pay teachers very high wages, commensurate with those earned by the hegemony, so those teachers impart lessons which serve only to support free market, capitalist ideology.
In my view, that is an attempt at social blackmail.
The second comment requires one to be familiar with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the personal relationship had by Ms. Rand and Alan Greenspan, Mr. Greenspan's adherence to the philosophy of Objectivism, Mr. Greenspan's recognition of the need for financial market regulation, which is not the same thing as "repudiation," and finally, an understanding that the commenter is attempting to apply the philosophical underpinnings of industrial unionism to the teaching profession. Nearly impossible to do without a way to directly measure profits, especially within the education arena. Though it does serve the purpose of avoiding a direct performance-based measure for teachers and the education profession.
Ahhhhh, so that's what they meant......
hmmmm.....very interesting dialogue. I have not ever made a case that teachers are underpaid. I have simply stated that I disagree that teachers are as overpaid as many on the blogs seem to think they are.
At this point, the teachers are not anywhere near being paid wages commensurate with the elite.
Anon 1:38, you got it right. Much good may that do any of us. I love the lesson the young teachers are getting especially. We're all in this alone.
Let's downsize the national workforce into full national employment. This is the only thing that makes sense to a certain mindset. (contradictory irony, approximately)
Would it be too communistic to teach our children that AIG is to pay $100 million dollars in bonuses to the London-based unit that pushed the insurer to brink of collapse?
Would you want our children to be taught that there is money for failed investment bankers, but not teachers? And that our government is a broken form of democracy, too weak to put financial criminals in jail, yet strong enough to extort trillions of dollars from the good moms and dads in exchange for campaign donations?
Anonymous @ 4:36,
Did you misplace your meds today?
Seriously...what a rambling mash-up mess of a comment...
Libtardation and off the meds.
Always trying to change the topic.
The spectre of old Joe McCarthy haunts District 207.
I only snoop around here for the jokes, anyway.
Anon@5:04 --
And I thank you personally for being today's punchline.
February 3, 2010 3:06 PM
"At this point, the teachers are not anywhere near being paid wages commensurate with the elite."
That's because most of them don't have the credentials the "elite" have, or produce what the "elite" produce, or have the risk and stress of the "elite."
As somebody else already commented, $100,000 for 8 months work plus the benefits is overpaid.
Please delete this message....
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