Teacher Salary Lies--The ANTIS attack again

During the recent school board campaign our ANTI friends told outrageous lies about extravagant teacher salaries in VUSD and understated teachers work hours. The lies were first sowed by Guffanti, a troubled man, who wanted a mob to follow him. He wrote on a web page on his website called vusdwatch an entry entitled "Average VUSD Teacher Pay" and said the following:

"You should know because this $90,546 per teacher is your taxes. Is it a coincidence that the contract is signed immediately after the board election? You decide. Last, this raise generates a multimillion dollar budget deficit. Is this fiscal irresponsibility? You decide.” Guffant's website here:
http://vusdwatch.com/AverageVUSDTeacherPay.htm

Of course Guffanti and his lies are old news, but as recently as yesterday in NCTimes blogs our ANTI friends have been referring to outrageous teacher salary and teachers taking money form the students for lavish salaries. They now use as foundation for these lies an article in the Sacramento Bee. Here:
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=42375329441684&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=1&cpipage=2&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=

The author of the article, Phillip Reese, confused Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) with classroom teachers.

As you know FTEs include administration and non-classroom teachers like psychologist--all of whom make far more than classroom teachers. Those two categories both of make up more than one in six FTE's. See the State of California produced table entitled Certificated Staff State of California 2007-2008. Here:

http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/profile.asp?Tab=2&level=04&reportnumber=16


NOTE: District and local site administration as well as psychologists are all certificated but they are NOT classroom teachers.

Adding in their much higher salaries heavily skews the average FTE salary and also gives our ANTI friends a "lie" that they can rally around.

Here is my letter to Mr. Reese with a small part deleted to protect my family and friends who still work in VUSD. I have asked him to correct his article.

Dear Mr. Reese

I found your article because the right wing blogsters down here in Southern California keep referring to it. The teacher haters use it over and over to bash good hard working teachers.

Why would you write that the average teacher salary in California is $65,808? Are you ignorant of the difference between classroom teachers and their average classroom teacher pay and Full Time Equivalents (FTE)? or are you a right wing hack who deliberately lies to the mob to get readership? I hope not the second.

FTEs include district and local site admin pay as well as psychologist pay all of which is substantially more than classroom teacher pay. A good one in six FTEs are based on better paid admin salary and psychologists, etc.
See:
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/profile.asp?Tab=2&level=04&reportnumber=16

On this OFFICIAL state of California site see the table that says Certificated Staff. Please notice that Administration and Pupil Services (psychologists, etc.) are certificated BUT NOT CLASSROOM TEACHERS. Please further notice that those two together add up to more than 53,000 FTEs. Also notice that CLASSROOM teachers are worth about 300,000 FTEs which means that the HIGHLY paid NON teachers account for MORE than one out of every six FTEs. FTE does not equal classroom teacher. Certificated does not mean classroom teacher. Adding in admin and pupil services certificated FTE's is mis-leading to the public especially when the reporter conflates FTE's with teacher average pay.

My experience tells me that average pay of a California CLASSROOM teacher is somewhere around 50 thousand dollars, yet California is one of the highest housing cost states in the country.

Take for instance a CLASSROOM teacher in Vista Unified School District in San Diego County at the top of the CLASSROOM teacher salary, after thirty years in the classroom her salary is barely what you inaccurately call the average pay of teachers.

Most teachers do NOT have a masters or doctorate degree. The top of the salary schedule in any district has VERY FEW teachers in it due to the time needed to reach that level as a teacher teaching IN THAT particular DISTRICT and the advanced degrees needed. The top of any salary teacher salary may look very impressive but it is only an phantom impression almost a hoax to make the district look better to prospective new teachers. Admin knows that few if any teachers will ever make it anywhere near the top of the salary schedule.

Here is VUSD salary schedule: Sadly I have no breakdown as to the number of teachers on each level. If i did it would demonstrate that the bulk of the teachers are way down in the low fifties or lower.

http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/Departments/hr/certificatedHR/Certificated%20HR%20Documents/Teacher%20Salary%20Schedule%200607%20Retro%20070106.pdf


Here is the psychologist salary schedule: Please note the difference between it and the teacher salary schedule.
http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/Departments/hr/certificatedHR/Certificated%20HR%20Documents/Salary%20Schedule%20Psych.pdf

There is no administration salary schedule. But those folks can make up in the $250,000 yearly range. There salary is often equivalent to three or four CLASSROOM teachers.

Please correct your article or consider adding my email as a comment. Unless of course you are a right wing hack who is not interested in accuracy then of course your purpose was served by riling up the mob against good hardworking classroom teachers.


Sincerely,