Mostly Useless Baldwin-Whitehall Teachers Striking-Comments from a Former Teacher

When are we going to rid ourselves of the USELESS teacher union?

I am (un)proud to say I went to Baldwin and it hardly got me prepared for college. I needed to retake all my math classes because those A's and B's they gave me at the high school amounted next to fuckin nothing (they might as well have given me D's and F's).

I was a teacher at one of the better area high schools, I swear to God, for one year before persuing work in the business world. All the whining in the teachers' lounge and disgusting union meetings made me ill. I couldn't fathom making less money than a teacher who showed popular movies twice a week in his math class because he was too old to care anymore. What a loser.

Here are some facts to remember, before you get swept up in the Union Rhetoric:

-Teachers get off between mid-June and mid-August and have regular vacations like the rest of us (for the most part) plus most holidays the kids have. They will try and spin it that they will still have to work in the summer, and that is true for new teachers writing lessons, but anything extra they do besides lesson planning, THEY GET PAID FOR IT. One of my collegues made an extra couple grand every year being the teacher rep for some science shit, and basically showed up once a Saturday for a few weeks, plus for an event and a few after school gigs. Nice money for something they should do anyway. Trust me that old teachers NEVER do lesson planning, so their summers are spent at the beach.

-In some districts, teachers of 17-18 years make upwards of 85k! Baldwin is listed as a POOR PERFORMING SCHOOL DISTRICT and gets a near average salary for the area and pretty high for the rest of the country? Can you imagine you are paying a below average employee an average wage?

-Teachers get tenure usually after 3 years. Can you imagine, that after 3 years you never have to compete for your job again? The only stress you create is your own, because guess what, you get a PROSCIBED RAISE each year no matter how good or bad you do. Talk about socialism.

I could rant about this all day. Don't confuse this kind of union with the unions that have faught for workers rights from greedy corporations throughout history. This is a greedy union, who pushes their propaganda down to good and bad teachers alike, and makes them feel they are worth more than they really are. Like they are owed something. This isn't stealing from a greedy company, this is stealing from YOU the tax payer.

As always, I have an easy solution to all of this:
-Pay teachers a base salary, plus an amount per class they teach. This keeps it fair, and ensures you put the best teachers on the most classes.
-Eliminate tenure. NO OTHER JOBS have tenure outside of education. Eliminating tenure puts stress on teachers to keep up strong performance every year. Keep the great teachers, do away with the shitty ones.
-Not all teachers are created equal. So don't pay them that way. Pay the great ones MORE than 85k and well before that 18 year mark. Eliminate or demote to subs the shitty teachers.

Our kids deserve better. Our taxmoney and citizens deserve better. There is nothing wrong with our schools that eliminating the teacher's union won't fix.
Even Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and pretty liberal, has choice words to say about the oligarchy called the teacher union.

I can't urge you enough to defy these bums. Remember, Baldwin teachers are making an average of 55k to teach kids at a below average level. More money isn't going to help anyone but the teachers line their pocketbooks, and the union leaders have more money. It is more money PLUS newer and better teachers MINUS a teacher's union that will solve our problems. Just think back to your time and imagine that that bitchy masculine woman of a gym teacher was making 85k. Do you think your parents' tax money was worth it???

Its too bad that the minority of amazing and caring teachers out there have to get lumped in with the rest of the lazy worthless bums that are babysitters and not teachers.

Don't honk in support of them when you drive by. Throw them the finger, and a few choice words. Make this strike or any they do in the future MISERABLE for them.