So, the TUSD board voted for a total of $4.4 million in raises for district employees. That’s a serious chunk of change, but it wouldn’t be quite as serious if our schools weren’t starved for funds. Every spending decision is going to be about robbing Peter to pay Paul — putting off spending for one aspect of the district that really needs money to spend in another — when the legislature insists of robbing our children of the money it takes to educate them. And I mean “robbing” literally. Our Republican-led legislature has been stealing from our schools to the tune of $317 million a year. And that doesn’t even factor in our long-standing near-lowest-in-the-nation spending per student, which isn’t thievery per se. It’s more like a perfectly legal moral failure.
Forgetting whether you think the money is well spent, let’s take a look at that $4.4 million and see how much it comes to, Tucson-wise. Here’s a math problem for you. How much would each Tucson adult have to pitch in to cover the $4.4 million in employee raises?
Before I give you the figures you need to work out this little story problem, just make a quick estimate in your head, a ballpark figure: $20 per Tucson adult to cover the $4.4 million? $50? $100? More?
Here’s the whole story problem, put in good math textbook form. “Tucson has a population of about 600,000, of which about 400,000 are adults. How much would every adult have to contribute to TUSD to cover the $4.4 million in raises it gave to its employees?”
Let’s see. Ignore the 600,000 figure, that’s just there to confuse you. Divide 4,400,000 by 400,000, and you get . . . $11. That’s the answer. Eleven dollars a year. Less than a dollar a month per adult to cover all those raises.
Now let’s move the problem out of a 4th grade math book and into the real world. We know the cost wouldn’t be split evenly among all income groups. People who make $100,000 or more would probably pay somewhere between $30 and $60 a year — $3 to $5 a month — and low income Tucsonans would pay a few dollars a year, at most — a few cents a month. It’s penny ante stuff on a city-wide scale.
Here’s an extra credit problem, moving from the local to the state level. “How much would it cost each adult in Arizona if we wanted to raise the salary of every teacher in the state by $1,000 a year? Arizona’s population is about 6 million, and about 4 million of those are adults. The state has approximately 60,000 teachers to educate its 1 million public school students.”
Don’t peek if you want to figure the answer out yourself. For the rest of you, it comes to about $15 per year per adult to give every Arizona teacher a $1,000 raise.
But we can’t afford to increase our teachers’ salaries, even though most of us agree that teachers are underpaid, even though the cost of a salary increase to each Arizona adult is reasonably small, because “RAISING TAXES, BAD!” “LOWERING TAXES, GOOD!” It don’t take no book larnin’ to figger that one out.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.
The problem with your short sighted article is that if the state gave TUSD 4.4 million then TUSD would not give to the teachers. There is a whole lot of wasted money in TUSD. Cut that first, then holler. Don’t rob Peter rob 1010.
David, David, David. It is beginning to look like you use my comments to write rebuttal arguments. In your other column you said TUSD has the money to pay, and for more than just one year. So the taxpayer is not paying more.
But your big mistake is in assuming that the 400,000 people “floating” around Tucson all pay taxes. Part of these monies are federal funds and you and I both know that with the EITC many people get thousands of dollars per year in additional income from other tax payers.
You are making the Weekly look a lot like the NEA monthly duesletter.
Overturn the EITC and I would give 10% to the teachers. It is hundreds of millions.
“The IRS cannot possibly reduce its fraud rate below $11.6 billion”…
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/04/the_earned_income_tax_credit_fraud.html#ixzz3LigiYBRc
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We don’t need more taxes, we need less fraud.
Rat T, I just read the first sentence of your comment above. In fact, you’re wrong. I don’t use your comments to write rebuttal posts. In fact, I’ve stopped reading your comments almost entirely. They tend to be distracting and tangential to my posts, and they add little to the conversation. This is one of those cases where more is less. If I can count on you to be the first commenter on almost every post regardless of what I write and can expect to see a bunch more comments later, I have to think you’re more interested in simply saying something than in having something to say. That’s harsh, I know, but facts is facts. (The other side of “Sometimes, more is less” is “Sometimes, less is more.”)
The problem isn’t the $12 per year per adult, you should consider each working adult. Social Security for most people went up about $!2 per month. Not to mention the added$3 per month for our new Dog Pound.
Along with all of this, our Pima County tax for 2015, went up 20%. It’s not the five or ten dollars, it’s the many five and tens that bother people. It’s a fact, most people don’t get raises every yea,r because they don’t have unions working for them. I agree with the other comment, get rid of 1010 before you start asking for money. Monthly drug testing would’t be so bad either, a lot of teachers are breathing more than pure air.
You flatter me. i knew you read them. You had to, to respond.
Merry Christmas.
Of course, teacher salaries are not funded by asking the public to chip in the cost of few cafe mocha’s at Starbucks. Schools are funded by local districts, the state and federal agencies. The state already owes TUSD – all K-12 school districts in Arizona – millions or billions of funding they preferred not to pay while the district has a bloated bureaucracy that should be trimmed to, in part, provide teachers with a respectable pay hike.
The raises provided by the governing board are a meager first step in addressing the disrespect teachers are held in when push comes to shove – their paychecks. This new raise will provide teachers with – on the average – less than $10 a week; again a couple of lattes at the local coffee shop.
It’s a start but not much to celebrate.
From the perspective of a huge supporter of teacher/staff raises, the issue of “TUSD would not put the money into raises” SHOULD be considered by the Board. Financial transparency is not a hallmark of this administration (or any)–the difference is that to varying degrees, we have had Board members that actually demanded accountability. The general taxpayers still don’t know the funding for the pre-schools, still don’t know what happened to Title One funds and still don’t have a good feeling about money that goes to TUSD, I fear. For the life of me I can’t figure out why this isn’t seen as TUSD’s number one accounting and public relations problem to be solved. Like all politicians, it seems that the Board and the Supe are depending on us to have no memory come the next Bond or override request. PLEASE if I am wrong, PROVE ME SO by increasing transparency enough to honestly WIN that next override request.
MOST of Who agrees they are Underpaid? I dont AGREE.. I think they are Overpaid Prima Donnas who arent doing their Job worth a Hoot. Worse School District in Arizona – Racist, Incompetent and Lousy Entitled Whiners.. Thats why I vote NO on ANY money (overrides, bonds) for TUSD. No way No How am I rewarding another Grijalva led Racist Boondoggle.
Not only do the waste money and have a much higher percentage of administration than other districts, but your $11 per person is seriously flawed. The majority in our community wouldn’t pay that if anything. The brunt is born by those that actually pay the taxes. That is a distinct minority. And if money for the schools equaled performance than the D.C. school district would be stellar. It is funny how those on the left decry capitalism but crave the money generated from it.
Just out of curiosity, Guiseppe, how much contact do you actually have with TUSD schools? Do you have a student in one? Its hard to believe that anyone who did would use words like “entitled”….entitled to what? A salary that allows you WIC benefits? Paying more than a thousand dollars out of your own pocket to cover supplies for your classroom? Or is it that crushing walls-closing-in feeling, between supervisors with charts and tests that need to be bubbled in and kids with needs to learn so much more than that that teachers in TUSD are entitled to?
Transparency has apparently always been a problem with TUSD central offices, and especially within decisions involving personnel (i.e., salaries) and finances. But front line teaching jobs are not easy at all, tough and getting tougher; these people really deserve a raise some years. And BTW & IMO, these TW TUSD articles are good, better than past years, and I like it when a writer jumps into the comments section with the rest of us unruly citizens. Most don’t dare.
Well, Davey boy, your foot is in it again. Since we’re doing that 4th grade math give us all a rundown on the money generated at the end of every year for school programs by the $200 tax offset? That program exists for a reason and so many people contribute that it probably would lessen that $11/person you are suggesting. And, the legions of people who contribute do so because they believe in helping in the education of children. Legions of others would give even more if the tax laws allowed it so I’m just not buying your repeated rant.
Which leads me to my followup. How about an idea of the TUSD share of that $317M and a further breakdown of that money by dept.
David, another good article on education in spite of some nay-sayer commenters. Very interesting article on the same subject in the December 15th issue of Forbes (hardly a liberal journal) that describes five ideas that will generate $2.25 Trillion by turning US education around. The five ideas are: Increase teacher salaries, universal pre-k, empower school principals, blended learning (computers with teachers), and common core.
Unfortunately, in this state at least, the unceasing mantra of “lower taxes, reduced regulation” an idea that hasn’t worked in the past and shows no sign of working now or in the future drowns out any reasonable suggestion to improve education.
Keep up the good work.
If say “it hasn’t worked on the past” is all that is necessary, it would appear that nothing has ever worked. Is that what you believe, because this ain’t working now.
I agree with Bette transparency is a must TUSD waists more on a daily basis. Teachers do deserve a raise however other districts are out preforming TUSD IN HUGE WAYS . I know many teachers most of the truly excellent ones have left TUSD others shouldn’t be teaching but fit into TUSD so well. TUSD administration has ballooned out of control their actions and spending border criminal. Why has no one asked about the audit requested . The weekly should look into that they would find that the auditor general will not be doing that audit for a year and a half by then Sanchez will be gone and the district in ruins teacher raises won’t matter then. What will happen to support staff when they take that money from M & O , no one seems to care about them. I would challenge David or The Weekly to look into these issues but as I have challenged them in the past they will simple ignore it in blind support of a district that has failed.
Mr Safier,
Why do you continue to ignore the administrative bloat in TUSD? If TUSD brought its per pupil admin costs in line with peer districts, this would save $225 per pupil or about $10.8 million, enough to give its 2700 teachers a $4000 raise.
What say you?
C Weiss