Happy Furlough Day from Janny Meyer!
Check out today’s weepy facebook ramblings from the allegedly-conservative Fullerton School Board Trustee Janny Meyer as she whines about the downsides of furlough days and their effect on all of those hard working teachers:
Keep reading as the sentiment is bounced around the echo chamber by union president Andy Montoya and then the dearly departed Collabricorn, Pam Keller.
So a crew gets all hopped up because a few teachers engage in a little professional development in their time off… something considered perfectly common for every private sector professional I’ve ever met. We just don’t have to hear them making a fuss about it.
No mention by Janny that furlough days are foisted upon us at the insistence of her own teachers’ union as a wonderful alternative to the actual pay reductions that the rest of us in the real world are taking. Maybe someone should remind Janny and her union pals of this important fact: today every kid in Fullerton will go without the day’s ed-u-ma-cation because teachers chose to take a day off instead of receiving a small pay cut.
Cry me a flippin river! I work my arse off twice as hard as I had to before the recession just to make ends meet.
Yeah, (some) teachers work hard but I see a bunch of them with PARENTS in the room working in study groups while the TEACHER works on her Ed thesis!
Wasn’t Meyer and husband at Steamers last night for a Democrat’s fundraiser? Just another union hack!
Lack of perspective seems contagious to this group
Are these people really allowed to teach our children? There isn’t a proper English sentence in the entire conversation.
If it makes you feel better, Keller doesn’t teach anymore. She just gets paid a teacher’s salary to “collaborate.”
Agreed. Every other sentence ends with triple exclamations or a smiley face, much like a class of third graders. Who is teaching who, anyway?
This woman is a train wreck waiting to happen. Pam Keller 2.0. I can’t wait until she runs for city council.
misery is not relative, attending professional development on furlough days is not a hardship. Losing a job or losing a third to half your income is misery.
Does the Director of the collaborative actually have furlough days?
I guess so.
Poor, downtrodden teachers. Don’t worry, Spring Break is coming soon!
I suspect the rationale behind her post was inspired by the general feeling that public employees have of being considered outcasts and pariah over their chosen professions. I think she simply wanted to let folks know that public workers have to constantly work on their skill sets just like their private counterparts do and they do so on their own time as well.
“I suspect the rationale behind her post was inspired by the general feeling that public employees have of being considered outcasts and pariah over their chosen professions”
Wrong. That is the myth public employees wish to cultivate: that they are some sort of victims of public sentiment. They may be unpopular. But you can’t be overpaid, unfireable, and retire like a princeling and be an outcast.
False. The union’s purpose is to pretty much guarantee that teachers don’t HAVE to do crap to improve themselves and they’ll never get fired or demoted for not being good enough.
If a few of them do it anyway, great. But we have a duty to mock the collective pity party.
This isn’t a union issue, so why try to make the parallel connection? Teachers who want to improve their skill sets do so because they want to improve how well they teach our children. I know plenty of public workers that went back to school to earn Master’s degrees so they too could improve upon their skill sets. There are more Master’s degrees in the public sector than there are in the private sector, guaranteed.
Funny you bring up masters degrees. I know a few teachers who got their masters right before they retired. I wonder why?
I have been told that some teachers intentionally wait to get a master’s degree until is most financially beneficial, and then go to a freeway degree mill like Phoenix U., where they have to write a little essay.
Would somebody explain how a teacher in grades K-8 becomes a better teacher because of a Master’s Degree and how this justifies a pay raise?
I fail to see the connection.
Hm, why doesn’t someone with a bachelor’s in biology get to practice medicine? Because more education doesn’t matter?
If the district had a pay tier for Masters degree holders, you don’t move up a tier until you get the degree, which means the most financially beneficial time is as soon as possible.
I see no one here has attended any private sector executive retreats down at say the St. Regis or The Montage or Ritz Laguna or Vegas. All paid of course. All golf fee’s paid of course. And then deducted from taxes as an “expense”.
I’m sitting here trying not to blow my stack! I assume that all who decided to get a teaching credential knew the pay. They also knew the hours ( 2+ months off during the summer, every holiday known to man, etc). And, please do not respond about how much time at home you spend on school work. I’m sick of your whining! The fact that we have so many credentialed teachers looking for job says that actually we are paying too much. Have they heard of supply and demand? Kindergarten teachers who make 80K a year because they got a masters so they can pump up their retirement? Really? And, by the way, studies have shown that it makes no difference in student performance. The system is broken and if teachers are smart, they should just lay low. But no, they keep on whining.
Good pension? Yes, but don’t forget that teachers don’t get Social Security.
Janny Meyer’s writing skills are terrible. Why capitalize the word “DO” in the first sentence? Shouldn’t the emphasis be on the word “NOT”?
Reminds me of an “English” teacher at Ladera Vista who couldn’t capitalize or use punctuation to save her life. I’m not kidding. Her 7th grade students had a better grasp of the English language than she did. I think the administration or the district was too incompetent and/or corrupt to fire this woman back then (mid-90’s). These are the same idiots who failed to fire the Ladera Vista photography teacher after the Asst. Principal and some students walked in on him masturbating in his classroom.
Diane K, I like how you think!
Help Wanted: Work 3 1/2 days per week, make $80K and up per year, a year minus 3 months for Summer vacation, 2 weeks off for Spring Break, 2 weeks off for Christmas/New Years and every other public sector holiday, at last count 12 or more. Not to mention a kick ass pension after retirement. Yep, I would take that job wouldn’t you?
Elementary school teachers aren’t making 80K & if you think so you are high. Administrators yes. Teachers not.
Wow, if it were such a lax gig with uber-benefits how come all of you guys didn’t take up teaching? Or did things suddenly change? Maybe with the bad economy kids are less in need of an education?
I know this old codger who bitches about overpaid teachers just like you hens. I’ll call him ‘Al’, who himself trained to be a teacher. Instead of taking a teaching job, he decided to start a small computer company. He did well for himself and has since retired. I asked him why he didn’t become a teacher if they had it so good, he said because there wasn’s any money in it.
And yes, this entire logic arc was within the very same, dumb conversation. Ole!
Between Janny and her useless old man they will eventually pulling down the better part of $300,000 a year in pension benefits.
Janny can afford to be generous with other people’s money. And she learned from the best. Her dad got recalled for unnecessary taxes.
And as everyone has pointed out, the literacy level of these “educators” and educrats is appallingly low.
In Fullerton, and elsewhere in OC, all one has to do is put an “R” in front of name and boom, you’re a made “conservative”. But when their life’s record is analyzed you will truly see what cloth they are really cut from.
Sorry, Who Cares, but you are wrong. I personally know someone who does (in Orange County). And, I’m so tired of the arguement that teachers don’t get Social Security. I would gladly trade my SS for their pension!
Thought you should read this article below. I’m not the judge for anything nor want to.
But I admire teachers who genuinely put an effort to teach our kids. We won’t be who we are if we did not find that one special teacher who believed in us and brought the best in us.
http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf/2011/03/apology_to_a_cleveland_teacher.html#cmpid=v2mode_be_smoref_face
They also don’t have to PAY for Social Security like the rest of us.
I have a list which contains the names of 84 Fullerton teachers (not administrators) who each took home over $90,000 in salary last year.
How many over $80k. I’m just wondering so we can not count them either.
In fairness teachers dont get what most public employees get and certainly far less than public safety workers get.
I only have $90k and above, but it wouldn’t be hard to get the rest.
Travis, do you know what it takes to advance between Class I, II, III, IV and from Steps 1-24?
The FSD salary schedule is here:
http://www.fsd.k12.ca.us/personnel/certificated/salary_schedules/FETA_10-11SalarySchedule.pdf
Side rant: Even the lowest salary on this list is obscene for a 178-day school year: $42,900 or $241.01 per day. In the real world where people work 5 days a week, 50 weeks per year, the LEAST qualified school teacher makes the equivalent of $60,250 annually ($241.01 x 250 days).
Imagine that, getting paid an equivalent of $60,250 for a job you’re not qualified for!
It looks like the classes are based on education, ranging from a BA without a credential all the way up to a BA + 60 units including a masters.
The steps are based on longevity.
do teachers get piss tested? if not, sign me up, i cld buy a lot of weed with 40 grand, and I’d have all summer to do nothin but blaze.
Hey, that’s a great idea. Are there any special skills required? Do I have to start in the mail room and work my way to the top by impressing my boss? Surely elementary school teachers must be highly trained in the specific subjects that they teach. It must be a difficult profession to enter.
No. Literally any idiot can do it. All you have to do is get a college degree (like every single neanderthal in the NFL), take a few extra classes and you’re in.
Even if you’re a shitty teacher, you get paid exactly the same as the best of the best. No skill required. And if you commit some heinous act, you’re more likely to go to jail than get fired. It’s a god damned free-for-all!
Gee, we’re all fools for not getting in on that action! Wait, who are the idiots again?
Seriously, I think it’s a great question: if teaching requires no skill, no accountability, way too much money and endless vacation time and keeps you sitting pretty on into retirement, why didn’t you do it?
Apparently you can go to any sh!thole college and do a couple post grad hours and voila, you’re set for life. It’s not like you have to be an Ivy League grad and schlep your way to New York to be an investment banker, every town has a school and any idiot can do it and make bank for life.
If it’s so unbelievably great that even a fool knows it’s like hitting the lottery, why didn’t you?
nipsey, the teaching profession has become diluted with semi-literate clowns like the self-congratulatory chimps in the facebook thread, above.
Worst of all are the over-ambitious goons who flee the classroom to become six-figure ‘administrators” even though they couldn’t manage a dog fight.
If we cut out all these stupid, footling “conferences” and seminars for teachers and admins alike from K-JC, I bet we could save a hundred million each year in California.
Just more bloviating from bitter, out of work people. I do enjoy the bashing of school teachers even when it comes from a bunch of drooling mouth-breathers who are products of the public school system. Are changes needed? Of course, but these sweeping generalizations posted by dimwits show a propensity for short-cuts to thinking. That coupled with an unabashed bitterness displayed by this site’s proprietors only serves to further erode this blog’s credibility and further demonstrates that the Internet is a refuge for lonely, bitter malcontents with too much free time on their hands.
@compton. A three month blaze fest sounds great to me! Considering who the publik skwool cystem/adolescent prison industrial complex allows to be licensed these days, I think you and your stash should fit right in.
FTR, I have a private sector job where I don’t coerce the taxpayers to finance my retirement. I finance my retirement voluntarily with the money that I earned. It’s the government that takes from money from me via coercion and force to finance the retirements of their servants who oversee an unsustainable, broken and inept system. I’m no Koch brother or George Soros by any stretch but am more than competent and capable to survive on my own. Unfortunately, the jackasses with guns don’t think so.
how much is you children’ education worth? more then a plumber working on your toilet?