Forget that “We do it for the Kids” crap. Teachers do it for the MONEY!

Administrators do it for the MONEY!

And the School Board is a bunch of wanna-be community “Leaders” with personal agendas.

The only Board Member with a brain was Bob Evans, and he got fed up with the amatuers and quit.

I’m just a taxpayer. I just pay for this charade. I don’t trust ANY OF YOU AS FAR AS I COULD THROW YOU!

Oh wait, I pay taxes too. And I need to retire some day too. The government is stealing money from my salary and I’m not even a teacher making 66K and up. And my health coverage isn’t nearly as good, my copays are double what a teacher pays, my prescription costs are higher too, AND my monthly premiums are way higher than a teachers. So I pay more for worse benefits. Wow, feels like I’m living with the side effects of a poor economy. Maybe I should see a doctor about that, except I don’t know if I could afford the visit…

Must be nice being a teacher so far removed from the poor economy. And don’t play the teachers education card on me, or anyone for that matter. To teach, you need a 4 year degree. I don’t know why you think it takes 5 years to get one, but it doesn’t. I also don’t know why the REA, teachers, and overall pro-teacher vocalists like to say no one (Besides teachers of course) has a 4 year degree in Rockford, because thats nonsense and downright insulting to think that teachers are the only college educated people in this city. Teachers do deserve more than what a McDonalds kid makes, but I wouldn’t throw assembly line workers under the bus so fast. If you want to complain about poor working conditions, go do a graveyard shift at the Chrysler plant. It’s not the kind of work that people dream about performing. All of that is beside the point. Those salaries are still outrageous. You can’t use the expense of getting an education as a justification for it because more people are leaving college with a degree and joining the ranks of unemployed people because the economy is trash right now. My point of calling out teachers bloated salaries was not in favor of pay cuts, but for teachers to step it up and prove that they DESERVE those salaries. Acknowledge that times have changed, health care is more expensive, and the average joe, equal education or not, is not making as much today as they were last year. Almost everyone is hurting in this economy, and the teachers think they should be immune to it. Why?

Perhaps the solution would be for everyone to save their tax dollars to education and pay for their own child’s education themselves. Then, we could get rid of public education problem and this expensive cost altogether having no more “high” paying teaching jobs at all. Everyone would have to teach their own kids or be sure that their kids were taught by someone or be fined. Hummmm I wonder how that would work out. Would you send your kid to the school with the teachers that were paid the least with the least qualifications (the cheapest you could find)?

Want to know why teachers keep teaching in Rockford? Please educate yourself with the following website -
http://www.familytaxpayers.org/ftf/ftf_district.php?did=13669&year=2011

I see a lot of reasons to keep teaching in Rockford. Some of those salaries are outrageous. You know what comes with outrageous salaries? Usually a stressful work environment, higher levels of responsibility, and the requirement to go above and beyond. Thats the kind of performance that a high salary like a teachers demands in the real world. Yet the union fights to keep those same salaries while removing all the other downsides. Thats the unions job, I can’t fault them for it. But teachers are the ones who vote on union issues. When teachers vote to let the union keep fighting for their outrageous demands, the teachers look bad.

Which leads to your closing statement – “If I remember right, RPS 205 is one of the largest employers in the area! I wonder what just 2 weeks of that would do to the economy.”

Yes, lets wonder. Teachers bite the hand that feeds them, local business suffers because teachers aren’t spending money. Parents of the districts 36,000 kids need to find arrangements for someone to watch their kids. The parents begin to harbor a growing resentment for the teachers of this city because hey, the teachers are on strike and staying home. Teachers don’t feel the burn of hiring child care or babysitters. Parents of the 36,000 kids spend more of their dwindling paychecks on someone watching their kids. The parents have less money to spend on other things. Local business hurts even more.

And for what? So teachers can continue to have a Cadillac health plan the likes of which hasn’t been seen in other businesses since 1997? Yeah, it’s just all about the kids and the community for the teachers. Right?

What makes me sick about so many of the posts and guest articles is that no one pays attention to what they are complaining about. They just get a list of stuff the board has done and start complaining about every single item. Thats how you get gems like this article, where they complain about something AND THEN complain about a brilliant investment that FIXES the thing they were just complaining about.

Tell me Jane Hayes, what would you have done about the old administration building? You think the building was unsafe for the public to attend board meetings? How about all the people who worked in that building every day?

And before you respond, put down your Sheffield repellent pitchfork and remember that SHE LEFT. You can’t blame the new leadership for the mess they inherited. Aside from Lewis, Sheffields cronies have all quit. So do you think that a new board of ed and a new set of super/assistant supers are all running the same crocked agenda as Sheffield? Sounds like someone is just looking for things to complain about.