cram

How do you find the *market value*? If you look at private schools are the teachers makign more or less?

If teachers are such morons and you do value your kids education you should pull them out of the public system and put them in private or homeschool. btw -- 90k is for maximum tenure and maximum upgrading (taking courses through thsummer etc). The average is 71. I bet most teachers in their 30's are making 60-70k, after 4 years of university and 1 yr of teachers college. We just gave $4B to the auto industry to pay guys who are making 140k for standing on a line (i have lots of friends in teh auto industry, and even they say they're overpaid), yet everyone's belly-aching over 700mm (1/6th what we paid the autoworkers), most of which IS BEING APPLIED TO STUDENT FUNDING, NOT TEACHERS. These are your kids, and your neighbours kids, and your brother/sister's kids. You probably spent more on beer last year than you did on school tax.

I get that. Unions are crap. I so prefer a free market. Not sure how it works in that profession though.....you'd have good teachers earning more and crappy teachers earning less (all good things), but you'd also have good teachers aggregating on good neighbourhoods and leaving the less desirable ones. Curious - what does your wife think about the extra funding for students? I assume she can't be steamed about that.

So if you value your kids education, and teachers are such morons, did you pull your kids out of the public system and put them in private school? Or home school?

What's understated in that article is that we have just 5 major banks. The US has hundreds (thousands?) of banks. Much easier to regulate 5, and you know they're goign to be more careful. When you're one of a few hundred or thousand i assume you're more willing to get overly aggressive to win a piece of the pie.

Snookey -- i'm assuming you don't have kids, right? btw - average is 71k, not 100. Headhunter -- do most of the teachers show up 15 mins before and leave 15 mins after?

very, very, very cool. I can't get the sound to work though.

looks like no strike.

Normark, in oshawa. They may even be able to courier them to you.

Okay - let me ask it this way....what does a principal in new brunswick politicizing the national anthem have anything to do with a teacher's strike in Ontario that is about increased salaries and funding? I value my kids' education. I don't get why we are freaking out over whether or not to properly fund our kids education when the $'s are far below what i spend on beer annually and FAR FAR FAR below what we paid the automotive industry to keep their workers in ontario. btw - average teacher's salary is 71k.

Principal in NB has nothing to do with this thread. Nope - she didn't give a number, just pointed stuff out. When the school board won't pay for books for my kids, so teh teachers have to, i have a problem with it. I don't care what the number is. I'm surprised you do. Maybe we just don't have the same values. I mean, i probably spent 3x more on beer last year than the average household's school tax....if cutting into my beer budget means kids get a better education......

I hardly think an example of a principal in new brunswick banning a national anthem has anything to do with the supposed elementary teacher's strike.. Not clothes. If you need tools, then yes -- i'd say they should come out of your employer's pocket OR be tax deductible. The money you spent on them should not be considered income. If you're a tradesperson i bet that's the case, right?? Prep time -- i don't even really know what that is. Time off between periods? As for funding -- just do what i said. Ask the teacher. I did. Its pretty scary. You'd likely find that 75% of the stuff in an elementary classroom was paid for by the teacher out of her pocket....including the books. I personally have no problem funding my kids' education. Esp when - as muddler pointed out - we're paying our teachers less than daycare babysitters.

btw - isn't the pay increase everyone is ticked off about basically the rate of inflation? I don't get how 2.5% a year is getting people upset?

Do teachers really politicize the classroom. Really? Re: funding --- If you have kids in elementary school, next time you're visiting the classroom ask the teacher what in the classroom was purchased by the teacher vs. the school boardc. I think you'd poop yourself. Its pretty scary how much our elementary school system relies on the teachers buying stuff out of their own pocket. Really ridiculous.

Well it sounds like she hates all the people she works with, which doesn't sound like much fun.

Headhunter -- sounds like your wife hates her job. That's really unfortunate.

Lots of interesting views here. I wonder -- would everyone prefer if schools were private? If it were a free market?

They already pay for the supplies required, out of their own pocket....after taxes.

I actually wish the teacher unions would dissolve. The good teachers would earn (way) more. The downside is that the school system, and education your kids receive, would be driven by a free market system where the rich/desirable areas would get the good teachers, and visa versa. You'd create a class system that makes it very difficult for a kid in a poor area to get a good education and earn a great living later in life....does anyone really want that?

The whole world sucks the US teet. The US is the world's biggest customer. You guys buy everything. That said, the US dollar is likely to plummet from inflation. Not sure what happens to ours, which is heavily dependent on the price of commodities like oil.

btw - someone should look up what board administration folks make. Plus look up what the custodial staff make.......and then compare both to teachers. Its fine to complain about it coming out of OUR pockets, but I would rather pay my kids' teachers more $$ and the board administrators less (many of whom make multiple hundreds of thousands).

You guys don't know what you're talking about. I don't know a single teacher making 92k. I bet the average salary is 60. Much of the platform they are supposedly striking behind has little to do with salary and much to do with funding for your/our kids. I personally don't get why that is their issue to fight for, but for some reason its part of it. Maybe because most of the stuff in your child's classroom was paid for by the teachers, out of their pockets, and isn't tax deductible. So...maybe funding from the government means they dont have to pay for it themselves.....i have no idea. I think the contract they're negotiating is for 4 years or 5 years. The optics on timing are bad, but its hard to not ask for $ increase that at least matches inflation when you're locked in to that for quite a while. The negotiation has been happening for a long time (a year or two?). While i doubt they go on strike soon anyway (has the union said that, or the media just hyping it up to make news), there has been ample time to get something negotiated on both sides. But again, the part that pisses me off is that teachers pay for most of the stuff in kids' classrooms. That shouldnt' be the case.

Yep...super jealous. The US economy is in such great shape. In all seriousness though, don`t expect a recovery in the 2nd quarter or half....the Cdn gov`t can`t control the fact that our biggest customer is absolutely screwed (the US makes up a giant portion of our GDP)

Exciting for sure, and an admirable conquest....but fishing for spawning bass just isn`t fishing. They strike more in defense of their nest than to eat....