WISH-TV is reporting that, under a deal between the Muncie Teacher’s Association and the Muncie Community School district, teachers will have to retroactively repay insurance premiums to the tune of $900 to $2,300 per teacher. The Muncie schools are struggling financially and previous stories said that the State sided with the teachers to stop a 23% pay cut. The teachers have, nevertheless, been resigning at a pretty fair clip.
I haven’t seen what the new deal does in terms of teacher pay, but the WISH-TV story says:
Teachers had been working under an old contract from 2015 to 2017, while the Muncie Teachers Association (MTA) and the school district negotiated and finalized a new deal.
Teachers’ insurance premiums increased for those two years, and Monday’s newsletter explained they’d have to pay back the difference.
According to the MTA newsletter, teachers will need to pay back anywhere from $50 to $130 per paycheck for the next 18 paychecks, depending on their insurance plan.
This is messed up on a number of levels, most obviously in terms of how we fund our schools and how we fund health care in this country. Then there is the backdrop of decades of stagnant incomes for average Americans even as GDP and economic production has increased a great deal over the same time period.
I know I come off as some kind of communist on this blog to my right-wing friends. But I assure you I’m a fan of the market, innovation, hard work and risk taking. It’s just that there has to be some balance to keep the system working smoothly, and it’s my opinion that there are elements of our economy that are badly out of balance, causing us to do things in a way that is equal parts senseless and harmful.
Our society’s thumb is firmly on the scale favoring property rights over other types of rights and, as a result, wealth is concentrated in few enough places that it’s distorting our markets and our democratic institutions. We end up spending far more on health care than other countries while getting the same or worse results. We can see other countries implementing educational systems that perform better than ours does but, for ideological and venal reasons, we pursue privatization rather than taking measures to enhance the professional status of our teachers and other steps that have been shown to yield educational improvements.
Economic stress on working families is exacerbating our underlying racial and other social problems, shrinking the middle class and causing widespread hopelessness which, in turn, increases drug use and related crime.
Humans need cultural myths and narratives to give them purpose. The American Dream has been that guiding story for much of our country’s history. As I always understood it, that Dream was that we are a nation of laws, not of men. If you work hard and play by the rules, you will prosper and your community will flourish. That dream was often more aspirational than real, but mostly it didn’t seem too far-fetched. These days, with the idle rich making money hand over fist, hard working Americans going bankrupt from medical bills or lack of opportunity, and the wicked going unpunished, that Dream is being stretched to the breaking point. Once deprived of the narratives that give our lives positive meaning, we succumb to nihilism or other pernicious ideologies.
Is this a lot of freight for me to be putting on a simple employment contract out of Muncie? Sure. But all of these things are connected. And we’re not going to make a lot of progress on the immediate problems unless we recognize the underlying structural problems.
The problem, as you suggested, runs a lot deeper than schools running short of money. There are a number of pieces to this puzzle, but in addition to the ones that you mentioned is the long-standing lack of respect and even contempt for education and the ones who represent education, namely teachers, and not just in this state. There are many reasons why this state can’t keep the professionals educated in Indiana who have been required to meet very high standards, yet who find themselves treated with contempt and derision in their home communities. It’s more than money. When people and their representatives have such low regard for education, and even demonstrate fear of it, I guess there are consequences for that in the society at large. I suspect it becomes a cycle that feeds on itself, with educated people being treated like dirt, educated people leaving the state for situations where they will be respected, fewer people respecting and rewarding education and wanting to be educated and the cycle continuing. Generally speaking, if you are educated, keep it to yourself.
Financial support for teachers has never been good in Indiana, and recent years have seen the undermining of the whole educational enterprise, especially with teachers. The process begins when persons enter teaching. The state “borrowed” a billion or two dollars from the Teacher Retirement Fund a number of years ago, which is yet to be paid back, and retired teachers have not received an increment in their pensions for years, despite the fact that there is money for one in the budget. The whole enterprise is a leaky bucket, where the system has intentionally poked holes in the container.
People can get into the whole voucher plan debacle and how the legislature continues to micromanage education. And the legislators are surprised that there is a teacher shortage???
I guess Indiana aspires to the standards of Mississippi and Alabama.
To balance things out, Doug, as a commie I’ll say that you are too centrist and capitalist friendly in your faith in the market. :-)
I find this highly offensive and I’m not a teacher.
I mean really. Just what the fuck?
We can’t even pay for teachers health insurance after promising them that it would be paid for?
” I’m a fan of the market, innovation, hard work and risk taking. ”
I am too. But there is nothing inconsistent between a free market economy that leaves millions behind and a free market economy that provides a reasonable social safety net, high quality K-12, secondary and vocation education that provide equality of opportunity. These are exactly the features a market economy must have to reward innovation, hard work and risk taking. Education provides the tools for people to work in meaningful and lucrative occupations. Northeast Indiana is begging for factory and skilled trades workers. But the jobs go begging because of the lack of trained workers and the prevalence of drug abuse. Innovators and risk takers need a social safety net to engage in endeavors that could fail or take a long time to generate success. (If you look at the resumes of most actors, artists, or musicians you find that most of them came from upper-middle class backgrounds with families that can provide them support until they can establish their careers.)
And behind the property rights you describe is a regressive tax system that favors capital accumulation over work and entreprenuership. Capital gains tax rates are below the marginal rates for earned income. Dividends receive the same treatment. New tax plans proposed would lower corporate and pass-thru entity tax rates to 15%. This would be one of the most regressive tax cuts the nation has seen. LLC owners, the majority of small to medium size business owners would pay a 15% income tax rate, while higher paid workers would face a marginal rate of 25%. And can anyone imagine who owns most of their real estate and other ventures as LLCs. Doctor-practice owners would pay a lower effective rate than their nurses. Law firm principals would pay less in taxes than senior associates.
A free market economy that rigs the game at the lowest rung of the ladder is not a free market. It is a plutocracy with a closely-related kleptocratic clan that serve in all branches of government.
I have always thought the United States approach to education has always been skewed toward higher education. State University’s like IU and Purdue get large amount of money from the state, then they turn around and charge the students for their education and then after you graduate they hit you up for donations to expand the university. The professors are paid well, have great benefits, come no where close to teaching the number of hours that a grade school or high school teacher put in. They can have grad students grade papers and really don’t care if a student shows up to class or if they pass or fail. No parents complaining to you about why their kids are failing or administrators bitching about test scores.
In a perfect world the business community in Muncie and the graduates of the Muncie high schools would band together and raise the money to bail out the teachers.. Instead millions are donated to our colleges for new building and programs. Occasionally businesses donate equipment and software to pubic schools (Microsoft give out free software to schools). On a local level most of the money that gets donated seems to be more in line with athletics then academics. Center Grove and Franklin Central both get over $10 grand a year from a local car dealership for their advertisement in the football stadium which goes toward the athletic department. I can only recall one situation where a private citizen raised the bar. One of the owners of Red Gold paid for four teachers salary’s for an entire year so the Elwood School Corp could start a pre-school program through her parents foundation. If only we valued pre K through high school as important as a college education.