Reader comments
Panel asks to raise teachers' pay again

a taxcut on the STATE Tax are we pay way to much taxes at the state level ?

Every little bit helps. The teachers need about a $10,000 a year raise in starting salary to get people to even consider it for a career.

When we get starting salaries to about $50,000 then we will really see an increase in people becoming teachers.

Right now it is around $30,000. You can't come close to buying a house on that salary.

I would like to know who's software company will benefit from Brad Last's proposal, and what connection he has to it.

I like how the author uses the word "another" throughout the story, notably twice in the first sentence. Nice subtle hint D-News that you think teachers are 'always' getting raises, raise upon raise. Please. This is the most important profession in our society, one of the least respected, and surely the most underpaid. I'm not a teacher, I was too selfish and went for more money, but I realize the need to provide critical thinking skills and discipline to our children. The teachers and educators we have our amazing, they do so much with such few resources given to them. Thank you teachers.

Not Again! My pay has been cut because of the current economic conditions. Everybody needs to help out and not beg for more pay increases. The only way this can happen is if illegal alien students are eliminated from public education and the saved money distributed to teachers.

Teachers have been short changed for years and years. As a result, many talented people who would otherwise become teachers don't. It simply doesn't pay enough. This is penny wise and pound foolish, not to make this profession decent paying and well respected.

As a result you have many lower IQ people going into teaching that can't see that whole language when teaching reading, and investigations math are dumb ideas. Although the general public can see it, to many teachers can't. We need teachers who are smarter than the general public not dumber.

Did all other citizens get at $2,500 raise

Why only $2,500? That's too little. The grammar used by the first poster above is clear evidence of poor education in our state. I think he meant to say " a tax cut on the state tax as (not are) we pay way too (not to) much...

I'm a teacher and my I.Q. is in the top two percent tile. Guess were all not dumb. In fact, the teachers I know at my school are pretty smart. There are a few that do struggle with math. This is my area of strength.

...and the way it is earned is typically by working hard and letting the market determine wages. That's how the rest of us do it, and it should be good enough for teachers. I say that because I would love to see a lot of teachers get paid a whole lot more, but there are a lot of teachers who do more harm than good, and shouldn't be paid anything. This nonsense about all teachers needing a pay raise is just that, nonsense. Anyone who is unwilling to admit that there are lousy teachers who don't deserve the pay they already get is either wilfully blind, or else is a shill for the teacher unions. Free our teachers to earn what they are worth! For most of them is a whole lot more than they are getting now, but for some it will be absolutely zero, and to that latter group, I say good riddance!

$50,000 starting salary? What government employee starts at $50,000? Police Officers don't. Prison Guards don't. DCFS workers don't. Streets workers don't. Most start between $20,000 and $30,000.


Yes Teachers need to be paid more, but it's time we start looking at the REST of our government employees, the ones who have been languishing without a raise so the teachers could get theirs. A prison guard starts at $13 an hour.....$13 to deal with the people that no one else wants to deal with. A Sergeant at the prison with 6 years on the job makes a whopping $16 an hour. That's $33,000 a year for 2080 hours worked.

For comparison, according to utahsright.com, there is ONE teacher in the SL City School District making less than $36,000 a year.

The lowest paid teacher in Granite makes $23.95 an hour, which comes out to $31,604 a year for 1320 hours worked.

By comparison, a Sergeant with the Dept. Of Public Safety (UHP) was making $22.20 an hour.

Troopers are making between $16 and $20 an hour.

Where's the outrage at what we're paying everyone else who works for the government? Do we only care about those with a loud union?

If you think teachers are underpaid go to the Dept of Workforce services and do a little research. Considering that schools are in session less than half the year (180 days), teachers are among the better paid professions in the state, especially when you factor in their benefits. The rest of us are either getting pay cuts or not getting raises and our benefits are being slashed to the bone. Teachers are doing pretty well. Just drive by any elementary or middle school and look at the cars in the parking lot.

And as far as the wacked out curricula, it's not stupid teachers that are foisting that on our kids, it is government intervention. For the paltry sum of a few million dollars (a very small percentage of the school spend in Utah), the Federal Government dictates local school policy. Let's cut the strings and refuse any Federal Government money and set our own school policies based on Utah values.

Humph.

Stop it, stop it, stop it! Enough already. If teachers don't like their salary and benefit package, let them go find something better in the private sector. In the meantime, give me back the excess taxes I paid and stop handing it out like a sugar daddy.

And how many careers have a starting salary that you CAN go out and buy a house on? How many carreers give you summers off, a six hour work day, and a killer benefits package? Those poor teachers!

Respect must be earned, but figuring out a fair way to measure that respect opens up a whole new can of worms.

It would be nice if the pay increases actually arrived in the teachers' pockets instead of going through school districts who use the funds to purchase, furnish, and overstaff eloborate buildings for their own comfort and self esteem while teachers wage the real battles of learning in classrooms with thirty plus students and no air conditioning, etc.

No disrespect to you from me. There are many fine teachers. However because the education profession pays so little, there are also many lower IQ teachers. There is not enough money paid to have high enough standards to weed out the dumb ones.

I once tried to convince a teacher to teach phonics. I explained that it is better to teach a few rules that will suffice in 70 to 80% of the cases when young students are reading words, after these rules are learned, the exceptions aren't too difficult to catch on to because the words can be discerned in the context of the sentence. She told me it is easier just to memorize each word individually. I remember thinking how dumb she was. I have been proven right, whole language has been discredited.

Same with investigations math. We need to pay the educational community more and then require more of them. Their work perhaps more than any affects the future of all of us.

Of course there are intelligent people who choose teaching, just not enough of them. We need to pay enough so that every teacher is the cream of the crop.

There is a shortage of teachers now. Isn't this the market speaking? When going to university I remember hearing from others they would like to become teachers but need to make more money. The standards to become teachers and to go to the schools of education are too low. As a result many low IQ people are in the profession. (not all teachers are dumb). We can't raise the standards, because then the shortage would be even greater.

If you don't see what I mean, then look into what Alpine School district has done and is doing with math education, there are teachers who don't even believe in teaching long division or times tables. At the secondary level, algebra, geometry and pre-calculus, math education has been dumbed down severely. This because education does not attract enough of the best and brightest. This needs to change. How much sense would it make for a farmer to eat his best seed, amd use his worst seed for next years crop?

The legislator should not give the state school board one more dime.

They (the legislator) put together a solid proposal last session that absolutely would have increased per pupil spending and reduced class size. However, because it meant losing some power over student education, the union rallied their troops, fired up the propaganda machine, and convinced a largely uninformed voting public to kill the proposal.

The legislator is completely justified in not giving one more red cent to the closed minded educators running state education.

Also, I agree with the sentiment that public schools that accept the children of illegal aliens as students help create a magnet for illegal immigration.

To bad the legislature cannot define teacher. My daughter has been teaching school for many years in Salt Lake and the raises are given to secretaries and janitors and everyone but teachers simply because once the district gets the money THEY decide how to spend it. There is no accountability once it leaves the states coffers. AMAZING!

I totally agree that all Government workers need to get a pay raise. However the arguement that is used concerning $ per hour looks good on paper but is not quite accurate. I guess it is accurate if all teachers everywhere got to school 1/2 hour before school starts and left 1/2 hour after school ended (regular contract hours). I think we can all agree that many teachers work more hours than what the contract calls for. I don't know much about other government jobs ie. prison workers, police officers, etc. but do they get paid overtime when they work longer?