teachers' pay

i got this email years ago. i used to think that it was hilarious and sad and pointedly cynical. now, it probably needs adjustment.

Teachers are paid too much!
I'm fed up with teachers and their hefty salaries for only 9 months work! What we need here is a little perspective. If I had my way, I'd pay teachers babysitting wages. In the end, that's all they really are - glorified babysitters. Obviously, kids aren't learning anything from them.

That's right. Instead of paying such outrageous taxes to keep teachers living in style, I'd give them $3.00 an hour. And, I'm only going to pay them for 5 hours, not for all that luxury "planning time." So, that would equate to $15.00 a day. Each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers to babysit their children. Even if you have more than one child, it's still cheaper than private daycare.

Now, how many children do they teach a day - maybe 20? So that's $15.00 x 20 kids = $300.00 a day. But remember, they only work 180 days a year! I'm not about to pay them for all that vacation time! So that's $300 a day x 180 days = $54,000.

To be fair, there are some good teachers out there who have lots of experience, a solid record and a maybe a master's degree. Maybe we could agree to pay them minimum wage. We can round that off to about $6.00 an hour x 5 hours x 20 children. So that's $6.00 x 5 x 20, which comes to $600 a day. $600 x 180 days.

Wait a minute! That's $108,000 -- there's something wrong here!

so, now, let's adjust it to the new minimum wage rates. $6.55/hour x 5 hours = $32.75 per day, per kid. 20 kids is a generously low estimate; in today's classroom and economy, that's likely to go up by 3 kids next year. that's $753.25 per day, per teacher. yearly salary, $135,585. when the minimum wage adjusts in july, the uptick will be a shade north of $150K.

sounds good to me!

c'mon, pump!

when i got my truck way back in the day, gas was about $0.91 a gallon. that made a fill up a shade less than fifteen bones. pretty cheap by today's standards...

until today! as i was filling up today, i found myself cheering the pump on, "c'mon; stop, stop! ok, now....stop!"

and when it did, my wallet danced a jig in my pocket. $19.99! first time i could pay for a tank of gas with andrew jackson for years. six years actually. i looked it up, and did a little math.

on another i'm-trying-to-reduce-my-carbon-footprint note, my monthly gas bill is about a third of what it was in february. this whole carpooling thing is working out well!