Fuck The Man!

The Man. The proverbial Man. Capital M Man. Oh, he's real. And he can go fuck himself.

So the Governor of Georgia proposes new legislation and it gets written and approved. (I say it's not really his law because I understand how government works. The Governor doesn't make laws, he just signs off on them which is really sort of symbolic anyhow because a Congressional vote can override the veto. Surprisingly, I'm a graduate of a government school and I understand that.) Anyhow, the legislation is about how school systems can spend money. The part that the upper level admin are concerned about is that it states explicitly that class sizes have to meet a required minimum (no averaging anymore) and 65% of education funding must be spent on or in the classrooms. That includes teacher salaries, building maintenance, supplies, books, etc. from what I understand. That leaves almost 1/3 for upper level admin duties. Obviously not enough, surprisingly, if you judge by the roars from the county superintendents (mostly the ones in suburban Atlanta).

So, the superintendent in our county has a wonderful solution to the hits to the budget for next year. How much do you want to wager on the fact that it's cuts at the top-heavy county admin level? Ha ha, you lose!

And again, despite the fact that I am a graduate of a fine government school, I am surprisingly good at math.

The governor approved a 4% pay raise for teachers for next year. That's for the state salary schedule. See, some (most) counties offer an additional stipend on top of the state pay, especially those in areas where the cost of living is higher (aka metro Atlanta). Our county does this. So, a 4% raise on the state pay makes the raise come out to about 3.5% for us, assuming the county retains the same level of additional pay.

If you read the linked article, you find out that 3.5% is too high compared to what we will get. See, the net raise will only work out to be 1.77%. They want to add the extra significant figure to make it more attractive than 1.7% but not lead people to expect 1.8%. So, figuring on what I expected to make next year, instead of gaining $1713 dollars based solely on state contributions, I end up with $844 extra dollars. A loss of $869. Basically, they're lowering the county contribution by $869.

They cite having to hire more teachers to make class sizes smaller as their justification. I find it particularly interesting that not a single cut was made for county positions (much higher paid than lowly teachers, as in the very close to if not 6-figure range) or for their particularly ridiculous legal expenses. "Nah, let's stick it to the guys who are actually doing the grunt work. We'll make those teachers pay for someone else's decision to try to help teachers out with a little extra folding cash. Literally, make them pay!"

But it's not over yet.

They're also making us take a furlough day. I didn't even know what that was until today. But basically, I signed a contract for 191 days just a few weeks ago. They will be changing the contract to 190 days, thus changing the contract however they wish at any time. Ok, they're the employer. But we had an agreement. Yeah, an agreement that puts pretty much everything in their favor, like the ability to change contracts at will. I wish I could do that, but I'm not the employer, I'm the employee, I understand that. So back to the furlough day. The one less day is an unpaid day. For me that will be roughly a $254 loss.

So to add up all of my losses, the pay that I expected next year will end up being $1123 less than I expected it to be. "Oh, bitch bitch bitch, you're still getting a 1.77% raise." Did you notice the percentage that energy costs have gone up? I think it was a bit more than that just in the last month here just for fuel. And how does that affect the prices of goods? "It makes them cheaper, right?" If you think that, you obviously didn't have me as your teacher.

Oh, and I really enjoyed how we got the notice of this news from the county after I found out from the local newspaper. Apparently, we're not worthy of being the first to know.