By now you've had a chance to digest the statistics on salaries and raises. Realizing that most of you are still grabbing for the antacids after meal that may still be threatening to re-emerge....It's time to snack on leftovers!
Yep we threw a lot of data, graphs and statistics at you, but just maybe, some of you are thirsting for more...for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
Our posts were not intended to inflame the teacher community..or the community at large. But we have a problem, people, and neither the state, nor the Feds are going to fix it for us anytime soon--if ever. If we really truly are a district worthy of renown, we need to take the 800 lb gorilla firmly by it's fur.
We've said it before, but perhaps it's been glossed over. Our 800 lb gorilla--salaries and benefits--is not a problem isolated to Sun Prairie. Like the H1N1 flu, this is a virus that has spread across the state and the nation. In fact, as SPEA has pointed out, Sun Prairie is much lower than most districts in the salaries it pays teachers. We know...sad but true.
Rather than focusing on the age-old Dane County, whose 16 school districts vary dramatically in both size and challenges, we prefer to focus on the 20 school districts most similar in size to Sun Prairie. THESE are the districts with whom we share size and socioeconomic challenges.
If one compares "average" salaries, only 2-3 of the 20 have averages below that of Sun Prairie Teachers. That is a fact Jack.
Are we just paying less? Could that be true? Or is it something else? Remember than an average is just that. A great many small values will drag an average down. Is THAT what's happening here?
What we DO know is that if one considers the total number of years of teaching experience, Sun Prairie is a young district. Over 2/3 of SP teachers have less than 15 years of teaching experience. If you recall from our linear regression, 15 years of experience translates to a salary of about $51,000 per year ($33.50/hour) of . Our average salary of 48,000 similarly translates to an average of 13 years of teaching experience.
We do not have the data to confirm our theory, but it is quite possible that our "young" teaching staff translates to a lower "average" salary in Wisconsin.
Posts
