First Posted: 3/31/2014
When it comes to school matters, a year away from my 10-year anniversary of leaving my last classroom, I’ve spent very little time keeping up with the news in public education. Sure, I’ll read the occasional piece on the newest testing instruments foisted upon classroom teachers by politicians who’ve always seemed to think they know what’s best for schools rather than those who actually are in the schools or the stray story on the merits of home schooling and other virtual-learning experiences as opposed to the traditional in-school experience. But, beyond that, I’ve developed a fairly high degree of apathy when it comes to matters that once mattered a great deal.
That’s why it surprised me some recently when I got a bit fired up in talking to a current administrator, an assistant principal, with the Lima City Schools. The conversation actually started with some others in the group commenting on a recent story in The Lima News about the wide array of candidates, many familiar names that someone in the group called “the usual suspects,” who were all expressing an interest in filling the vacancy for Allen County Superintendent.
Of course, ever since the Open Records Act allows the salaries of public employees to be published in the paper, the covers have kind of been pulled back when it comes to what administrators make relative to those who slug it out day in, day out in the classroom. One in the group questioned just how important the job of county superintendent could be when each of Allen County’s nine schools has its own superintendent, especially for a salary that will probably be somewhere north of $100,000 a year, in other words, he said, double or more than what most classroom teachers are paid who are seeing to the day-to-day nuts and bolts of what schools are all about, which is kids learning.
Now, standing a few feet away, there was one dissenting opinion over what was the prevailing and somewhat cynical opinion over the inequality of pay that, I’ll admit, used to rankle me quite a bit when I was in the classroom.
And, not surprisingly, that opinion belonged to the aforementioned Lima City Schools administrator. So, when I threw in my two cents on money matters in education that I, too, have always felt there was far too great a discrepancy between administrator and classroom teacher salaries, said administrator and yours truly got into a bit of an impromptu debate.
Now, before I have all my pals who either are retired or current principals or superintendents calling or text messaging me and rebuking me for suggesting they don’t deserve the money they make, let me say that, yes, I do realize school administrators work more days. And, despite the fact that a good teacher, especially one who teaches a subject where students write a lot of papers, certainly works almost as many hours as he or she is in the classroom when school is not in session, I’ll still go along with the notion that an administrator should out-earn classroom teachers. It’s just that outlandishly more issue that, for me, has always been the rub.
I also realize, as my assistant-principal antagonist pointed out that school systems are multimillion-dollar businesses, and administrators are needed to provide leadership and direction on matters beyond the day-to-day operation of the classroom. I get it. I certainly would never suggest abolishing such folks’ positions.
And, lest you think I have some pathological dislike and distrust of all administrators, you’d be absolutely wrong. I worked for many who I greatly admired and respected, especially two of my building principals, Quentin Clark and Dan Griffin, who supported my efforts to the max and made me want to go the extra mile to be the absolute best I could be for my students.
In the private sector, I fully understand the substantial gap in income between owners of businesses and general workers. After all, the owners are the ones who took the risks, often assumed the loans and spent their money to develop their businesses. So, of course, they should get more, even far more than the general workers that work under them. However, when it comes to state administrative workers, they didn’t assume any of those same risks or spent any money to start the business they are overseeing, so why should there be such a huge difference in their pay and the pay of their teachers?
My young assistant principal, who I like on a personal level very much, stood his ground, that administrators deserve every penny they receive, and I stood mine, that the difference in compensation is far, far too great between administrators and excellent classroom teachers.
I think both of us realized that much of our disagreement was the result of where I once stood, which was always in the classroom, and where he currently stands, which is out of the classroom. And, isn’t that the very essence of most disagreements, that two people are viewing an issue from two entirely different sets of eyes?
Listen, I know there will always be a gap in salaries between administrators and classroom teachers. I get it; really, I do. A gap, I can abide, but, a chasm? Well, that’s another matter entirely, and even after all these years, I guess that one still bothers me.
