Alan Haskvitz, a teacher for 45 years, honestly didn’t mean to place so many states in danger of going bankrupt. He just wanted a secure retirement plan.
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For over 45 years I have enjoyed making a living teaching. It hasn’t been easy or lucrative, but it had its rewards, one of which was a secure retirement plan.
Now, after reading the recent California Little Hoover Commission Report that recommends that public school retirements be reduced, even for those who are already retired, and the actions of the Ohio, Idaho, and Wisconsin republicans in accusing teachers and their pensions and bargaining rights as mainly responsible for that state’s financial situation, I am sorry I became a teacher. I honestly didn’t mean to place so many states in danger of going bankrupt.
I also realize now that I am sorry to have chosen education as a career for other reasons. I am sorry that my wife may have to work until she is well past 70 and endure the rigors of 12-hour shifts as a nurse. I am sorry that I may become a burden to my children because my retirement income won’t cover the costs of extended care. I am sorry for those students I encouraged to become teachers, telling them to ignore the glow of the better-paying professions.
I am sorry that the government is punishing me for being a civil servant by taking away over 60 percent of the Social Security benefits I had paid for during years of part-time work in the private sector to help put two children through college. I am sorry that, if I outlive my wife, I won’t be eligible for her Social Security benefits—because I’m a public servant.
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I am also very sorry that the vast conservative media have chosen teachers as a topic for loathing and hatred.
I am sorry that the right-wing politicians and conservative think tanks are at work to convince the public that education would work better if schools were private. I am sorry that the producers of Waiting for “Superman” didn’t travel a few miles farther to see my school and talk to the parents and students. I am sorry that the writers of the movie didn’t get a chance to see what is really happening in America’s schools. I’m sorry they didn’t call their work Waiting for “Funding.”
The use of misleading facts to bully educators is rampant. Most recently, Wisconsin teachers, fighting merely for the right to negotiate as a union, were accused of causing over 7 million dollars of damages to the State Capitol Building and grounds. The media spread that lie and never followed up with the fact that the damages never were properly assessed. Sorry to say, but this is just one example of the media’s bullying of teachers. When is the last time the public learned that 145,100 public school teachers were physically attacked and that 276,000 were threatened with injury?
I am also sorry that, as a teacher, I did such a poor job of teaching students to think for themselves, and let the fear mongers drug their critical thinking skills. I am sorry that I spent so much time getting my students ready for the state test that I did a poor job of teaching them to ask for proof when an organization says it offers fair and balanced news reporting.
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Until today I never stopped to look at what my decision to become a teacher had cost. I wrote a letter to one of the commissioners on the Little Hoover Commission expressing how my decision to become a teacher had cost my family dearly and that their findings made me sorry I had become a teacher.
The response was hardly unexpected. The secretary of the commissioner responded by writing that teaching was a valued profession. But apparently not valued enough for the commission to advise the California legislature not to leave the teacher retirement plan alone. After all, the budget has to be balanced and God forbid there is a tax increase. Sorry to say, their recommendations, if followed, would result in extensive court battles, legal costs, and the possibility that teachers would continue to be the scapegoats whenever the economy is troubled. By the way, sorry to say, not one member of the Little Hoover Commission is a teacher or educator, and the commission is dominated by big business members. The findings of the Little Hoover Commission are not unexpected, given President Hoover’s legacy.
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I left the financial world after tiring of the constant manipulation of the general public to add to the company’s bottom line. I am sorry I didn’t fight my temptation to help others and instead stay in the corporate world with a secretary, reserved parking spot, executive dining room, paid-for college courses, free health care, my own office, and a chance to continue to hobnob with the movers and shakers of the world from Richard Nixon and king-maker Asa Call to Ronald Reagan.
At age 22 I had my own upscale apartment in Los Angeles and a racing Cobra. Life was good and the pension plan was lucrative as I had to pay nothing into it. The company was going to move to a beach community and I would have been a made man. All I had to do was ignore my desire to help others.
Sorry, but I couldn’t resist: I entered a teaching college and, now, over 45 years later, I have a lot of apologies to hand out.
I know that my fellow teachers have spent decades teaching our students about the evils of bullying and to not tolerate it. The theme “Don’t Be a Bystander” is one of our major lesson plans. And yet, I am sorry to say, we are now the ones being bullied. Perhaps it is time for us to join together and write letters, make phone calls, and express ourselves to our elected officials to let them know that there are millions of teachers who vote—and we won’t want them to be sorry.
—Photo corinne.schwarz/Flickr
Defined benefit pension plans are a bad idea….for government, for school systems, for the private section. Period. Pensions and other guaranteed post-retirement benefits, like fully paid medical insurance for life, are bankrupting cities all over the country. Private industry moved away from offering pensions to their employees years ago. All government organizations, including public schools, should do the same. Instead, pay teachers higher wages and/or link the teacher or school’s performance to employer 401-K contributions. Pay teachers for what they accomplish, not for getting a Master’s Degree. None of us in the private sector gets a raise just for having… Read more »
Don’t be sorry that you’re a teacher. Be sorry that you blindly followed union bosses who put your union’s narrow self interest above that of students and the public at large.
I, as a self employed person feel that the tax code is biased against the self employed, and in favor of hourly and salaried earners, yet people tell me, well, you didn’t have to chose to be self employed. So how does that feel?
Did you even fucking read the article?
Teachers create the future of our country – in my opinion, their are few to no jobs of greater importance than teachers – yet they always seem to be the first on the cutting block !! Do we really want the future of this country to be governed by half wit twits because the only people who are willing to be teachers are the migrants who stand on the street corner waiting for s “day job” with their fake i.d.’s ? We (the government) treats teachers and Doctors like garbage expect them to care for our children (our Countries future)… Read more »
Another Anonymous, a PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER for 25+ years, honestly didn’t mean … I also realize now that I am sorry to have chosen ENGINEERING as a career. I am sorry that the government is punishing me for being interested in PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE. I am also very sorry that the vast conservative media have chosen ENGINEERS as a topic for apathy and ‘ousourcing.’ I am sorry that the politicians are able to convince the public that the Windows PC can replace intelligent engineers. When is the last time the public learned that many engineers have been injured and killed at exploding… Read more »
Cry me a river. I haven’t had a salary increase in 3 years and get no pension. My situation is typical for people working in the private sector. The fact is that politicians have always found the path of least resistance to be to promise unsustainable pensions to powerful public employee unions. The shit has hit the fan and now California is for all practical purposes bankrupt. The money isn’t there. I’m sorry your wife might have to work until she’s 70 but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to work until I’m 70 too.
Comparing teachers to those in the military is NOT a stretch. Apparently the man who pee’d his panties over that one has NEVER walked in to a classroom. Each situation presents a risk that is not pretty. At least you are trained in how to use weapons – the kids who bring theirs to school are not – to the point they fall out of their backpacks and go off. Do not tell a teacher to F-OFF again. That is disrespectful and rude. And if you really were in the military – your superior would have your ass for that.… Read more »
I stand by “our civilization at stake.” Of course Saddam and Qaddafi are tin pot dictators; it is the people they rule over that present the problem. Thats why the tyrants ruled with such an iron hand. A case can be made for leaving the scoundrels in power, considering the alternative. I never said warfare was the only way of dealing with these countries. In fact we’ve been able to achieve an uneasy peace with many of the Mid East governments. But certain rogue threats involving the global oil supply and threats of terror in Europe and the US homeland… Read more »
I stand by “our civilization at stake.”
Sorry, Mark. I don’t want to invoke Goodwin’s LAw here, but something tells me you’d also have been stroking your chin thoughtfully and nodding yoiur head at Nuremburg when an ex-corporal with a funny little mustache talked about the need for lebensraum.
Hanna Arendt has some choice words about the banality of evil which you should really read.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0327-lausd-20110327,0,5427721.story
Not even worth discussing.
Dad, You can not worry about Alabama vs. Illinois. Your call. Point is, business goes where it’s less burdened. It’s a lesson. Overseas is another.
GE? Of course GE gets breaks. That they get breaks is not the point. The point is the folks who don’t.
I think you need to try out for dancing with the stars.
GE has been many politician’s BFF for a long time, that is hardly relevant to the discussion at hand and neither does the difference are tax rate variations amongst states, we were talking about countries. I’m not worried about a company choosing Alabama over Illinois… states with lower tax rates are still part of the United States are they not? I’d like to see the “middlin’ folk” pay less and the “bigs” pay more, so maybe we have something we can agree on there? I don’t know the number that rate needs to be, but it will certainly be less… Read more »
“and neither does the difference are tax rate variations amongst states” (nice proofreading on my part)… that should have read “and neither are the tax rate variations amongst states”.
Dad.
We can talk about US states. See, for example, Texas. Or Illinois.
Tax zeros are for the bigs. See GE and Immelt, Obama’s new BFF. GE also got a $1bill solar contract. But the bigs generate very few new jobs. It’s the middlin’ folk who generate the jobs. The guys who can’t afford lobbyists or pay congressional staffers to slip loopholes into laws when nobody’s looking.
Our rates are going to push the businesses out? All the figures around this issue always center around an imaginary corporate rate of 35% without taking into account the loopholes which allow companies like GE to avoid taxes altogether. Our corporate tax rate is 0 to 35%… not 35%. As for other countries with (allegedly) lower tax rates? They seem to have similar unemployment to those with the highest rates. Please expand on the examples of which countries with higher taxes (Japan? Belgium?) are doing so much worse and how those with the lowest rates (Ireland? Poland?) are doing better?… Read more »
Mark Ellis. As it happens, petroleum in its various distillations is the most compact, manageable method of moving, storing, and using energy. Wind energy is, at best, an energy wash and a great subsidy-puller for the Connected. Solar requires some rare, and sometimes toxic, minerals. Scaled up to the power generated by the Japanese generation plants currently in the news, one guy calculated that much solar capacity would have resulted in five tons of toxic metals swept into the ocean. Don’t know if he’s close, but, with energy, we have the law of Conservation of Matter and Energy and its… Read more »
As an American citizen, I too grieve for these wars. I wish we could pull out of the Middle East yesterday and let the tribes sort things out. But our civilization is at stake. Spare me the revelation about how these wars are about oil–I already know that. I never bought the part of the Bush Doctrine which talked about bringing democracy to the region. My gut knew that was a fool’s errand. The thing is, without oil the grocery shelves in New York City would be bare in a matter of days, if not hours. Imagine that. Alternative energies… Read more »
No. It’s lack of revenue.
In the 1950’s the tax rate for the top 10% wad 90%!!! Ninety!
We managed to create a very nice middle class and infrastructure with that revenue.
Then came Regan… and it plummted down to 30%.
Highest it has been raise is 37% under Clinton.
Revenue problem…
“Our civilization is at stake?” Oh, jeebus…. Of all the high-flying, ridiculous excuses for war, that has to be the worst I’ve ever heard. In case you didn’t notice (and I realize that keeping up with all these “tribes” as you call them is difficult, expending brain cells urgently needed to calculate football betting pool odds), Sadam Hussein and Kadafi, while a bastards, are certainly not “barbarians from the third century”. They are a run-of the-mill, 20th century dictators of the sort your country has had absolutely no problems doing business with in the past – and has no difficultiues… Read more »
Dad-on-the-Run.
Tell us about other countries who tax more than we do, and how they’re doing.
Great article and disappointing responses. I’d expect a little more from people who are counting on public schools to educate their children. Yes there are fiscal issues and yes we should consider raising taxes where needed. Are there problems with some teachers and some union demands… yes, but if the teacher’s unions are so powerful why do teachers still struggle with the problems Mr. Haskvitz mentions? It’s a great myth that we are out of money and can’t pay for social services and education all we need to do is tax our corporations and wealthy in a manner in line… Read more »
Dad On-The-Run, Please reread my post. I specifically stated that education reduces crime rates over time, but cutting law enforcement leads to lower response times, etc. today. Not stating that law enforcement is more important. My point is that fiscal shortfalls are not just in education. Many professions are feeling it. But instead of finger pointing, fighting, etc., we all need to rally around the short-term solution. Then look at the long-term. Many teachers, officers, etc. are worried about rent/house payments, etc. TODAY. We’ve got to deal with the problem at hand first. Do I have all the answers? NO.… Read more »
1. Student test scores aren’t a fair way of assessing teachers. Too many differences in families, books-in-the-house, TV watching habits, parental support for scholarship, etc. Maybe peer visits would be a way to go. BTW, there aren’t a ton of “better teachers” waiting to take these jobs, if we only could fire the “bad” ones. Not at those wages. Maybe good benefits mitigate teacher drain to an extent. 2. I might favor ending all pensions, putting everyone on an expanded social security. This would be dependent on stopping all US wars, and other forms of nonsense like tax givebacks for… Read more »
In Brazil, we use peer visits, at least at the university level. Furthermore, please bull me no shit about the States being broke, folks. Not when you’re funding three wars for no apparent purpose that the rest of the world can see. But hey, if the U.S. wants to cut its own throat by voluntarily eliminating one of its only remaining advantages in the world – the quality of its university system – that’s fine with me. Or you folks can hire us furriners whenyou discover that you’re not getting any of your own people to be adequate teachers. That’ll… Read more »
(BtW, Henry, I realize that you aren’t claiming the U.S. needs to cut teachers’ salaries. I should make that clear.]
It’s a little late for you, Mr. Haskvitz, and thanks for posting, but younger folk who might have doubts about going into the teaching profession may want to heed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s warning and “do something else.”
The degree to which education funding is responsible is debatable, but we are bankrupt, and this is the future.
Ronald. Nobody said anything about “okay”. My wife went to a meeting with a state rep talking about teachers’ bennies. He said teachers need to organize to get their piece of the pie. No talk about the size of the pie. Yeah, the people who failed to fund the pension plans should be penalized one way or another. If you don’t like bailouts of the bigs, don’t vote for Obama next time. CALPERS is supposedly using a growth rate of 7.75% to calculate their necessary contributions to the plan. They’re still catastrophically behind. If they used, as was proposed, 7.5%,… Read more »
You think Bush wouldn’t have done the bailouts, or another republican? The bail-out was prepared under bush, Obama and his administration were just the ones signing on the dotted line.
Ruplican or Democrat; there’s no difference, puppets on strings of the corporate sponsors.
You want a change; make new political parties.
I really enjoyed this article and of course, love to hear what Perry has to say. Right down to ol’ BL himself. Great work by you all. Glad to hear this side of the story.
I’ve also been a teacher for 40+ years, and if I’ve been getting rich at taxpayer expense, I’ve worked in the private sector as well. I must have misplaced my fortune. Maybe there is a hole in my pocket. Of course, I don’t get performance bonuses; I get no Christmas bonus; I get no annual review to determine wage increases. I have no chance of negotiating an equity share of anything. Should I innovate—and I do—I get “thanks”—but that’s hard to spend. I also accept lower wages than the private sector for equivalent work in exchange for alleged security—which is… Read more »
Beautifully put.
To be fair the financial policy of the Clinton administration was just as bad as Reagan’s and Bush’s, there was still a very large deregulation trend, in fact if I remember correctly, it was during his administration that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, which was a major factor in the recent financial turmoil. The reason that Clinton ran a budget surplus was that we were currently going through the dot-com bubble, and that he didin’t wage any prolonged wars of occupation. If you’re using his administration as an example of why waging wars on a deficit is costly, then by… Read more »
Not to mention the use of the Social Security surplus to effect the appearance of a surplus. Clinton was and remains committed to zero-based budgeting, like all DLC members.
“Start with the notion of “who else gets automatic pay increases?” The fact is, almost everyone. Inflation is a fact of life in America, and unless an organization wants to renegotiate contracts annually, increases are built in. We aren’t in the Weimar Republic quite yet—two and three year contracts with automatic pay raises are standard operating procedure.” – I believe the writer was referring to nonunion workers. Hundreds of thousands of them, myself included, have taken significant pay CUTS due to the economy. When was the last time you had your salary REDUCED, Perry? That would be n-e-v-e-r. “Members of… Read more »
Things are tough all over. Our local county constable’s office just cut 97 positions, only 7 of those were support/office help. Ninety were officers on the street. Are teachers more important than law enforcement? Education leads to lower crime rates, yes. But that is long-term. Ninety fewer officers means longer response times today. We can point fingers all day and threaten law suits. The bottom line is that for several decades there has been plenty of fiscal irresponsibility, and arguing that point is not going to fill the coffers. What is happening all across the country is beyond awful, but… Read more »
Mr. Haskvitz, Nothing wrong with being a teacher. My family’s full of them. Your fault is that you believed your union leaders when they negotiated retirement plans knowing, along with the administrations, that nobody would be funding the plans. When the bill finally came due, as with other public pension plans, those on both sides of the negotiation devoted to kicking the can down the road aren’t there. Easy to give a benefit that doesn’t cost anything today. The unions know it, too. Easy to demand and get a benefit the employer isn’t going to pay for. And the members… Read more »
But we theoretically would have had the money to fund these benefits when the time came, right? That’s what the financial experts said. And we listened, because they promised they knew best. So before we blame unions or employers for laughing all the way to the bank because they spent money that didn’t exist, let’s look at others who did the same thing, and were bailed out by the federal government because they were “too big to fail”.
The message is: it’s okay if our schools fail, but not our banks and morally upstanding financial institutions, right?
Alan: I have mixed feelings here. On one hand I almost became a teacher. I passed the MTELs four years ago, but never followed through because the fiscal constraints most municipalities are in means more layoffs and fewer jobs. Plus in Mass. you have to get your master’s within five years, and more school just wasn’t in the cards with a kid on the way and my wife also in grad school. I have many, many friends who teach and they are all fantastic people dedicated to their job. They are invaluable. But there are valid criticisms of teachers. Who… Read more »
> Their raises aren’t tied to test scores or how their students have fared. And that’s not right. Teachers, like most everyone else, should be held accountable based on their accomplishments. You, like many other misguided people, seem to think that test scores are directly correlated to accomplishments of both student and teacher. I have never seen a study suggest this. I have, however seen many studies (like this one: http://epi.3cdn.net/b9667271ee6c154195_t9m6iij8k.pdf) refute this. You don’t get to see the “accomplishments” of teachers in a measurable, quantifiable, excel spreadsheet neatly bundled at the end of the school year. That’s just not… Read more »
Ronald: You, like many other misguided people, must not realize that in Massachusetts those tests scores do matter. Greatly. All students MUST pass the MCAS if they want to graduate high school. I’m not saying I agree with this, because I don’t. I have many problems with the test. But the fact remains, it’s mandatory. That means teachers need to get their students to pass or they literally can’t get a diploma. I understand teaching to a test is often counter-productive. And I agree it doesn’t truly measure learning. But guess what? That’s the reality here in my state. So… Read more »
Daddy Files: That is almost like saying I’m going to base your work for my company based on how many people decide they need the product. It is the consumer’s choice whether they buy a product. This is not the best metaphor… but hopefully it gets you thinking in the right direction. We who value education cannot assume that everyone being taught wants to learn – it’s just not true. Many parents do not even see the value of education, let alone the students. I would be appalled and enraged if you told me I was going to be judged… Read more »