Teacher salaries at the high school average $72-78k. Apparently 50% of the students at the school are failing all of their classes, and the graduation rate is also under 50%. In an effort to turn the school around, the superintendent requested some changes be made whereby the school day would be slightly extended, teachers would perform some extra tutoring, etc.
The union balked and refused the terms, so now she is firing the entire teaching staff of the high school and replacing them.
The numbers above are incredible. The school was barely graduating anybody (and you have to question the education level of those who did manage to escape), but the teachers were averaging incomes between $72-78K. By comparison, the average income for the area is a paltry $22K. Those teachers were living like royalty, and developed an appropriate sense of entitlement and aristocratic disdain .
No, it's not exclusively the teachers' fault that their school was so lousy. Central Falls is an economically depressed area that the best and the brightest abandoned long ago. But, a sub-50% graduation rate certainly testifies to endemic problems in the classroom. Maybe it was hard for the teachers to break through the wall of student apathy, but they were being paid enough money to give a damn - three or four damns, actually. The money obviously wasn't enough to motivate them, so why bother continuing to pay them?
My only question is: can it really be this easy? Can you really just fire all of the teachers? Seems like a union that could negotiate salaries that are triple the local average would also have managed to negotiate a preemptive strike against this as well. If this does hold up, then those teachers were idiots who threw away lucrative jobs on little more than aggressive brinkmanship over "principle$."
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