Acclimating to RI’s Education Dispute
Commenting to a post by Marc, Rich from East Greenwich offers several specific questions that he might ask if mediating teacher contract disputes there. Among the considerations that he proposes is a comparison of teachers compensation with the median for the town.
Although not addressing East Greenwich, Marc and I worked through some of these sorts of questions on our personal blogs (pre–Anchor Rising). The following figure, which tells nowhere near the whole story, provides a baseline beyond which the picture only gets worse:
As a parent in the Warwick system for the last two years, and also being a new resident of Rhode Island – I am so angry at this stalled contract for the Warwick school district. We came from Brainerd, Minnesota and a wonderful school system where I knew teachers were not paid enough. My sister, a 30 year teaching veteran in the St. Paul school system is not paid enough. I hear about her union battles and have always cheered her efforts on. But out here in Rhode Island? I am nothing short of disgusted. As we moved here, my son was at a great neighborhood school. The first argument I had was him, as a 9 year old – being made to WALK to school. There was not enough budget for transportation. Next was the odd thing that he didn’t have books for all subjects in the second half of fourth grade and all of fifth grade in the first school (Wyman). He got copies of pages from the book to bring home for homework. They couldn’t let the books out of the classroom. Why? No money to spare! Fortunately, the principal at his school, and the teaching staff were bucking the pressure the union was putting on them. Despite less PhyEd, Music, Art, Science time (which is a crime in itself), my son had a great school experience at Wyman. This year, for 6th grade, we moved to the Hoxie neighborhood with the purchase of our first home in Rhode Island. We’d always been owners in MN, but took a year and a half here to find where we wanted to live. And – what we could afford. The article above highlighted greatly the outrageous housing costs in RI. As little as 4 years ago, this same house… Read more »
if you hate it here so much go back where you came from
Or else change it for the better, eh, “b”?