A discussion board for East Islip teachers, parents, students and taxpayers.

The salaries in East Islip are said to be the highest on Long Island I read that over half make 89,000 or more up to 165,000 That would be 200 teachers in that district. how can taxpayers sustain

How can taxpayers sustain these payrolls ? They can't. The Budget Advisory Committee has the facts and the figures and they show that the district has historically overbudgeted for years..... always having extra money socked away for contract settlements or whatever - This is taxpayer money that should never have been taken in taxes until necessary. This district is and has been under the control of the teachers union. There is no leadership either in administation or on the board - no prposals other than what teachers want done and spent peiod The hiring of 14 new teachers this past year despite a declining enrollment ...... The fact that no givebacks were considered - Mr. Chu stated he did not even bother to ask - and people doubt who runs the school district ? Not Mr. Chu now the spokeman for all Long Island Superintendents Assoc.......not Board President Gary Lamm an administrator in Bay Shore school district - Are they going to buck the system ? Does any one over there know that things aren't so good for many East Islip taxpayers? Are all those who work in the school district and are are card carrying union members ( thats Teachers Union) which is everyone except the custodians... completely ignoring the economic realities ? Andreavecchio

Lady, what is your problem????????

Aren't our children worth paying highly educated and well qualified teachers a livable wage?

After all, teachers have to pay these confiscatory school taxes too! If our teachers made a dime less, they would not be able to afford to live here and still take multiple vacations from their part-time/part-year jobs. They need to travel the world, to get away from your bratty kid just to keep their sanity long enough to qualify for an early retirement buyout. Then they can still earn more than most working professionals while doing nothing,while getting fully paid medical and pay no NYS income tax to boot!

So next time you get up on your soapbox whaling about teacher pay, keep these facts in mind and show some comp(deleted expletive)ion for their plight!

I hear you - lots of people feel that way... it is hard to fathom why there is so little resistance to total acceptance of the party line - "that we deserve every cent we get and more" especially if times really get worse for non unionized public sector workers ......is it possible that NYSUT has convinced their membership there is no direct corellation between our taxes and their salaries. i thought that along the way teachers themselves would say "Hey, we got a good deal - let's give it a rest" or All the misinformation and deception that it takes to keep this fiction afloat isn't worth the cost......"

Are the NYSUT members statistically challenged?

About 80% of a typical SD budget is salaries & benefits.
Cant' get a better correlation than that! Eighty cents of every school dollar spending is for school districe personnel...primarily teachers.

There is no way they can ever contemplate serious cost reductions if barring 80% of the expenditures from being reduced.

I suspect this is ignorance by choice. I honestly believe many of the NYSUT members know better but choose to avoid the obvious.

It's very sad what the state of the field of education has become in present-day NYS. It seems that the union leadership are the ones who are not realistic about what communities and the state can afford to pay to fund their schools. But the day will eventually come to an end for the small group of beneficiaries of this forced pubuic largesse (i.e., LI tenured teachers). It is happening now in the NYC system. Beginning in 2005, the union leadership concentrated on demanding a $100,000 top salary. They got it, but in return had to give up seniority and much job security. Now the mayor is closing most of the public high schools, excessing all the teachers and then reopening the schools under new names -- with far less expensive, new staff. The tenured, excessed people are in limbo as ATRS (teachers without a regular assignment who are waiting to see what the city will decide to do with them, which may include firing them soon). It is very difficult, if not impossible, for these teachers to be rehired by another principal because in 2005, the mayor established a system in which each school must pay it staff salaries out of its individual budget (instead of salaries being paid by the DOE). Now principals must seeks out the least expensive (and least experienced and credentialed) teachers when filling an opening. Other former public schools that have been closed are turned over to private companies and reopened as charter schools. With that system, the management of these charters help themselves to a tremendous amount of public money (e.g., Eva Moscowitz, the head of Harlem Success Academy who is drawing a $400,000 salary). Maybe it would be better to make all teachers NYS state employees with a pay scale of $40,000 to $80,000, and stop bankrupting the suburban taxpayers and stop closing all the urban schools and giving public funds away to these charter CEOs.