Yes! Wouldn't that be quite a sight? However, that's kind of mean to do to the parents. If I didn't both live and work in the county I guess I would think differently (actually, if I didn't live in FC, I'd never have started working here (pay is too low) and this would be a non-issue), but since I both live and work in the county and have kids and grandkids in the system...I think differently. I've heard a LOT of stuff over the past few days and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out and who knew the real story! I'll keep you posted and in the meantime...I'm going to do my job and not dwell on the "what if" scenarios. I'll deal with that when the final decisions are made.

The DrudgeReport.Com has a link to the AJC regarding this. This county has finally hit the bottom. Nothing left to do now but roll in it.

We take benefits from the teachers within days of passing the end all be all savior known as the SPLOST, and now we want the teachers to give back their cost of living raise too?

The teachers here are already the lowest paid in the metro area. If you think your property values are low now, wait until we further cannibalize the school system (which is the ONLY reason our property is worth more than Clayton County)and see where the property values go.

Where is the leadership? What moron is responsible for this idiotic move?

One of our board members had the audacity to compare our teachers to those in Maryland ... is he that ignorant?

Georgia: Average teacher salary: $48,300

Maryland: Average teacher salary: $67,257

Nearly $20,000 a year more for the Maryland teachers you dolt.

They do NOT compare.

What a bunch of idiots. No wonder there are no men in the school system anymore.

The AJC explains that if the 1800 teachers returned their 2.5 percent raise, the school system would get $4 million.

On average, each teacher would then give up $2,222. If that’s 2.5 percent of their salary, then the average salary is $88,880.

That’s a better average salary than is reportedly paid in Maryland.

I know many teachers with many degrees and years of experience and none of them are making anything close to that salary. That salary is more in line with administrators and county office staff.

Just looking up the State of Georgia website www.open.georgia.gov, where teachers’ salaries for the fiscal year ended on June 30, 2008 are now displayed, I find for Grade 8 teachers in the Fayette school system salaries of $73,730.46, $71,778.06, $70,310.96, $75,269.70, $70,121.50, $75,629.94, $72,700.82, $76,965.44, $71,112.82, $81,171.08, and $71,689.79.

I have not supplied the name of each teacher reported to have been paid these amounts, but you can go look them up. Of course, many teachers teaching Grade 8 made much less. You can look up the whole school system if you wish. I just picked Grade 8 at random.

And how much did the superintendent get paid? $214,371.34. The Paquin article in The Citizen back in August had reported $190,029.92 for him the year before, so the school board gave him a raise of 12.8 percent.

Mapleleaf says "I find for Grade 8 teachers in the Fayette school system salaries of $73,730.46, $71,778.06, $70,310.96, $75,269.70, $70,121.50, $75,629.94, $72,700.82, $76,965.44, $71,112.82, $81,171.08, and $71,689.79."

Well, well, well. Let's look at reality: Please click here to see the ACTUAL Salary schedule for the teachers in Fayette County:

Salaries

In other words a teacher with more than 25 years of experience as a PHD/Ed.D. (Doctorate) would make less than the "Random" group of teachers that Mapleleaf found.

Riiiighhhhtttt ....

The Truth: A teacher with a Masters Degree in Fayette County makes as little as 38.5k

So, I looked again. This time I picked Grades 9-12 teachers. There are 418 of them. It is clear from the size of their salary that quite a few of them did not work full-time or for the full year 2007-08. Thus calculating an average that incorporates their salaries would be futile.

The top five salaries were $95,914.52, $94,181.64, $93,289.60, $87,718.27 and $86,910.22.

It is obviously possible to make that kind of income as a teacher in our school system, because actual people (whose name I omit here to respect their privacy) make it.

People who argue that no teacher makes that kind of money in the Fayette school system are dead wrong. I am not saying the teachers do not deserve it. All I am saying is that they make it, and that it is possible to make that much.

This information is available under the Georgia Transparency in Government Act. Each one of us as a Georgia citizen, taxpayer and voter is entitled to view this information, in part because we each pay a portion of these salaries (through state income tax, state sales tax, local property tax, and shortly a SPLOST), and in part because we are called upon to vote intelligently at election time.

There are people who prefer we didn’t know. Tough!

Look up the official State of Georgia website www.open.georgia.gov and you will see the actual salaries paid to all Fayette teachers in 2007-08 next to their name. Every one of them.

Other than the cheap thrill of looking up your neighbor’s paycheck, what is the point of going to this list? Unless I'm mistaken the large bulk of teacher compensation is set by the state anyway. Advanced degrees, special certifications and seniority all play a role in pushing some to the top – again, all under state rules. Some teachers also augment their classroom pay with outside duties such as working the after-school programs and such. If you want to do a serious comparative study of the local component of Fayette teacher pay -- also factoring in comparative student performance -- then do it. But tossing around a few eye-catching top-end numbers is meaningless.

In any case, if you’re suggesting classroom teacher pay in Georgia is scandalously high, you must be from Mississippi, not Moose country.

You no more randomly found a group of teachers making the salaries you claimed than I speak Chinese.

Look here at the ACTUAL salary scale for this year and next.

You selectively went through and edited your cut and paste not only to remove names but in an obvious attempt to make teachers look like they are making an average salary of nearly $75k. It's misleading and you have lost any and all credibility with anyone who knows a teacher, is a teacher, or is married to a teacher.

If you believe for one minute the average 8th grade teacher in Fayette County makes over $71k/yr. you are either wrong out of ignorance, or simply attempting to mislead people.

The average salary of middle school Assistant Principals is actually less than the average salary you attempt to attribute to our hard working, underpaid and under appreciated teachers.

What is your motive? Are you a board member or relative of DeCotis? Or do you just hate American teachers?

Mapleleaf and I usually don't see eye-to-eye, but in this case he is not wrong. I took the liberty of doing some research as well and my findings are the same as his. Also, he did not say the $70k figure was an average salary or that most teachers made that. Some, though, do. This is a fact verified by both the open.Georgia.gov website and my own personal relationships with educators within the FCBOE.

If you actually went to the site as you say, which I did, you will not find a "Random" group of teachers with those annual incomes: ($75,629.94, $72,700.82, $76,965.44, $71,112.82, $81,171.08, and $71,689.79).

He/She stated "I just picked Grade 8 at random."

Again, this is a select group of teachers and if you read the salary scale you will see that in order to make in the mid $70k range a teacher must have:

A Doctorate/PHD and
Over 25 years of service
All local supplements
An additional supplement not publicized.

Since neither of you are willing to actually look, here is the salary for those teachers (percentage of which is available online) with a
Masters Degree: T-5 :

Here are the Doctorate Numbers: T-7 Doctorate Begin at 48,213.00 and go to 72,530.00

Now, again - you are saying you agree that he/she "Randomly" picked salaries of 8th grade teachers ranging from $71,000+ to $81,000+???? Believe what you will. Random? Please.

*Sigh*

Apparently I'm going to have to spell this out for you.

You asked me the following: "Now, again - you are saying you agree that he/she 'Randomly' picked salaries of 8th grade teachers ranging from $71,000+ to $81,000+????"

My reponse is no, I do not. If you had any reading comprehension skills you would be wise to once again read what mapleleaf wrote. Here it is: "Of course, many teachers teaching Grade 8 made much less [than the $70k figure]. You can look up the whole school system if you wish. I just picked Grade 8 at random."

Instead of picking the 3rd grade, or the 7th grade, or the 12th grade, mapleleaf RANDOMLY chose the group of 8th grade teachers to examine. He did NOT randomly select the salaries from this group of teachers. As he pointed out, "many teachers teaching Grade 8 made much less." The grade level was randomly chosen, not the salaries.

Geez, it's getting tougher and tougher to carry on an intelligent conversation here these days.

My statement was: "You no more randomly found a group of teachers making the salaries you claimed than I speak Chinese."

Your response was that the statement by MapleLeaf was "Correct".

You madam are the person in need of reading comprehension improvement as my opining was clearly that MapleLeaf had skewed the information to make it appear as though Teachers in Fayette County made much more than they actually do. Obviously, Luckydog, among many others are quite able to pick up on this inaccurate bending of the truth.

Again, for those of you with an obvious learning impairment - the salaries that were held as representative of, or set forth as, a fair representation of the salaries of our teachers are neither.

We call this bias Ms. Avenger. I would strongly encourage you to learn about the "Sapir–Whorf language relativity hypothesis". Why, for example, didn't our northern neighbor list the lowest salaries, those in the $30k range, and accompany this list with the caveat that "of course some make higher"?

Pearls before swine, I digress. I am not here to educate you or inform you of printed ego centrism, internal bias, journalism integrity (an oxymoron), or provide you with reading comprehension lessons.

I will simply leave you with this personal retort since your drivel appears to be limited to sophomoric ramblings; save your red herrings for arguing with your children and your personal insults for someone more deserving, like your husband for example.

I've never said this here before, but you're an idiot.

And oh yeah, I'm not a woman.

Entering parameters in a search engine on the web site does not a "RANDOM" search make.

SELECTING salaries from the preselected data does not a "RANDOM" selection make.

After researching Sapir-Wharf, which you obviously have not done, take a course in the mathematical discipline of Statistics. You have obviously never performed or published any valid research, I have.

Your ignorance is an embarrassment to the community of PTC, Avenger.

How dare you. The Sapir-Wharf postulation has no bearing on the matter at hand. I could sit here and argue about cultural semantics and comprehension biases all day, but I will not because it pollutes the crux of what we're discussing here, which is that the method in which mapleleaf ascertained the salary figures was not random, the selection of the sample pool (Fayette county 8th grade teachers) was. That is a fact and you need to deal with it. Seriously. You come on here and hurl big words and obscure linguistic theories at me, claim to be a published researcher, insult my intelligence, make outrageous claims that I'm a woman, and for what? To try to intimidate me? Hardly, you arrogant little piece of garbage. I'm finished having this discussion with you.

And by the way, if there's something we need to get together and figure out outside the confines of this forum feel free to send me a private e-mail.

Having a battle of wits with you is like having a fight with an unarmed woman. Thank you for the entertainment.

Regardless, from your anger, ramblings and phonetic flustering, I feel certain that you have now realized that there were NO random selections made by Mapleleaf, that the assertion that the post of a 'random' selection of teacher salaries was neither random, nor a fair representation of our wonderful teacher's salaries. And I see that you have learned that different language patterns (assertions, assumptions, predispositions) yield different patterns of thought. Remember also that whenever one (you and Maple in this instance) present a 'random' selection that is not random, and all of those figures presented are well above the average, the data is irreconcilably and errantly skewed and that the proposer of fact is either consciously or unconsciously biased, and those who blindly accept it as accurate are ignorant and risk being falsely swayed. (It's okay Avenger, the world needs more sheep than shepherds.)

Ironically though, your anemic defense (clouded as it was with personal insults) of errant data would not only fail the two tailed test, it fails the test of common sense. Typically a less intelligent individual is blessed with at least some measure of common sense, and a strong back. I see you have not been so fortunate. I have great sympathy for you.

Now, as for you being so easily intimidated and the necessity for you to seek help in unlocking the meaning of your native lexicon, search among the dusty reference books that YOUR former hard working teachers, few as they may have been, attempted to steer you toward. Eventually education and maturity will help alleviate the anxiety, frustration and inferiority complex that has driven you to your feeble attempt to argue a failed point to exhaustion.

So, Ms. Avenger, what are the average salaries of our school teachers in Fayette County? Do you still think that salaries for teachers are predominantly in the $70k to $80k range? Care to guess what they actually are since you refuse to view the actual salary schedule that i posted for you multiple times?

Hint: It is well below the figures presented by Mapleleaf and supported by you as being a random representation of our teacher's salaries.

Thanks again for the laughs.

(You SURE that was your last post on this subject?)

Who is your school board representative - Marion Key?

Dr. Decotis needs to give back that 12.8% raise. That's ridiculous! How in the world did this board approve that? How does the Fayette County Board of Education's mess-ups become our problem? Can these people not budget?

If they re-bill the property taxes & the 20% decline in value we are all experiencing is reflected, will they then collect less money? That would be interesting!

Salaries are not all that an employee costs.

The $80 an hour that automakers get is half benefits!

Those must be paid also. Plus the overhead at headquarters.

Detailed costs of anything in public service are very hard to get!