Why does no one acknowledge how overworked teachers are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para.

I can’t speak for other schools, but Eastern’s paras are often in contact with parents, including providing their personal cell phone numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

So, I will agree that having "summers off" is the number one perk of being a teacher. (#2 is, of course, having snow days and #3, your own kids' vacation day schedule, if you have kids).

Continuing to have dental, vision, LTD premiums coverage those months (I get my health insurance through my husband's plan) is a perk as well. It's just 4 pay periods out of a total of 26, it's not like it's some big huge benefit or anything, but yes, there is a benefit there. It's part of the understanding we have when we sign our contract.

There's an alternative: School districts could just pay us for the 22 pay periods we work, and consider us "temporarily unemployed" for the 4 pay periods we don't work. We could file for COBRA, we could file for unemployment. Our biweekly paycheck would go up 18%. Their contribution to our health insurance premiums would go down by 18% -- and then we'd need to lose health coverage for those 4 pay periods unless we contributed it on our own. That seems really complicated to me logistically for a profession where everyone is on the same summer schedule -- where you can anticipate that there will be 8 weeks where people aren't working. To me, it makes sense that part of the salary package includes health insurance for 26 pay periods, not just the 22 you are actively working. But I don't work in HR or Payroll. Maybe it would be easier to do it a different way?

I personally don't feel that would be a decent tradeoff as it really doesn't solve any problems, except maybe it would make parents like you feel better that teachers weren't getting some great summer benefit in keeping their employer subsidized health insurance premiums for 4 pay periods?

I have to add, I don't feel there are any major restrictions on teacher summer jobs. Its true you aren't allowed to tutor your own students or students at your school for pay, but there are summer school options, and you can tutor thousands of other kids who aren't at your school. I don't think it would be a problem if I wanted to work at a bar or anything. Probably working as a stripper would cause some issues. Summer job choice is not a major issue of complaint for any teacher I know, anyhow.

It *is* hard to find summer employment that would be at the same rate as my usual salary.

(My biggest complaint in terms of vacation or days off is actually that all my vacation needs to be taken in the summer or at school breaks, and that I have to take 4 hours off at a time... can't just do one hour here or there (because of sub coverage). As an older teacher and member of the sandwich generation, I need a lot of time off now for medical care for family members. But my district won't let me take just one hour off, it has to be a half day or a full day. I would gladly give up an entire week of summer vacation, just to have a few more hours off when I need it during the school year.)

But none of these concerns come close to the most challenging aspect of teaching and the reason so many are leaving - it's the absolutely unrealistic teaching demands and expectations being placed on teachers to have students reach certain benchmarks despite the fact that they enter our classrooms without the foundational skills they need to be doing grade level work. We can write a million "I can..." statements on our board, and we can implement your curriculum with fidelity as required, and we can monitor progress and adapt the lessons and scaffold them and keep anecdotal records and implement Tier two interventions, but if students are working severely below grade level these little "mini-lessons" aren't going to cut it. They need actual lessons. Actual, below grade level lessons on below grade level skills, and that doesn't happen in a 15 minute mini-lesson. Yet we aren't being allowed to teach below grade level skills with fidelity; it's just impossible to do it in the time you give us. So we do our best, but we know it is't enough, and it just makes work even harder for the teachers the next grade up.

Bartender in a strip club =/= stripper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para.

I can’t speak for other schools, but Eastern’s paras are often in contact with parents, including providing their personal cell phone numbers.

At the schools that I have worked at, the only paras that have any direct contact with parents are the 1:1s (who are of course sped paras). Even then though, those 1:1s often are not attending the IEP meetings for their student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this video is an important reminder for parents and administrators

https://fb.watch/hcxdi1BUVj/?mibextid=0LFGlp

Teachers of all people are not overworked. More than some doing construction, line work, doctor, lawyer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

So, I will agree that having "summers off" is the number one perk of being a teacher. (#2 is, of course, having snow days and #3, your own kids' vacation day schedule, if you have kids).

Continuing to have dental, vision, LTD premiums coverage those months (I get my health insurance through my husband's plan) is a perk as well. It's just 4 pay periods out of a total of 26, it's not like it's some big huge benefit or anything, but yes, there is a benefit there. It's part of the understanding we have when we sign our contract.

There's an alternative: School districts could just pay us for the 22 pay periods we work, and consider us "temporarily unemployed" for the 4 pay periods we don't work. We could file for COBRA, we could file for unemployment. Our biweekly paycheck would go up 18%. Their contribution to our health insurance premiums would go down by 18% -- and then we'd need to lose health coverage for those 4 pay periods unless we contributed it on our own. That seems really complicated to me logistically for a profession where everyone is on the same summer schedule -- where you can anticipate that there will be 8 weeks where people aren't working. To me, it makes sense that part of the salary package includes health insurance for 26 pay periods, not just the 22 you are actively working. But I don't work in HR or Payroll. Maybe it would be easier to do it a different way?

I personally don't feel that would be a decent tradeoff as it really doesn't solve any problems, except maybe it would make parents like you feel better that teachers weren't getting some great summer benefit in keeping their employer subsidized health insurance premiums for 4 pay periods?

I have to add, I don't feel there are any major restrictions on teacher summer jobs. Its true you aren't allowed to tutor your own students or students at your school for pay, but there are summer school options, and you can tutor thousands of other kids who aren't at your school. I don't think it would be a problem if I wanted to work at a bar or anything. Probably working as a stripper would cause some issues. Summer job choice is not a major issue of complaint for any teacher I know, anyhow.

It *is* hard to find summer employment that would be at the same rate as my usual salary.

(My biggest complaint in terms of vacation or days off is actually that all my vacation needs to be taken in the summer or at school breaks, and that I have to take 4 hours off at a time... can't just do one hour here or there (because of sub coverage). As an older teacher and member of the sandwich generation, I need a lot of time off now for medical care for family members. But my district won't let me take just one hour off, it has to be a half day or a full day. I would gladly give up an entire week of summer vacation, just to have a few more hours off when I need it during the school year.)

But none of these concerns come close to the most challenging aspect of teaching and the reason so many are leaving - it's the absolutely unrealistic teaching demands and expectations being placed on teachers to have students reach certain benchmarks despite the fact that they enter our classrooms without the foundational skills they need to be doing grade level work. We can write a million "I can..." statements on our board, and we can implement your curriculum with fidelity as required, and we can monitor progress and adapt the lessons and scaffold them and keep anecdotal records and implement Tier two interventions, but if students are working severely below grade level these little "mini-lessons" aren't going to cut it. They need actual lessons. Actual, below grade level lessons on below grade level skills, and that doesn't happen in a 15 minute mini-lesson. Yet we aren't being allowed to teach below grade level skills with fidelity; it's just impossible to do it in the time you give us. So we do our best, but we know it is't enough, and it just makes work even harder for the teachers the next grade up.

If teachers were considered unemployed during the summer, they’d be considered seasonal employees. At least in Maryland, they wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment.

I don’t really disagree with any of your points. I’m just saying there are several significant benefits to teaching. Summers off with continued health insurance being a big one, which you seem to acknowledge. A lot of the other people that post here won’t acknowledge that as a perk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, how about paraeducators. We work the same hours as teachers during the day, and get four vacation days. Yes Summers and some school holidays, but there are many what they call "no work no pay" days for paraeducators.

The hourly rate is less than what I could make at Starbucks or Costco. There is Health insurance, but that is changing too, for the worse: from CareFirst to Cigna

Thanks for what you do. No question, you are inexcusably underpaid and underappreciated.

+1 and yet we don't see a thread about paraeducators being overworked.

Because for the most part, they're not. In my experience as a special ed teacher, the paras are people who have few other job opportunities and want the school schedule. My MIL worked as a para in a 1st grade class and complained endlessly about working with the kids (and God forbid if she was asked to help with a child with a disability, she wanted nothing to do with them). She took the job when her kids were in HS because she (her DH) wanted the health insurance but couldn't get another job with benefits because she had never worked before.
They get the great parts of the job (working with the kids) without all the junk- dealing with parents, paperwork, lesson planning, etc. The only exception IMO is special ed paras. They deserve way more pay than a run of the mill elementary class para.

I can’t speak for other schools, but Eastern’s paras are often in contact with parents, including providing their personal cell phone numbers.

At the schools that I have worked at, the only paras that have any direct contact with parents are the 1:1s (who are of course sped paras). Even then though, those 1:1s often are not attending the IEP meetings for their student.

When I worked for almost 20 years as a special ed para I did attend some IEP meetings but only when the parents requested it. In general, in my school district, the head of special ed did not want paras to attend IEP meetings despite their being the person most familiar with every aspect of everything about the student. The special ed admin usually had good control over the special ed teachers but not so much over the paras, meaning they could not be sure what the para might say or reveal and the fear was that it might not reflect what the special ed team wanted revealed.

Admittedly some paras are not well trained enough or possibly not sharp enough to know what to say or not say at an IEP meeting and the time required to bring them up to speed was not available, so it was easier to just ban them from attending IEP meetings and avoid any issues arising from paras saying something they shouldn't. I'm sure you can imagine what I'm talking about, like the IEP might say student is accompanied to all specials by support staff and the para pipes up and says "Well that's impossible because I am assigned to monitor lunch for another grade during that time on Wednesdays and Fridays" and just like that they are out of compliance and have to scramble to address that situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The point is, schools are paying for your health care over the summer, even though you’re not doing work for them over the summer. That is a very good deal. Teachers can either treat the summer as a vacation, they can care for their kids without needing to pay for camps, or they can go off an get a summer job that wouldn’t need to include benefits. That’s definitely worth the small restrictions on summer employment that a teacher was complaining about earlier in this thread.

So, I will agree that having "summers off" is the number one perk of being a teacher. (#2 is, of course, having snow days and #3, your own kids' vacation day schedule, if you have kids).

Continuing to have dental, vision, LTD premiums coverage those months (I get my health insurance through my husband's plan) is a perk as well. It's just 4 pay periods out of a total of 26, it's not like it's some big huge benefit or anything, but yes, there is a benefit there. It's part of the understanding we have when we sign our contract.

There's an alternative: School districts could just pay us for the 22 pay periods we work, and consider us "temporarily unemployed" for the 4 pay periods we don't work. We could file for COBRA, we could file for unemployment. Our biweekly paycheck would go up 18%. Their contribution to our health insurance premiums would go down by 18% -- and then we'd need to lose health coverage for those 4 pay periods unless we contributed it on our own. That seems really complicated to me logistically for a profession where everyone is on the same summer schedule -- where you can anticipate that there will be 8 weeks where people aren't working. To me, it makes sense that part of the salary package includes health insurance for 26 pay periods, not just the 22 you are actively working. But I don't work in HR or Payroll. Maybe it would be easier to do it a different way?

I personally don't feel that would be a decent tradeoff as it really doesn't solve any problems, except maybe it would make parents like you feel better that teachers weren't getting some great summer benefit in keeping their employer subsidized health insurance premiums for 4 pay periods?

I have to add, I don't feel there are any major restrictions on teacher summer jobs. Its true you aren't allowed to tutor your own students or students at your school for pay, but there are summer school options, and you can tutor thousands of other kids who aren't at your school. I don't think it would be a problem if I wanted to work at a bar or anything. Probably working as a stripper would cause some issues. Summer job choice is not a major issue of complaint for any teacher I know, anyhow.

It *is* hard to find summer employment that would be at the same rate as my usual salary.

(My biggest complaint in terms of vacation or days off is actually that all my vacation needs to be taken in the summer or at school breaks, and that I have to take 4 hours off at a time... can't just do one hour here or there (because of sub coverage). As an older teacher and member of the sandwich generation, I need a lot of time off now for medical care for family members. But my district won't let me take just one hour off, it has to be a half day or a full day. I would gladly give up an entire week of summer vacation, just to have a few more hours off when I need it during the school year.)

But none of these concerns come close to the most challenging aspect of teaching and the reason so many are leaving - it's the absolutely unrealistic teaching demands and expectations being placed on teachers to have students reach certain benchmarks despite the fact that they enter our classrooms without the foundational skills they need to be doing grade level work. We can write a million "I can..." statements on our board, and we can implement your curriculum with fidelity as required, and we can monitor progress and adapt the lessons and scaffold them and keep anecdotal records and implement Tier two interventions, but if students are working severely below grade level these little "mini-lessons" aren't going to cut it. They need actual lessons. Actual, below grade level lessons on below grade level skills, and that doesn't happen in a 15 minute mini-lesson. Yet we aren't being allowed to teach below grade level skills with fidelity; it's just impossible to do it in the time you give us. So we do our best, but we know it is't enough, and it just makes work even harder for the teachers the next grade up.

If teachers were considered unemployed during the summer, they’d be considered seasonal employees. At least in Maryland, they wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment.

I don’t really disagree with any of your points. I’m just saying there are several significant benefits to teaching. Summers off with continued health insurance being a big one, which you seem to acknowledge. A lot of the other people that post here won’t acknowledge that as a perk.

I don’t really disagree that I enjoy summer, but your idea of all school system employees having to use COBRA for 2 months out of the year is ridiculous from an HR stand point. It also would have stopped me from EVER becoming a teacher and would drastically reduce the workforce. Summer health insurance coverage isn’t a perk as much as it is practical.

[Anonymous]

I'm in my 11th year of teaching and for the first 8 years, I'd agree that the job is worth the summers off. Not anymore. The piling on of extra work without time to do it has changed my mind (and many others who have quit). This will continue until those in charge get their heads out of the a*&#s and realize what teachers actually do all day (hint: it's not sit at our desk). If I wasn't this far in with a kid to put through college, I would've quit. If the powers that be can't read the room, maybe they should read the feedback on the zillion surveys they sit around creating to make themselves look busy. We are not okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers need to quit whining. Even this thread is about why nobody supposedly acknowledges how overworked teachers are. We get it, you feel stressed out, but so are many other professionals. We've already heard you complain about it 1000 times. Why do you think you're special and get to whine louder than everyone else?

I don’t think you can appreciate the stress of teaching unless you’ve done it. Is it the ONLY hard job? Of course not. Are teachers extremely overworked? Yes.

-career changer who has worked in the corporate world. I hard rough weeks in that job, but teaching is considerably more time-consuming and stressful to me.

Fact is that many middling college students who'd rather not get stressed out over grad school self-select into the teaching profession because they think it's an easier gig with lots of vacation time. And then those people get all upset when they realize that teaching is just as hard as many other jobs. So it's not the work per se but the false expectations about teaching that's causing all the whining.

Teachers get very little paid vacation time and that time is dictated to them. They do not have the option of working for more than the ~190 days of the school year without applying for another, different,temporary job. For all practical purposes, they are furloughed every summer.

What? We don't get any paid vacation time. Most teachers work a 190 day contract and they work 190 days. We don't get paid vacation at all. I do get one paid personal day per year and a certain number of sick days.

What do you think “paid vacation time” is? That’s what your personal day is.

That sounds like very little, and it is. Except you also get holidays and many schools breaks off. That’s when other people end up using their paid time off.

Teachers don’t get as many holidays off as Feds do, which is a huge percentage of DCUM.

Care to explain?! Nobody gets off as many 3-day weekends and endless vacations as teachers.

Endless? Please explain.

How many of those "3 day weekends" are actually work days for teachers? No students doesn't mean teachers aren't working. How many are Stat holidays that others also get?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I don’t really disagree with any of your points. I’m just saying there are several significant benefits to teaching. Summers off with continued health insurance being a big one, which you seem to acknowledge. A lot of the other people that post here won’t acknowledge that as a perk.

So I agree that having health insurance coverage continue for the 4 pay periods I am not working over the summer is convenient. I looked up the employer contribution from my district for health insurance premium, and it is about $200 per pay period (depends on your plan chosen of course). So x 4 pay periods = $800 benefit. Cool, but not exactly earth shattering, you know?

I don't know that I would call that a "significant" benefit. My school district also has a pretty good dental plan, but I don't think these things are being used to attract people to the teaching profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers need to quit whining. Even this thread is about why nobody supposedly acknowledges how overworked teachers are. We get it, you feel stressed out, but so are many other professionals. We've already heard you complain about it 1000 times. Why do you think you're special and get to whine louder than everyone else?

I don’t think you can appreciate the stress of teaching unless you’ve done it. Is it the ONLY hard job? Of course not. Are teachers extremely overworked? Yes.

-career changer who has worked in the corporate world. I hard rough weeks in that job, but teaching is considerably more time-consuming and stressful to me.

Fact is that many middling college students who'd rather not get stressed out over grad school self-select into the teaching profession because they think it's an easier gig with lots of vacation time. And then those people get all upset when they realize that teaching is just as hard as many other jobs. So it's not the work per se but the false expectations about teaching that's causing all the whining.

Teachers get very little paid vacation time and that time is dictated to them. They do not have the option of working for more than the ~190 days of the school year without applying for another, different,temporary job. For all practical purposes, they are furloughed every summer.

Not only are teachers furloughed all summer, but there are restrictions on what jobs they can do during those eight weeks. My sister in law had to turn down an offer to tend bar in a strip club. It’s not just morality clauses, either. For example, in my district, a teacher can’t nanny or tutor a child who might end up as a student at their school.

They’re still collecting benefits, namely subsidized health care, over the summer. Perhaps a fair trade would be forgoing the school’s contribution to health care premiums over the summer months in return for removing any restrictions on outside employment.

This is not a good solution. If schools end the health care coverage, then teachers would need to find some other health care coverage for the summer months. For teachers or dependents who have special circumstances, if they lost health coverage, when they resumed health coverage in the fall, they or one of their dependents might no longer qualify. When you transition from one health care to another, the new insurer has to accept any preexisting conditions. If you stop and restart the health care coverage, then they do not have to accept preexisting conditions. So, then, if teachers did not have alternative coverage, for example a spouse that had health care coverage AND that the ending of benefits for a seasonal position was considered a qualifying event to change outside of enrollment period, then they would need to find an start a ACA covered insurance plan that could provide coverage for the 2 month interruption of coverage. This is a horrible idea for many.

Alternatively, if you had teachers paid for 10 months and not paid for two months, then how would you collect the outstanding premiums for the remaining two months of the summer break. You are saying that the school district would forgot the school systems contribution. So you are saying that these teachers would not have the option to get paid for 10 months, that they would have to be prorated to be paid over 12 months so that the premiums could still be withdrawn? Or they would have ten months of premiums that were charged at one rate and two months of premiums at a second higher rate that would be deducted during the ten months of the school year. But then, what would happen if a teacher left employment at the end of the school year? Would the higher deduction rate of the summer months be reimbursed to them? What if they left in the middle of the school year? How would those prorated higher rate premiums be reimbursed to them when they left?

Trying to account for 10 months of premiums at one rate and two months of premiums at a different rate, and distributed over 10 months/22 pay periods and still not overcharge employees when they leave employment would be an accounting nightmare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like this thread would have been better served by saying "I need to complain about how overworked I feel" and then go and do so. But it is phrased as "I need YOU to understand how overworked I feel" and trust me, we know you feel overworked. Partly because many of us also feel overworked.

I'm the OP. I couldn't phrase it that way because I am not a teacher. I am just a school parent that is embarrassed by many other parents who are pretty obnoxious and condescending to teachers and helping administrators to drive teachers from the profession. I see some of the best teachers, who my children have enjoyed having, leaving the profession because of how abusive a significantly large subset of parents behave. And I have a ton of friends who are teachers and listening to their grievances, upsets me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like this thread would have been better served by saying "I need to complain about how overworked I feel" and then go and do so. But it is phrased as "I need YOU to understand how overworked I feel" and trust me, we know you feel overworked. Partly because many of us also feel overworked.

I'm the OP. I couldn't phrase it that way because I am not a teacher. I am just a school parent that is embarrassed by many other parents who are pretty obnoxious and condescending to teachers and helping administrators to drive teachers from the profession. I see some of the best teachers, who my children have enjoyed having, leaving the profession because of how abusive a significantly large subset of parents behave. And I have a ton of friends who are teachers and listening to their grievances, upsets me.

OP,
Thank you for seeing what you see. I just finished planning my weekly lessons a moment ago and broke down crying. I don’t think I have the strength for it, being in front of my students all day with no break. I’m running on fumes. That’s what I hate most about my job: when you’re on, you are ON. And you are always ON. My 7-week summer, which is definitely a benefit, doesn’t outweigh the burden of the day-to-day exhaustion.

-18 year teacher, who thinks it’s getting harder as more responsibilities get put on us

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not a good solution. If schools end the health care coverage, then teachers would need to find some other health care coverage for the summer months. For teachers or dependents who have special circumstances, if they lost health coverage, when they resumed health coverage in the fall, they or one of their dependents might no longer qualify. When you transition from one health care to another, the new insurer has to accept any preexisting conditions. If you stop and restart the health care coverage, then they do not have to accept preexisting conditions. So, then, if teachers did not have alternative coverage, for example a spouse that had health care coverage AND that the ending of benefits for a seasonal position was considered a qualifying event to change outside of enrollment period, then they would need to find an start a ACA covered insurance plan that could provide coverage for the 2 month interruption of coverage. This is a horrible idea for many.

Alternatively, if you had teachers paid for 10 months and not paid for two months, then how would you collect the outstanding premiums for the remaining two months of the summer break. You are saying that the school district would forgot the school systems contribution. So you are saying that these teachers would not have the option to get paid for 10 months, that they would have to be prorated to be paid over 12 months so that the premiums could still be withdrawn? Or they would have ten months of premiums that were charged at one rate and two months of premiums at a second higher rate that would be deducted during the ten months of the school year. But then, what would happen if a teacher left employment at the end of the school year? Would the higher deduction rate of the summer months be reimbursed to them? What if they left in the middle of the school year? How would those prorated higher rate premiums be reimbursed to them when they left?

Trying to account for 10 months of premiums at one rate and two months of premiums at a different rate, and distributed over 10 months/22 pay periods and still not overcharge employees when they leave employment would be an accounting nightmare.

School districts would just have to withhold more from each teacher's pay check for their summer pay, to account for the extra, say, $800 they wouldn't pay over the summer pay periods (as per my example earlier)

So ...22 pay periods paid and 4 pay periods not paid (paid out of summer fund). Divide the extra $800 employer portion of insurance benefit by 22 pay periods = withhold another $36/2 week pay period from the teacher salary to pay their insurance premium over the 4 pay periods when they are not working in the summer.

NO ONE would do this though, because it is a nonsense issue. No one is seriously upset because teachers get employer contributions to their health care benefits over the summer months. They may be upset that teachers don't have to work over the summer months at all, but they really aren't worried about who is paying teacher health care premiums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I don’t really disagree with any of your points. I’m just saying there are several significant benefits to teaching. Summers off with continued health insurance being a big one, which you seem to acknowledge. A lot of the other people that post here won’t acknowledge that as a perk.

So I agree that having health insurance coverage continue for the 4 pay periods I am not working over the summer is convenient. I looked up the employer contribution from my district for health insurance premium, and it is about $200 per pay period (depends on your plan chosen of course). So x 4 pay periods = $800 benefit. Cool, but not exactly earth shattering, you know?

I don't know that I would call that a "significant" benefit. My school district also has a pretty good dental plan, but I don't think these things are being used to attract people to the teaching profession.

As another example, an MCPS Carefirst PPO family plan costs $770 biweekly (over the full year). The employee pays 17%-- $131. The district pays $639.