Reply to Teacher Discounts on Tuition?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here, thank you - the term "tuition remission" is even new to me- so thanks for pointing me in that direction.

What I most appreciate from having read the threads is that it is a dicey relationship it puts your family in possibly: other people getting annoyed with you for getting a perk, either the other parents or other faculty.  I hadn't considered that before.  In the public setting it is a wonderful thing for moms/dad and their kids to go to the same school, and everyone gets treated better whereas it sounds like there is potential resentment about the issue in the private setting all the way around, no matter how it is handled from a policy perspective.  Interesting for me to ponder.

17:45 - is the school you are referring to SSSAS?  Just curious.  [/quote]

Like many things on DCUM, the supposed resentment over faculty kids is something largely limited to a few antisocial posters on this board; my kids go to the school where my spouse teaches, and we've never had even the slightest feeling of being different or resented by other families.  Tuition remission is an employee benefit, just like health insurance and 401k contributions, designed to attract the best employees.  Private schools are competing for the most talented teachers, and tuition benefits are a good way of doing that (and for most schools easier to manage than offering higher salaries) - a number of the teachers at our school (including my spouse) were highly sought after by several schools and chose our school in part because they liked the idea of having their kids at the school where they teach, so tuition remission made our school more attractive to them despite comparable (and sometimes lower) salaries. Being annoyed about these teachers "getting a perk" is nonsensical - and again, I've seen zero evidence that anyone thinks or acts like that in real life.

As an aside, I also think it's good for morale and sense of of community when the teachers and administrators are invested in and committed to the school not just as employees but also parents.  When our kids previously went to a private school where my spouse didn't teach, I felt good about seeing faculty kids in their classes - it's a sign the teachers believe in their school and the quality of the education they're providing.      [/quote]

1) People who object to tuition remission are not resentful or “antisocial”.
2) Tuition remission is not the same as health insurance or 401K contributions because the benefit is only offered to a subset of employees. 
3) If PP really views tuition remission as ‘”getting a perk”’ then clearly PP doesn’t understand the income loss to the school due to tuition remission. Using PP 23:07 as an example, even at a 50% Potomac discount why should one teacher receive $15,000, $30,000, $45,000 etc. (depending on the number of kids) per year for possibly 13 years? That’s not a perk; it’s an unequal distribution of benefits.  
4) The proponents of tuition remission always say that it “attracts good teachers”. What they fail to acknowledge is that every employee (bookkeepers, secretaries, aftercare coordinators, camp directors, etc.) receives the benefit, which amounts to a huge amount of money. At a previous DC school a secretary received full tuition for four kids for 13 years at a rate of ~$30,000/kid. Why should a secretary, or any employee, receive a $120,000 per year benefit let alone for years? Is the school balancing that benefit by donating that amount to other employees 401K?
5)  The teacher kids numbers are huge – sometimes my kids were in classes with half the class teacher kids (free tuition). That means half of the class was paying for the full class. Also, teachers are typically not big donors. Therefore, there’s a two-way income hit to the school. 
6) The continuous whining about how little teachers make and how they take a pay cut at private schools gets old. No one made them be teachers. It’s a choice. Too, a lot of times the spouse makes a huge income, so why should a teacher with a spouse that makes a lot of money receive tuition remission?
7) Teacher kids are typically favored in the classroom. The misbehaved kids are never counseled out and any misbehavior is handled casually. Aftercare is especial bad. At my DCs school, the teacher/staff kids wander around and taunt the aftercare kids flaunting their freedom. 
8) Providing tuition remission does not create a “sense of community”. So many of the teachers who are at a school due to tuition remission leave after their kids leave the school. Parents can tell who is passionate about teaching and who isn’t. Too, teachers tell the parents they are there only for tuition remission. Their leaving just advertises that they are only there only for tuition remission.
[/quote]

Hmm, sounds pretty resentful and antisocial to me, but to each his/her own.  You're missing the point that this is really about basic economics - if your observations were accurate and the benefit didn't attract better teachers at lower salaries, then schools wouldn't offer it.  No one on this thread is "whining about how much teachers make" - the point is that in all job markets, the employers who offer the most competitive salary/benefits packages are going to get the most talented employees.  If you look through the faculty directory at our school, you'll see a lot of ivy league degrees and phds, and most importantly the names of teachers who by all accounts are phenomenally good at what they do.  And many of them will tell you that they chose our school because the tuition discount made the salary/benefits package more attractive than other school.  I assume you agree that people who go into teaching are educated/talented/desired enough to make choices about where to work the same way everyone else does, and that the more talented your kids' teachers are, the more you're getting for your money?

There are all sorts of employee benefits that benefit some employees more than others - if you've got more kids, then you get more out of health insurance; if you want to get a masters degree, then an employer contribution toward continuing education is going to benefit you more than someone who already has a masters degree; and so on.  Are you also bitter about maternity leave because it only benefits women who just had babies?

I'm sorry morale is low at your school, and that apparently it has to do with faculty kids running around taunting other kids.  We've been at two private schools, one where my spouse teaches and one where we were just a regular full paying family, and at both places the faculty kids fit it beautifully and helped make the schools a special place.  OP, my main point is just that you shouldn't take posts like the PPs as reflecting what you would encounter in real life where reasonable people don't think or talk this way.  [/quote]

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