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‘N.J. teacher salaries debate continues amid Gov. Christie's school aid cuts’ By Statehouse Bureau Staff
‘Last chance for NJEA to save New Jersey teachers' jobs’ By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
Press of Atlantic City ‘Battle over budgets creates image problem for New Jersey teachers union’
‘N.J. teacher salaries debate continues amid Gov. Christie's school aid cuts’ By Statehouse Bureau Staff May 16, 2010, 6:30AM
TRENTON--Susan LiBrizzi, a divorced mother of four, earns $61,798 a year as a special-education teacher in the Flemington-Raritan Regional School District — enough, she says, to pay the bills.
Over the years, she has taken on summer jobs — cleaning houses, tutoring, baby-sitting — for extra cash as her salary has increased by $300 or $400 a year.
Now LiBrizzi, who has taught for 14 years, is due a $4,000 raise — and the governor wants her to give it back.
"I feel like staying middle-class is a struggle," said LiBrizzi, 48, who lives in Bridgewater. "I still have two more kids to put through college, and it’s scary."
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In his quest to pressure teachers to accept a pay freeze, Gov. Chris Christie has portrayed them as a privileged class, untouched by the recession.
But a Star-Ledger analysis of the salaries of New Jersey’s nearly 113,000 public school teachers finds that more of them are like Susan LiBrizzi than like Rockefeller.
Most would be considered middle-class in New Jersey, making less on average than firefighters, cops, engineers and business middle managers, and more than social services workers and sales representatives.
The analysis found:
• The median pay among New Jersey’s public school classroom teachers is $57,467 a year — meaning half of them earn more than that, and half earn less. The average is $63,154, with more than half of the teachers earning from $40,000 to $60,000.
• New Jersey’s teachers are the fourth-highest-paid in the country, behind California’s, New York’s and Connecticut’s, and make nearly $10,000 more than the national average. But not quite 2 percent make more than $100,000, and the average salary in New Jersey is in line with other Northeastern states with similar costs of living.
• Administrators are pulling down much bigger paychecks, with 235 making more than the governor’s $175,000 salary.
• There are vast differences in teacher pay within geographic and socioeconomic boundaries in New Jersey. Median pay varies as much as $18,000 between districts that sit side by side.
The Star-Ledger used salary data of certified teachers from the New Jersey Department of Education’s 2008-09 school year, the most recent figures available. The analysis is based purely on how much classroom teachers are paid for their work period (which, for most, is 10 months). It does not include benefits such as health care and pension. The figures also do not include extra pay that teachers may get for coaching sports teams or running school clubs or other activities.
The findings did not surprise Mike Griffith, senior policy analyst at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States. He said that even though unions have pushed salaries higher, the nation’s teachers generally are paid less than people in other professions that require similar degrees.
"Some people would say it’s still low, even now after all these adjustments," Griffith said. "At least it’s better than it was. But it’s definitely not a job you go into thinking that you’re going to make a ton of money."
In response to the analysis, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said the governor understands most teachers are not wealthy. But Drewniak noted they get summers off and said they cannot expect salary increases and generous benefits regardless of the economy and local taxpayers’ ability to foot the bill.
"The expectation that that should continue unabated is unrealistic and impractical in the current economic environment. That’s the point here," he said. "It’s time for a break and a reality check."
THE FIGHT
More than two decades after Christie’s mentor, Gov. Tom Kean, pushed through mandatory raises for teachers, the issue of teacher pay and benefits has taken center stage in Trenton.
In his call for "shared sacrifice" during the state budget crisis, Christie says public school teachers can afford to take a one-year wage freeze and pay at least 1.5 percent of their salary toward the cost of their health benefits — which, he says, can cost up to $22,000 a year for family coverage. He says most teachers, "when you put salaries and benefits together, are making a significant amount of money," and he notes that pay freezes are common in the private sector.
The state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, says most teachers can’t afford a freeze in pay, and that 70 percent are paying something toward health care (although that includes teachers who simply make co-pays to doctors or pharmacies). The union is predicting record crowds of teachers and other public workers will gather for a protest at the Statehouse this Saturday.
"He doesn’t understand the work that we do. He thinks that we have an easy job," Deirdre Cooke, a special- education teacher in Ogdensburg, Sussex County, said of the governor. Cooke, with a master’s degree and 27 years of experience, makes $76,000. "We live in one of the most expensive places in the country. In order to live in this state, we need to have a salary that at least gives us a livable wage," Cooke said.
ALL OVER THE MAP
Teacher salaries are determined in contract negotiations between each school board and local bargaining unit.
Each school system has a salary guide or pay scale. But because each district negotiates its own contracts and has reasons to pay more or less, teacher pay is all over the map in New Jersey. Rich, middle-class and poor districts are all well-represented among the 20 districts that pay the highest teacher salaries. But they are also well-represented in the 20 that pay the lowest. (These figures do not include the pay at charter schools,)
For example, a typical teacher in Rumson, where the median household income tops $146,000, makes $56,470. By contrast, a typical teacher with similar experience in the Ridgewood district — where the recent estimate of median income is $118,550 — makes $72,980.
The differences persist in poor districts. With eight years of experience, a typical teacher in East Newark, in Hudson County, makes $44,087, and in New Brunswick makes $71,697.
In some poorer communities, teachers make far more than the typical resident. In Trenton, a typical teacher has 13 years of experience and makes $77,751, about twice the median income in the city.
And geography doesn’t necessarily matter. In West Orange, a typical teacher is paid $69,020 and has seven years of experience; right next door in Orange, the median is $51,550 and six years of experience.
Drewniak said the wide range of pay can be a problem when some districts are pressured to award big raises because their neighbors have done it. He said a recent Christie proposal to give more power to executive county superintendents over teacher contracts would help bring predictability to the pay system.
MOST AND LEAST
Even with big differences from district to district, increased education and experience help teachers climb the pay scale just about everywhere. New Jersey teachers with a master’s degree typically earn at least $3,200 more annually than those with a bachelor’s degree and the same level of experience, according to a 2010 study by the Council of State Governments.
The highest-paid teachers in New Jersey are in Ocean City, a middle-class district in Cape May County with 2,103 students in three schools. The median salary is $82,801. Teachers there have a median of 17 years of teaching in New Jersey, and about 70 percent have a master’s degree. Across the state, 38 percent of the teachers have a master’s degree.
The Carlstadt-East Rutherford Regional High School District in Bergen County has median teacher pay of $81,707 and 10 years of experience; about half of the teachers have master’s degrees.
Not counting charter schools, the district with the lowest median pay is Elmer in Salem County, where the six teachers have a median salary of $41,033 and a median five years’ experience — and none has advanced degrees, according to the department’s data. Allamuchy Township in Warren County provides a median salary of $42,450 to its teachers, who have a median six years’ experience.
The state Education Department statistics present charter schools as their own districts. Charter schools, most of them relatively new, tend to have the least-experienced teachers and the lowest salaries. Median pay ranges from $65,421 at the 23-teacher Elysian Charter School in Hoboken to $35,510 at the eight-teacher Classical Academy Charter School of Clifton.
Christie backs the concept of charter schools. Meanwhile, education commissioner Bret Schundler is pushing for pension changes to encourage the state’s most-experienced teachers to retire this summer — and a plan to base teacher pay on merit.
Many superintendents said their staffs are worth more than they’re paid.
"People think most teachers go home at 3 o’clock and they don’t work in the summer," said Anthony Cavanna, superintendent in West Orange. "The reality is, at 6 or 7 o’clock at night, you’ll still see teachers up at the high school, working with students and getting them ready for the next day."
Newark, the state’s largest district, has "very senior staff," schools spokeswoman Valerie Merritt said, but the district lures younger teachers with a starting salary that was $50,000 in 2009-10. Newark’s median salary is $66,200 with 10 years’ median experience, and Merritt said teachers do not contribute to health benefits other than by making co-pays.
"We purposely increased our starting salary so that we are more attractive to new, quality teachers than surrounding districts," she said.
Christie, however, has taken a dim view of how that has worked out. In a speech earlier this month to school-choice advocates in Washington, he called Newark "an absolutely disgraceful public education system, one that should embarrass our entire state."
On the lower end of the pay spectrum, Milltown in Middlesex County pays a median salary of $43,696 and teachers have a median experience level of six years. Some teachers at the two-school district will leap to other districts for the higher pay, superintendent Linda Madison said.
"We don’t have any money here, I don’t know how else to say it," Madison said. "The board of education is (coming) from the perspective of looking out for the taxpayer and getting the most bang for their buck."
HOW TEACHERS STACK UP
New Jersey’s average teacher pay of $63,154 is higher than the per capita income in the state, $50,313, but lower than for some comparable professions.
Among public workers, the police in New Jersey are the highest-paid in the nation, with an average base salary of $75,400. Firefighters, on average, make $69,620, also highest in the country.
The median pay for teachers with master’s degrees is $66,212, nearly $9,000 less than what other New Jersey residents with master’s degree make.
According to U.S. Labor Department wage estimates for New Jersey, teachers make less than accountants ($76,380), architects ($81,590), and computer systems analysts ($89,390), and more than marriage counselors ($55,850), graphic designers ($49,590) and licensed practical nurses ($49,570).
Griffith, with the Education Commission of the States, said New Jersey’s ranking as the fourth in the nation in teacher pay is understandable because of the high cost of living in the Northeast. New Jersey teacher pay is slightly less than in states like New York and Connecticut and slightly more than in Massachusetts and Maryland.
Christie, however, says teacher compensation is a driving force behind the nation’s highest property taxes. Some taxpayers agree.
Sara Alford, 71, a retired artist who moved to Franklin Township, Somerset County, from Texas seven years ago, said she was shocked at the costs of public education.
Alford, who said she has co-owned three companies, said "it took spine" for Christie to demand that teachers freeze their pay.
Bridgewater Township Council President Matthew Moench, who is working to cut the Bridgewater-Raritan school district’s budget after voters rejected it last month, said he is married to an art teacher in another district but still believes teachers should freeze their pay.
"I know firsthand how hard teachers work," Moench said. "You can’t have the private sector seeing salary freezes or salary reductions and at the same time expecting that same private sector to also pay significant salary increases for the public sector. It just won’t work."
INTENSE SPOTLIGHT
All told, teachers in just 33 of the state’s approximately 600 districts have taken Christie up on his call to cut or freeze their pay, according to the state. In some districts, the intense spotlight on the salary issue has created stress among teachers, parents and administrators. While kids were being dismissed recently in Alexandria Township, where teachers did not accept a freeze, one parent verbally berated a teacher for budget problems, superintendent Matthew Jennings said.
In nearby Stockton, a tiny pre-kindergarten-through-sixth-grade district, school board president Jim Gallagher noted teachers are not offered family health coverage.
"As somebody who lives and works in the private sector, and is trying to run a small business in this economy, I understand when people say, ‘I’m not getting a raise; why are teachers getting raises, even a 1 percent raise?’" Gallagher said. "I understand times are very bad. I understand there’s a lot of anger. I think it’s unfair — and I think it’s unfortunate — that teachers have become kind of the target."
By Lisa Fleisher and Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau Staff and Sean Sposito.
‘Last chance for NJEA to save New Jersey teachers' jobs’
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
May 16, 2010, 6:30AM
Teachers in only 30 New Jersey school districts have accepted some form of pay freeze, according to New Jersey School Boards Association data. And that means a record number of teachers will be laid off and programs cut.
There is no official estimate on how many will receive pink slips, which started going out last week. But New Jersey Education Association spokesman Steve Baker said the numbers are “unprecedented in New Jersey’s history.”
So, as towns scrape from the bone of voter-rejected school budgets, facing a May 19 deadline to revise them, teachers have one last chance to accept their share of the economic pain and save colleagues’ jobs. But rather than pitch in, local unions are digging in.
After the school budget was defeated in Fairfield, the teachers’ union was asked by the mayor and council to accept a salary freeze in a last-gasp effort to protect the district from drastic cuts. The teachers, with a 4 percent raise coming, refused.
“Agreeing to a one-year freeze does not satisfy the budget crisis,” said Carrieann Lazzizera, copresident of the local union.
It’s a position teachers have taken in district after district: A pay freeze wouldn’t close the entire budget gap, so why should they accept one?
Think of it this way: Mom and Dad, their private-sector incomes reduced by pay cuts and furloughs, need to slash $10,000 from the household budget. Mom asks Dad to give up his Starbucks habit, which would save $3,000. But Dad won’t budge: “Why should I give that up?” he says. “By itself, it won’t solve our budget problem.”
Right, it’s a silly argument.
A pay freeze in Fairfield would comprise 77 percent of the needed $140,000 in cuts. But teachers there, and throughout the state, have thumbed their noses at taxpayers — the same taxpayers who have made teachers among the highest-paid in the nation, with an average salary of $63,154, a pension and, until recently, free health care benefits. So taxes will go up, programs will be eliminated and teachers will lose jobs. Hamilton will fire 75 teachers, and the union won’t even allow its membership to vote on a pay freeze that would save many of those jobs.
“We don’t have to lose 75 teachers,” said Fred Schwartz, president of the Hamilton teachers union. “If it happens, it happens by choice — the administration’s choice, the governor’s choice and (the township council’s) choice.”
No, actually, by the union’s choice.
Press of Atlantic City ‘Battle over budgets creates image problem for New Jersey teachers union’
By DIANE D’AMICO Education Writer | Posted: Monday, May 10, 2010
When Gov. Chris Christie battles over school funding with the state’s largest teachers union, he takes on a $131 million corporation that directs major resources into lobbying, advertising and lawsuits.
The New Jersey Education Association collected $98.4 million in dues from its members during its 2007 tax year, as is shown on its most recent Internal Revenue Service filing, which covered Sept. 1, 2007, to Aug. 31, 2008.
Those dues, paid by almost 130,000 teachers in annual increments of $731 (50,000 noncertified employees pay less), support one of the most influential lobbying forces in the state. The NJEA’s gross receipts for 2007-08, including $717,000 in proceeds from the annual convention in Atlantic City, were $131.4 million.
But the NJEA has an image problem. The tax-exempt nonprofit group that bills itself in ads as “making schools great for every child” is now vilified as being interested only in making salaries higher for every teacher and perpetuating its own power.
Gov. Chris Christie has helped paint that image, even citing the NJEA director’s salary. Executive Director Vincent Giordano earned $421,615 in 2007-08, the most recent year for which public records are available. He also received $128,508 worth of benefits and deferred compensation. That year’s salary included a one-time deferred compensation payment, but his current salary, $300,000 is still more than is earned by the governor, who makes $175,000.
NJEA officials say they are victims, scapegoats for a governor who wants to destroy public schools and replace them with a system of charter schools and vouchers.
“The governor needed a bogeyman, and we’re it,” NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said.
Others say the NJEA created its own problems.
“They have painted themselves into a corner,” said Jerry Cantrell, president of the New Jersey Taxpayers Association. “Are they a professional education association or a union? They are still a very powerful group, but they have lost some credibility with the public.”
More than a union
The NJEA rarely calls itself a union. Even its name focuses on education rather than teachers.
It spent $5 million on advertising and $2 million on public relations in 2007-08, promoting New Jersey public school successes. It produces a feature on the New Jersey Network called Classroom Closeup featuring motivated teachers doing innovative projects with their students. Its annual convention in Atlantic City, one of the largest in the country, offers hundred of training workshops. It created a Center for Teaching and Learning and spent $6 million on training programs in 2007-08.
But that’s just one part of its mission, as stated on its IRS 990 form: “The (tax)-exempt purpose of the New Jersey Education Association is to improve its members’ professional abilities and to secure for them better salaries and working conditions, sponsor seminars and courses for its members, participate in teachers conventions, bargain collectively and process grievances, and keep its members informed of its activities.”
Its officers are well paid. Joyce Powell, a former special education teacher in Vineland, made $237,100 plus $91,522 in benefits and deferred compensation while she served as president in 2007-08. Then-Vice President Barbara Keshishian, who is now president, and Secretary-Treasurer Wendell Steinhauer each earned $160,100, plus $61,659 in benefits and deferred compensation.
That year, the NJEA also spent $41.3 million in salaries, benefits and pension contributions to staff its Trenton-based operations. Its offices are within walking distance of the Statehouse. Staff members attend legislative hearings and state Board of Education meetings. Regional offices across the state provide advice to local school-district unions.
The NJEA spent $6.6 million on legal fees in 2007-08, defending members and litigating against legislation.
“Teachers are entitled to legal services,” Wollmer said. “That is another good reason to join.”
School employees are not required to join the union but must still pay a fee for service.
This year, the NJEA also filed suit against the new state law requiring school employees to pay 1.5 percent of their salary toward their health benefits, and against an executive order that would extend pay-to-play political limits to unions.
They and other state unions won the second suit Friday, when a state appellate court said the governor did not have the authority to issue that order.
The NJEA has a separate political action committee, which donates to Democratic and Republican Legislative candidates alike. The PAC spent $1.5 million in 2009 — as shown on its January 2010 filing with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission — including tens of thousands of dollars on activities in support of Democratic Gov. Jon. S. Corzine, who lost to Christie in November.
‘Politically partisan and polarizing’
Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute, which supports public-school choice, wrote a paper for the Cato Journal on the effects of teachers unions on American education in which he called them “politically partisan and polarizing.”
In a phone interview, Coulson said teachers unions are very effective in representing their members’ interests. The problem, he said, is that they have been able to use their power to maintain a monopoly on public education in America, which he believes is not in the public’s best interest.
When times are good and money is plentiful, both the education system and the teachers benefit, he said. But when times are tough, as they are now, the union puts the teachers’ interests first, which can put them at odds with the system.
“They are very effective at lobbying to get more money into education,” he said. “And it is easier to increase salaries when all schools get more money. But the economy turned, and now teachers are often making more money than the people in the towns where they work. It sets the interests of the teachers against the parents and taxpayers.”
Opposing the NJEA is difficult. Frank Belluscio of the New Jersey School Boards Association said it often agrees with the NJEA on education issues. But when it does not, the association does not have the same influence with legislators. The NJSBA is a largely service-oriented group, with a budget of about $8 million per year.
Belluscio cited lifetime post-retirement benefits as one example of a benefit the state Legislature gave teachers at a tremendous cost to taxpayers.
The economy and political groups such as the tea-party movement have generated public awareness of union influence and are using it to promote their own agendas.
Ben Boychuk of the conservative Heartland Institute said people are beginning to realize that the unions (not the teachers themselves, he said, but their unions) wield disproportionate power in Trenton and all over the country.
“Their pension benefits are going to bankrupt us all,” he said in an e-mail. “They’re all about maintaining the status quo, not serving the public or the students.”
Wollmer said the teachers are the union, and separating them is an attempt to be divisive. He said that while 58 percent of school budgets were defeated in April, only 52 percent of total voters rejected them, indicating many people are happy with their schools.
“Teachers are freaked out right now,” he said. “They feel like they did nothing wrong. They feel victimized.”
Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, believes the NJEA is so used to winning in Trenton that it has forgotten the art of compromise in politics.
“It’s not losing just to stand back and reassess,” she said. “Times have changed. The leadership needs to adapt.”
State Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, sits on both sides of the issue as a state legislator and a teacher in Atlantic City. He said he is grateful for the strides the union has made over the past 30 years in getting better salaries for teachers.
But, he said, the NJEA has to realize that the economy has changed and adjustments must be made.
“It used to be that public employees were poorly paid, but you had job security and benefits and a pension,” he said. “But now we are paid well, sometimes better than those in the private sector. It’s a fundamental shift.”
Contact Diane D’Amico, 609-272-7241, DDamico@pressofac.com
