The Education of a Reporter and Teachers' Salaries

When I began my journalism career at The New Haven Register back in 1972, my immediate boss, Don Anderson, a gruff, cigar-chomping-but-never-smoking old-line bureau chief with a crusty exterior but a soft heart, instilled in me several principles. First and foremost, no matter what a source tells you, there’s always a story to be found and retold in the paper. I learned that the hard way on my first assignment. 

I was to find out why a multi-unit housing development in Derby, Conn., had not been completed. After telling Don several times there was nothing to report, he suggested two alternatives. Either I could go back out and find the real story behind the delay in construction or I could pack up my desk and never come back. As if to emphasize he was not kidding about the latter option, he picked up my heavy Royal manual typewriter and flung it across the newsroom. Hardly anyone stopped what they were doing. Apparently he had done that before. 

He wasn’t finished with my “training.” He appeared ready to heave me out a third floor window. I wisely deferred to his experienced take on the respectability and credibility of developers following through on their real estate promises. I soon discovered the Derby project had been mothballed so the developer could pour more of his resources into a different project in nearby Oxford. 

Another of Don’s biases expressed itself in his disdain for teacher union contracts. Like too many of the residents of the Lower Naugatuck Valley—the mill towns of Ansonia, Derby, Seymour and Shelton—Don thought teachers were overpaid considering they “worked” just 180 days a year and then only from around 8 am to 3 pm, with two months off during the summer and assorted national and religious holidays the rest of the year. 

Perhaps he was relating their salaries to the paltry compensation The Register paid its reportorial staff. I don’t know what Don made, but two years later, when I became the bureau chief of West Haven, Bethany, Orange and Woodbridge, I earned just $200 a week. I was one of seven bureau chiefs on a staff of 100 reporters. Even in early 1970s incomes, Register salaries were low. You no doubt can understand why the Newspaper Guild won a unionization ballot in 1974. Our salaries were immediately frozen pending a contract agreement. More than two years later, some six months after I left The Register, a contract settlement raised a bureau chief's salary to close to $400 a week. 

I was reminded of Don’s antipathy toward teachers by the passing of a respected high school teacher described in my previous blog post and by a Facebook posting by a recent Meredith Menden about the value the public receives from educators. I’ve reprinted it for your edification (full disclosure—my sister Lee’s a retired elementary school teacher and brought Meredith’s commentary to my attention):

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do—babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning—that equals 6-1/2 hours).

So each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now, how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day.

However, remember, they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE ...

That’s $585 X 180 = $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6-1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute—there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nationwide) is $50,000.

$50,000/180 days = $277.77 per day / 30 students = $9.25 / 6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student—a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Newtown Memories

Have you ever been to Newtown? Gilda and I have, she more than I. As pained as everyone is about the unspeakable tragedy that overwhelmed the nation there Friday, a deeper anguish, I believe, may be felt by those who can personally relate to that beautiful, picturesque Connecticut community.

We lived in Connecticut from 1973 through mid-1977. While Gilda was earning her nursing degree from the University of Bridgeport from 1973 to 1975, she spent a five-month semester in a training rotation at Fairfield Hills State Hospital in Newtown. It was a psychiatric center with some 4,000 patients at its peak use. The state closed the hospital in 1995. The 100-acre site was turned over to the Town of Newtown in 2004. 

From our apartment in Seymour, Gilda would drive up to Fairfield Hills on Route 34 alongside the Housatonic River, past the village of Sandy Hook which is part of the Town of Newtown. Weekends, we would sometimes retrace that route as we explored western Connecticut around Danbury and further north, up to Litchfield. Western Connecticut back then was dreamy in its small town, Americana appearance. White colonial homes surrounded well-groomed village greens, at the side of which usually stood a stately Congregational Church, its spire reaching majestically to a blue sky. Rarely did you pass a traffic light. Of course, Newtown and the whole region have changed in the near 40 years since we traveled those bucolic roadways. The last time we visited Newtown was in 1993. Dan’s traveling all-star soccer team participated in the one-day Memorial Day Kickoff Tournament. Among the trophies still housed in his room, I found the jersey patch he received that day.

Like most parents I wanted to reach out and hug my children when they came home Friday. Alas, they are grown and have homes of their own. I talked with them, but it was not the same. 

Swept into the sadness of the tragedy was the feeling of futility experienced by many first responders, including nurses and doctors on the scene and in area hospitals who eagerly waited to tend to the wounded. But only two frail, soon to be lifeless, bodies emerged from the killing field. The medical professionals were told to go home. Eleven years ago on September 11, Gilda waited with other nurses and doctors for the injured to arrive at Manhattan’s Beth Israel Medical Center. They waited the whole day in vain.

This country is in denial. Margaret Brennan of CBS News, who grew up in nearby Danbury, said on CBS-2 Saturday, “There isn’t a gun culture here. It’s one of those small, New England towns you go to to avoid the city, and things like this don’t happen.” But how do you explain that Nancy Lanza had five guns at home, including two high-powered revolvers and an assault rifle her son used to kill 26 innocents in cold blood at short range? 

Guns permeate our society. They are so readily accessible. Remember, the Columbine shooters used guns from one of the parents. We are a culture that denigrates teachers but upholds and lauds the right to carry arms, openly in public and increasingly on school grounds.

Why do so many begrudge teachers better pay? Why don’t we realize teachers are professionals we entrust to mold the future of America? Why don't we realize that when unimaginable horror confronts our children, it is a teacher who protects them, sometimes with his or her life?

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching visual of the entire massacre was not the line of children running to safety, or individual pictures of the deceased, but rather the wooden sign hanging in front of the Sandy Hook Elementary School that simply and invitingly stated, “Visitors Welcome.” No more can such an earnest sentiment be expressed, not in Newtown or anywhere else in America.

A Sense of Higher Purpose

Among the most e-mailed recent articles listed by The NY Times was a piece on Apple’s store employees titled, “Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay” ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html?_r=1). 

As someone who covered retailing for more than three decades, I learned very little from the extensive reporting. It was not news to me that Apple, like most retailers, pays its store staff little more than minimum wage despite counting on them to rack up among the highest, if not the highest, sales per square foot among chain store retailers. 

Buried deep in the article was the following paragraph which explains to a large degree why Apple can get away with low hourly wages: “The phrase that trainees hear time and again, which echoes once they arrive at the stores, is ‘enriching people’s lives.’ The idea is to instill in employees the notion that they are doing something far grander than just selling or fixing products. If there is a secret to Apple’s sauce, this is it: the company ennobles employees. It understands that a lot of people will forgo money if they have a sense of higher purpose.”

That last sentence—”It understands that a lot of people will forgo money if they have a sense of higher purpose”—really got me. It brought me back several decades to a presentation by then CEO and founder of Crate & Barrel Gordon Segal. Asked by a Wall Street investment analyst to explain the success of his home furnishings chain, Segal attributed much of it to the dedication of store associates, men and women often with a degree in art or design or teaching. They had a talent for connecting with people and for feeling good about their work. That transcendent feeling, Segal said, allowed Crate & Barrel to keep salaries low because the staff received inner fulfillment from their work in lieu of demanding higher wages.

That’s the same management philosophy that for years buttressed the belief that public employees—firemen, police, social workers, sanitation workers, teachers, nurses, even the military—could be hired at low starting salaries. The tradeoff many of these workers, and government officials, accepted was better health care and retirement benefits. Now slash and burn governors, mayors and their legislative henchmen are trying to balance the books on the backs of government workers. 

Sure, there were and are some malingerers among them. What industry doesn’t have its share of goof-offs and people who take advantage of the system? But do we seriously believe teachers are not among the most important members of society and thus should be valued and paid appropriately? Does anyone seriously want to haul trash—even if it’s just their own trash— in the frigid dead of winter or the blazing hot summer? How about running into a burning building to save someone who might not even be inside the inferno, but firemen go in anyway because a family member or friend suspects a loved one is inside? How many of us are ready and willing to put our lives on the line each time we don a uniform to protect our cities or to safeguard our nation from attack in foreign lands? 

Perhaps what we need is a little more introspection about the good government workers bring to our standard of living. 

Human Infrastructure

His $447 billion plan to pump up the economy deflated by Republicans in the U.S. Senate, President Obama now is trying to reignite our fiscal health in piecemeal fashion. He’s pushing parts of his overall program one at a time, starting with a $35 billion package to keep teachers in the classroom and put more policemen and firemen on the streets. Though it might seem a laudable, even bipartisan goal, the GOP already has said it will vote to block its passage.

Which leaves me wondering, when did we as a nation turn against the public sector workers who are the foundation of our society? When did it become acceptable to strip away essential jobs in our communities while letting fat cats accumulate wealth beyond reason? When did we begin to demonize the very people to whom we entrust our most precious commodity, our children?

How would you like to leave your family every day for a job that puts you in jeopardy each work shift, that could cost you your life or could leave you injured for life because you were protecting society? Isn't it worth something to you to know others are ready to risk their safety for yours?

Sure, some cops are bigoted. Some overreact, are abusive. Some have behavioral problems. Haven't we learned anything from all the cop shows and movies about their tension-filled lives? How many of us would want to truly trade our daily routine for that of a policeman or fireman, knowing that around the corner on a mundane patrol or one alarm fire bell response death lurks? It might sound exciting for one day, even two, but as a constant condition of employment it would be hard to accept.

The infrastructure of a country is measured not just by the length and quality of its roadways, bridges and tunnels, but also by the soundness of its educational system. Teachers are its foundation. Sure, there are bad teachers, just as there are bad accountants, bad lawyers, bad doctors, bad truck drivers, bad waiters, bad you-name-it. Even bad bloggers. Tenure has been abused.

Let's reform the system but let's not abuse the teaching profession. If our children are our most precious asset, why wouldn't we want to pay the person who spends more daytime hours with them, the person who can influence their thinking and development, an above average wage? Aren't teachers doing a job at least as important as lawyers, as accountants, as stock brokers?

When it's my grandson Finley’s reading time, the books he chooses invariably depict heroes of the young—firemen, policemen, construction workers, teachers. Nary a computer wizard or Wall Street tycoon or lawyer or legislator or regulator or hedge fund trader in sight.

We are kidding ourselves if we believe society will be better off with fewer and lower-compensated teachers, policemen and firemen.

Charlie Sheen Isn't the Only One Who Can Rant

Am I the only one who thinks Charlie Sheen is auditioning to be Hugh Hefner's replacement when the dirty old man passes on? All Charlie needs is a pair of black silk pajamas. He already has an ex-porn star and a model as live-in bunk mates.

I try to avoid Charlie-Sheen-all-news-all-the-time coverage, but it's hard to avoid it when every TV newscast, except CBS, has fashioned this story as the second coming of OJ Simpson coverage, albeit without the blood and gore, though Charlie reportedly has threatened violence against his ex-wife and mother of his twin boys.

Sheen's breakdown is like a train wreck. You're almost compelled to watch it unfold in front of your eyes. The other day a friend sent me a YouTube of cars crashing as they sped through red lights. I wound up watching the full video. I couldn't take my eyes away from it. Sheen's meltdown is the same. Though most everyone is counseling him to stay silent, he keeps ignoring the red lights and plows ahead with rants that make Qaddafi seem almost sane.


Cry Babies: The other day I compared the GOP to bullies. Today I think they're also cry babies. Here's why:

In their attempt to beat back opposition to the draconian measures they have proposed in state and federal budgets, Republicans argue they are merely following through on what they told the voeters they would do if elected. Since they shellacked the Democrats last November, they should be entitled to enact their campaign promises, they say. Therefore, Democrats should just get out of the way and stop whining.

Sounds like a plausible argument. Until one remembers that in 2008 Democrats won a convincing national election on a platform that included passage of universal health care. We know, of course, Republicans fought to forestall passage of health care reform and continue to battle its implementation in the courts and in Congress. So much for accepting the will of the people when it doesn't agree with their view.

Disrespect for reality and the will of the people can also be seen in continuing efforts to deny Barack Obama's legitimacy as president. Georgia has before it a proposal to challenge the native born citizenship of the president unless he produces a birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Without it, the proposed legislation would not allow his name to appear on Peach State ballots. Of course, Georgia is ignoring documentation already released by Hawaii affirming Obama's birth status. But the Georgia GOP keeps crying foul.


Shades of the 50's and 60's: State and local budgets are being cut to the bone with school districts across the nation suffering major funding cutbacks forcing teacher layoffs that will result in more children per classroom per teacher.

What's the big deal? Back in the 1950s, my elementary school packed 35 per classroom taught by one teacher. A private Hebrew school, our school day ran from 9 am to 4:30 pm. Gilda's high school in the 1960s, Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall, was so overcrowded it required three different shifts to accommodate its 8,000 students. That's not a typo—8,000 students. There weren't enough desks and chairs for everyone in her class, so kids sat on the floor and the radiators.

We learned. We achieved. We had good teachers, we had bad teachers. Two critical factors helped us succeed—we were motivated and supported by parents who believed education was critical to upward mobility.

Until parents accept their responsibility, teachers will unfairly be cast as the villains for low tests scores and underachieving students.