http://www.rulesonline.com/

 

If the cost for one disabled student is going to be $60,000 above and beyond the $12,000 average, then at some point there needs to be (or should have been) a serious and dispassionate discussion about what the limits are on reasonable accommodation.

WBahn, excellent rejoinder. I think you have responded to most of my concerns.

As far as the $60,000 SWAG, I am basing on knowledge that the cost of an experienced paraprofessional can be about 50% of the teacher and allowing another 50% for overhead. Perhaps a little generous.

$30,000 for testing was a complex formula based on two specialists shared over 12 classrooms. In your budget, perhaps this could be outsourced as well. Don't get me started on the testing requirement; it deserves its own thread.

Also, don't get me going on the "...for 9 months" argument. I come from a family of educators and the good ones work year round.

 

WBahn, excellent rejoinder. I think you have responded to most of my concerns.

Thanks. It's nice of you to say.

Also, don't get me going on the "...for 9 months" argument. I come from a family of educators and the good ones work year round.

I know what you mean. I am presently teaching college and I only get paid for the nine month academic year (and no where near the $80,000 that I allowed for in my budget!). I literally do not get a paycheck for three months a year. Yet during the summer I most certainly did spending a lot of time nearly every day doing class prep -- my contract didn't start until two days before classes did, but showing up at that point and expecting to be ready to present a semester-long syllabus and start teaching two days later is a completely unrealistic expectation.

I'm "only" teaching three courses, but I am certainly putting in well over 40hrs/wk. Not only that, but because of the distance from home (particularly in the winter), I am away from my family from Sunday evening until Friday evening and some weekends don't get home at all.

But this is something I have chosen to do. Yes, I am making less than half what I was getting as a senior research scientist for the Air Force and I'm making considerably less than I did as a senior IC designer more than a decade ago even without taking inflation into account. Both of those required fewer hours than teaching. But this is something I have chosen to do, so I'm not in a position to whine too much about it. Discuss it, yes, but not insist that something must be done about it.

The simple fact is that there are many more qualified people that want (or are willing to be) teachers at any given level than there are teaching positions available. This is not the case for senior IC designers or research scientists where the positions available may be a lot smaller but the pool of qualified people is much rarer, too. It's the same reason that flight instructors get paid crap -- there are too many flight instructors willing to instruct in order to build their flight hours and that drives the rates down despite the fact that a flight instructor has a very non-negligible chance of being killed by their students where as mine is all-but-zero (not identically zero, but damn close).

I have a total of right at 100 students. Full time tuition and fees here is supposedly $8200/semester for instate (several of my students said that the official rate is wrong and that they actually paid well over $9000 this semester) and $16200/semester for out of state. Assuming that all of my students are taking six courses and all are in-state and all are paying the official rate means that the each are paying $1367 to take a course from me. With 100 students total, that's $136,700 for this semester alone. For the academic year, students are paying about $275,000. And that isn't taking into account a dime of state money, a dime of revenue from out-of-state tuition, or a dime of money from endowments or corporate donations.

Don't get me wrong. I am honored to teach here -- just as I will always be able to say with pride that I was an Academy instructor at one point in my career. In terms of return on investment over a career, this place is almost always in the top three for public universities and rivals and often beats MIT, CalTech, and Stanford (they are at a disadvantage because they cost so much more). So the students are definitely getting value for their money -- but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't expect an accounting of where that money is going.