Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Definitions: Read the Fine Print

In early-to-mid August I voluntary underwent 6 hours of online training modules put out by my district, believing (as did everyone I spoke to today) that I would receive 1 day of pay for that 6 hours.  Having been a teacher in California for 20+ years now, and having a master's degree, I make fairly reasonable money each year; with a work year of 185 days, and a contractual working day of 6 hours, I figured I'd make 1/185 of that annual pay for undergoing that training.

Uh, no.

Turns out that the communications we got about that training said we'd be paid at our "hourly rate".  Like everyone I talked to about this today, I interpreted that to mean "our" hourly rates--thus, at 6 hours of "our" hourly rate, we'd get one day's pay.  Again, no.

When we're paid our "daily rate", then we receive 1/185 of our salary.  But our "hourly rate" is not 1/6 of our daily rate.  No, "hourly rate" for additional training is defined as one (small) number for those with fewer than 10 years of teaching experience and one (still small but not as small) number for those with more teaching experience.

My "hourly rate" is about $47/hr, which is significantly less than 1/6 of 1/185th of my annual pay.  So instead of what I considered would be a sizable chunk of change, I grossed about $280.  After withholdings I came home with a whopping $178.

I'm going camping this weekend.  That $178 won't even cover my driving expenses there and back.

Totally not worth it.  I won't make that mistake again--it's either "daily rate" or Darren doesn't do it.

1 comment:

Ellen K said...

When I was teaching, rather than having the career ladder I was hired in on, they developed what they called a "range" basis for paying every pay grade. Even though I had taught 20 years and knew other teachers in a variety of departments with similar experience, few of us were anywhere near midrange for our career grade after 20 years. How long is a career? For most professions 30 years is considered a full career and 20 would be beyond midrange. Even more galling is when the district began expanding and hiring new, inexperienced teachers, they were be hired in at salaries only a couple of thousand less than teachers with decades of experience. Every district meeting a teacher would bring up the question as to how salaries were being assigned and the answers were always convoluted whitewash. Another thing that we discovered is that coaches were being paid more than building principals (against state law) by giving them bonuses for making play offs. This means they were making nearly $200K while the academic classroom teachers were making only about one third that amount. We also discovered our band director, because he helped write a Broadway musical, got a $45K stipend on top of his salary. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he's married to the head of Secondary GT services at the Admin building.