Part of the issue is that they’re effectively unemployed for 1/4 of the year (even though most teachers still do stuff for their job during that 1/4 of the year). Those 3 months aren’t paid time off. It’s unpaid. If it were PTO then they’d have an ok wage (still low, but it’d be much more livable).
That used the be the case when I was a kid. Now here in Maryland, specifically Mont. County the students get about 8ish weeks for summer vacation. That’s it. This year last day was June 18 and school started August 24th.
Two weeks, give or take. We got an extra last year because of Snowmageddon.
I will say that June 18 wasn’t the day we were SUPPOSED to end. We also get more weird days off during the school year. For instance, this entire school year so far, we’ve had only two weeks (out of eight or so) that have actually been full weeks. If not for a power outage that took out fourteen schools in one day, we would have had three.
Every other week has been four days or four and a half due to professional development and holidays, including this week, which has another, you guessed it, professional development day!
So yeah, we get less summer and only two weeks for winter, but we also have a crap ton of extra weird days in between, at least in my district.
We get out Last week of May and go back first week of August usually. With mandatory trainings in the summer, about a weeks worth. So two months, but maybe three other places.
Most places in Wisconsin start after Labor Day because years ago, the all powerful tavern league lobbied for that with our state so that bars and restaurants would have help until the holiday weekend was over.
They’re also the reason we’re one of the core Midwest states without legal cannabis.
My wife used to be a teacher. This is such a weird sentiment to hold.
Teachers agree to a salary, I agree that they should be paid more. Then they get the flexibility to decide if they want to be paid evenly throughout the year or taking larger payments during the school year and not get paid during the summer
They aren’t “unemployed”. $50k is 50k wether you split it between 10 months or 12 months. There’s few careers where you get your agreed upon salary and then get a 2 month break.
I’d rather argue about teachers unpaid time needed to do the job, argue about teachers salaries needing to be higher, or argue about teacher being criminally under appreciated, but let’s not skew the facts about being “unemployed”
They're paid for time off in civilised countries, tbf. In Australia it's not uncommon to rag on teachers for being paid obscenely for only having to work 2/3rds of the year.
Actually, it is a little worse than that- when I first started teaching, you could elect to get your paycheck over 10 months, meaning each check would be bigger, but then you would have to budget for the summer.
Now almost all the contracts are for 12 months, meaning the district holds onto a chunk of your salary for a longer time, making interest off it. Some people prefer the balanced paychecks over the entire year, but it still means that all the teachers are essentially giving the district a loan from their income.
Is this an American thing? Because here in Germany teachers have a special standing (called "Beamter", although not everyone these days) and are employed for the whole year. And there salary is pretty damn good I would say.
Teachers can opt to get paid for vacation time, but that is just a voluntary reduction of their pay to be given to them during the summer months and isn't a available everywhere. Our teachers are notoriously underpaid and overworked
Teachers in the US can either get their standard pay during the period they work and they don't get paid during the months off(and aren't allowed to get unemployment or anything to act as a buffer) or they can get their wages garnished during the school year so they will get paid that amount during the summer.
It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation
The years are broken into contracts ending at the summer vacation. They pay for the 10 months of labor. The other two are unpaid. It doesnt matter if they split your paycheck, its a yearly furlough
7
u/Simply_Epic 3h ago
Part of the issue is that they’re effectively unemployed for 1/4 of the year (even though most teachers still do stuff for their job during that 1/4 of the year). Those 3 months aren’t paid time off. It’s unpaid. If it were PTO then they’d have an ok wage (still low, but it’d be much more livable).