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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

Public schools are not underfunded. The inflation adjusted per student k12 spend in the us has gone up over the last 30 years.

It seems like school teachers are dramatically underpaid (a matter of opinion but I feel it's probably true in the median), but not the system as a whole.

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The public teachers don't have very high annual incomes, especially at the beginning of their careers. However, their wage is really good on a per-hour basis. A median teacher already makes more on their own than the median US household, while working considerably less than 2080 hours in a year. Additionally, the teachers typically enjoy really good pension benefits, which significantly improves their total compensation, even though it doesn't actually show up in the wage statistics.

Is the measurement of hours based on how long they spend in front of a class or does it incorporate grading/admin/etc?

It depends on who you ask. If you ask teachers, they'll tell you that they work 16 hours work days all year long, but try scheduling a teacher-parent meeting after work hours.

Its almost as if they are also humans who need to feed and enjoy themselves outside their job.

I know a few american teachers, grade thru hs. They report wages and supplies are a bit better off than in previous years, but that cricculum is so perscribed that they feel little leeway to actually 'teach'. They find themselves optimising for test taking and hate themselves a little bit for it. They are constantly under fire from other teachers with competing agendas, and beset by often abusive, sometimes nessarry, unions. It is a bad system that has evolved and the teachers are sad pawns in it. But there is still live to live, love to explore and things to strive for outside your job. Teachers have a heavy feeling of seeing their enforced ineffectiveness slowly degrade their community.

But screw teachers for not having extra time, amirite?

Wait, are you saying that being resistant to schedule work which both is recognized as appropriate for official working hours by the employer and which can be effectively performed during that time given the structure of the working day somehow contradicts the claim of necessary work that either cannot effectively be done during the official working day or is not recognized as necessary by the employer that must, therefore, be done outside that time?

Because from where I sit those don't conflict at all.

I'll just say that the friends I have who have gone in to teaching...sure work a lot of hours on weekends to be ready for their weeks

it really varies, its not fair to say that all schools are well or poorly funded. in california, it is dependent on local taxes for example. so palo alto has incredible schools, and LA and Oakland have some of the worst in the country

For most of california it is not at all dependent on local taxes. Local taxes only significantly affect "Basic Aid" (i.e. wealthy) school districts, 40% of which are in the Bay Area.

For the rest of the state, the funding is nearly identical on a per-student basis.

Palo Alto spends only 10% more than Oakland per student, which itself spends more than both national and state average. If Oakland schools are worst in the country, the funding has minor, if any, impact on it.

The difference is "PiE" Partners in education, which is a non-profit voluntary parent-led organization which supports "All" the extracurricular activities plus for in-class aides for all classes.

That's not true at all. You should look up the top spending per capita (large)[0] public school districts and you will find NYPS, LAUSD, CPS, and Baltimore school districts among them.

[0] there are lots of high-spending small outliers serving areas with total (adult+child) populations in the < 100k range

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