I was driving down the road the other day when I heard a strange noise coming from my car's engine.  Not knowing what it was I pulled over to the side of the road and got out raising my hood to see what was going on.

Yep!  There was a rattling noise coming from somewhere.  Although the engine seemed to be running I knew that if I didn't get a service technician to check it out soon it may develop into a larger problem.  I climbed back into my car and drove straight to the dealership and explained my problem to them.  The mechanic I spoke to asked me to leave the car overnight so that he perform a thorough inspection to locate the source of the trouble, which I agreed to do.

At the time I was assured that once he had a chance to diagnose my engine he would be able to find the problem and fix it.  When I returned the next day I was told by the mechanic that he thought he found the trouble and fixed it but he wasn't sure.  According to the him he had to replace some expensive part and was hopeful that it would correct the problem.
 
Paying my bill I drove away hoping to have no more trouble especially after the repair bill I just paid.
If only I had been so lucky.

You see, it turns out that the mechanic did not really find the trouble but replaced a part that he thought was causing the problem.  I had to return several more times before they were finally able to find the root of the trouble and repair my car.  However, it was not until after I had spent a couple of thousand dollars and countless hours driving back and forth to the dealership.

My biggest disappointment was thinking that as a professional the mechanic would be able to find and correct my problem efficiently and in a fair manner.  But because he chose not to analyze the trouble and seek solutions based on his knowledge of engines it ended up costing way too much money and time.

Does this story sound familiar?

Well it should- because this scenario has been repeated over and over again but at the state level of our government in terms of teacher salaries.  You see our esteemed Legislators and Governor have continued to propose one bad idea after another in order to correct injustices with how to compensate teachers in the State of North Carolina.

Early in his administration Governor Pat McCrory decided that the state had no money available to give teachers a pay raise despite that fact that his administration doled out thousands, if not millions, to pay for young inexperienced "kids" to work in some hand picked positions. 

I could go into the story of the issues with the Department of Health Services (DHSS) who paid the millions of dollars to some fly by night computer company from Canada to develop software just to administer social service programs around the state.  What I wonder is why was this company was selected given the fact that the Canadian government fired them for gross incompetence's....waste at the highest level!!

This waste and indulgence left the governor being able to justify to a public that elected him why he had no money to raise teacher salaries but said, "he planned to sometime in the future." 

Right! 

Sure, he inherited some problems but when a twenty-something gets a primo government job making over $50,000 a year because he worked on the governors election campaign truly doesn't sit well with the voting public.  Besides doesn't the Governor know that teachers have heard this same story over and over again for the past thirty years? Better yet, does he care?

It leads me to wonder how many of our legislators have a second or even a third job to make enough money to pay their bills?  How many of their children could qualify for free and reduced lunches at the very schools they teach?

My guess is not one of them.  Although they have managed to give themselves nice raises over this same time frame they have continued to withhold mandating an adequate compensation structure from hard working teachers with the attitude that if "they don't like they can find other work."  This has been pointed out quite clearly with the latest proposal to do away with extra compensation for teachers with a Master's Degree.   Let me ask you would you have brain surgery from a doctor that just went to medical school or that same doctor that trained as a neurosurgeon?  My guess is the later. 

So why wouldn't the state be willing to pay a teacher for having the desire to get additional training to become better at their profession?  I thought I heard somewhere that the state wanted to attract the best and the brightest.  Hmmm, seems to me a bass-ackwards way of doing things.  Yet we are left to wonder why thousands of teachers either leave the profession or move to a state that respects them more and shows it by paying them a "professional" salary.  As Rodney Dangerfield once said, "I can't get no respect." 

Hello out there! ...teacher salaries are lower than the guy that collects my garbage each Monday!!

So getting back to my story.

Over the past year our governor has acted like the mechanic, he has proposed fixes for a broken education system without giving any forethought to how it needs to be done.
 
Up to this point his office has proposed giving NEW teachers a few thousands more when they get hired because he wants to attract the best and brightest.  They haven't thought about how to keep them once they have spent the first couple of years training in North Carolina only to leave for greener pastures.  While I am sure for a while they will value getting by with this extra money, I say good luck getting a raise after that. 

Look what's happening to teachers with many years of experience.  They are left with a bad taste in their mouth because once again they were passed over.  For many of you that don't realize it each year a teacher stands to lose almost a thousand dollars a year due to increased costs of health insurance premiums and having to pay higher taxes.

A funny thing, but certainly not the Ha! Ha! kind either; recently happened to a teacher friend that went to refinance a house and was asked by the mortgage lender why her salary went down each year.  She just looked at him and suggested he propose that very same question to the governor.

How about the Governor's latest proposal to reward the top 25% of teachers in a district with a few thousand extra dollars a year providing that they give up tenure.  Now I am not a strong advocate of tenure for anyone, especially legislators, only because I know that many in the profession are not doing a good job and should be moved on to seek other options, but we are talking about teachers that are in the top 25% of their profession.  The governor should be pulling out all strings and giving them a lifetime job if they are that good just to ensure that they DON"T go to another state or quit teaching.  But to take something away from your best and brightest seems to me another way to ask teachers to bend over and get kicked in the ass....again!

And now, the governor has a new proposal which is to pay only 450 teachers in the entire state of North Carolina $10,000 for sharing ideas.  Really!??  ...that's funny!

Governor, do you realize that teachers share ideas with their colleagues every day?  So now you want to pay only a handful of teachers for their ideas.  How are you planning to determine what constitutes a good idea? What are you going to base this on?  Do you realize that a teacher can get paid posting their ideas on the Teachers Pay Teachers web site?  So why would these other teachers be motivated to share ideas for free?  Because our teachers are true professionals and want to the best for all students; that's why!

So Governor McCrory, it's time to open your mouth again, and insert your other foot.  You are truly surrounded by idiots who have allowed you to be sucked into their hair brained schemes.

Remember this debacle during the next election and you find yourself being a one termer- oh and then having to cozy up to your friends at Duke Energy to ask for a job!