Tag: Education

Statewide median teacher salaries up 10 percent

Statewide median teacher salaries in the region increased by more than 10 percent from 2008-09 to 2012-13, according to a report released by the conservative think-tank Empire Center for Public Policy. Meanwhile, the report released Monday notes that while student enrollment, especially in upstate schools, have largely decreased, staff reductions haven’t kept up with the rate at which students have left. According to the study, more than 76,000 students have left New York state schools from 2008-09, while districts have cut 25,350 positions. Read More

State teacher salary up 10%

Statewide, median teacher salary increased by about 10 percent between the fiscal years 2008-2009 and 2012-2013, according to a new report from the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative government finance watchdog. Read More

King pushes for more school aid

The Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative group, released a report Monday, meanwhile, that points to decreasing enrollment, increasing teacher salaries and high levels of staffing as factors in the continuing rise in school spending. Teachers in the Schenectady City School District earned a median salary of $59,651 in 2012-13, compared to $51,300 five years ago, according to the report. Read More

What’s driving K-12 school costs?

The full extent of the continuing rise in school spending since the recession was not inevitable or unavoidable. It was the result of (a) increasing teacher compensation costs driven largely by automatic pay raises, and (b) continued relatively high levels of staffing, relative to enrollment, especially in non-teaching titles. Read More

Cuomo’s school bond would stall environmental measure

E.J. McMahon, executive director of the fiscally-conservative Empire Center, noted that statewide bond acts are often rejected by voters and he said the education bond proposed by Cuomo seems to rely on an arbitrary number and would pay for technology that will be outdated and useless before it's even paid off. “My concern is that it was pulled out of thin air and it was used to fill space in the State of the State that was thin on education stuff,” he said Sewer and infrastructure upgrades are a significant expense faced by many municipalities, including some that still directly discharge waste into the Hudson River during storms. Beaches in communities along Lake Erie are regularly closed during summer months because of sewer discharge into the water. Old pipes, decaying electrical systems and other infrastructure problems have stalled private development in many upstate cities, McMahon said. While McMahon said he didn't support the whole environmental bond, the $2 billion directed toward infrastructure is increasingly necessary, but gets little notice during an election year. “It's the non-sexy, really important thing that seems like it won't happen while we're paying for iPads and technology for schools,” he said. Read More