One thing I find interesting is that teacher pay in California varies from district to district MUCH more than overall budgets do. LAUSD has an awful pay scale, but is close to districts like Redondo or Manhattan Beach who pay much better. Even though Manhattan Beach is a super rich area, because of how California allocates school funding the district isn't any richer than LAUSD* MBUSD has $17.4k of revenue per student compared to LAUSD's $20k.
If LAUSD gets around 15% more money per student, why is their pay so much worse? More administrators? Higher rate of special ed students? Lawsuit payouts? Buying bitcoin for ransomware authors?
* California's school funding is kinda complicated and a whole topic in and off itsf. Mostly the extra complexity is for a good reason, there's a gnarly formula to avoid the problem where quality of education is directly proportional to local property tax revenue. Richer parts of California often actually have less money in their schools, because schools with more economically disadvantaged students get more money in the formula. When schools have high local revenue, the state uses an offset to balance things out. The only exception I know of to that general rule is Beverly Hills. The BH property tax is so obscenely high that it doesn't matter that they get less money from the state+feds, especially taking into account that the area has relatively few children per capita.
> Richer parts of California often actually have less money in their schools
I’ve heard people say that, but as somebody that switched schools in California a lot in high school, public schools in nicer neighborhoods were categorically always much, much, MUCH nicer.
Like “had an on-site computing museum and shared latin and ancient greek teachers with the nearby UC campus” and “had a couple decade-old pcs for a desktop publishing class taught from a binder by the PE teacher” different.
One explanation that I've heard is parent-teacher associations and non-governmental funding.
At some point in the past, maybe the 70s, California move from a model of locally supported schools two state allocated funding.
I think this was a mistake and had a number of negative Downstream consequences. One was the passage of Prop 13 because homeowners and even parents are unwilling to pay more to fund schools if their children in community will see only a fraction or possibly no benefit.
Given human nature and self-interest, I think people need to see significant benefit for their dollar. I think it would be a lot better to roll back this law and replace it with something that siphons off a maximum percent of school funding to be dispersed Statewide. You might see more money going to schools in for neighborhoods.
I think the problem is that teachers' salary is from the "school funding" budget. Here in Germany it's different per state, but in my state (at least when I was in school) - ALL the teachers of ALL public schools were paid by the state directly, and according to a fixed table, it didn't matter if you worked in a rich district in the city or somewhere on the countryside (or let's say small town for a high school). So yes, of course housing prices can still be vastly different (and of course teachers who live on the countryside might have a house and the ones in the city may rent a small flat) but it wasn't a real problem that they couldn't afford housing, especially on a district basis.
The funding formula is also why CA’s student:teacher ratio is so obscenely high — districts simply do not have funds to hire more teachers and can’t raise taxes to get the money.
The difference isn't just average pay, you can compare LAUSD with neighboring districts and the pay is lower for a teacher at a given pay band, although the difference is less pronounced for entry level teachers (teacher pay at public schools is typically just determined by years of experience and level of education, and districts (or the corresponding union) publish those salary tables.
Edit: Let me rephrase to be less strict, and express this as my personal belief rather than an absolute truth.
Edit 2: Genuinely appreciate the discussions on this. (Besides the one or two comments that got moderated away) I think many of the responses here are emblematic of what HN can be, where people who disagree can still come together and talk through their different lenses.
I believe we need to decommodify housing and provide additional support for tenants, as well as build more housing stock. IME, it's not as simple as 'build more', because the interests and incentives don't align -- adding new housing stock devalues existing stock, so there's pressure to keep the commodity cost high.
Some combination of the following would achieve my goal of chipping away at the power of landlords, and reduce the power of landlords over tenants.
1) Build more housing stock
2) Remove single family zoning and allow density (congrats to Washington state for pursuing this)
3) Rent control
4) Guaranteed legal support for tenants
5) Affordable foreclosure insurance
6) Funded community land trusts
7) Social housing, specifically distributed low rise, well maintained
8) Cooperative ownership of apartment buildings
9) Vacancy taxes
10) Good cause eviction laws
11) Stiffer penalties for failure to keep apartments in livable condition
12) Right of first refusal laws (tenant opportunity to purchase)
Teachers are not the only ones impacted by this -- all the members of our communities are unable to live in them. My barista, bookshop worker, teacher, and firefighter don't live in my neighborhood. We then need to invest huge effort into getting people in and out of this community.
I think many of these ideas are sound but IMO your hostility towards “landlords” is misplaced. This isn’t the right forum to get into all the nuance, but the fact is we have an extremely non-competitive “landlord” and “developer” market, and almost all the perversions that we deal with originate in how much corruption, graft, ring-kissing, and (consequently) capital it takes to build anything.
The main issue I disagree with you on: rent control has been shown repeatedly to help existing renters at the expense of all future renters, which increases income inequality, in the long run is a wealth transfer from the young to the old, and lastly disincentivizes property maintenance leading to substandard living conditions. It also decreases economic mobility and incentivizes people who get rent control to do things like not have kids even though they would like to have kids, because they have an amazing deal on a 1bd apartment and needing more space would basically force them to start life over in a far off place.
If we had a robust free market for housing, like we do for cars, there would be lots of cheap “used housing” available and landlords would not have pricing power, they would have to make an effort to be a good landlord to have a tenant. You can see this with hotels (in areas where they aren’t over-restricted), where poorly run hotels are driven out of business by well-run hotels, including plenty of low cost hotels.
> I think many of these ideas are sound but IMO your hostility towards “landlords” is misplaced.
I see landlords like ticket scalpers -- they have the money up front to buy a product, and provide 'liquidity' and 'free markets' by selling that product at the market rate.
For some reason, we generally view ticket scalpers as negative, and landlords as "just what you do when you get wealthy enough".
And, to be clear, I have been a landlord. I know the challenges in maintaining a unit, finding tenants, chasing down rent, dealing with legal challenges, wondering if I would need to evict someone because they were destructive/loud/etc.
(Ultimately, I paid back all the rent I had collected that contributed to my principals on the unit, keeping only the money I used to pay for maintenance. My feelings about landlords come partially from being a landlord and realizing that I was profiting off of people only because I was rich enough to afford a house in the first place.)
We have issues with housing availability and we have issues with wealth concentration but renting a property to tenants is often a service to to people. And services are generally provided for money.
I’ve owned homes and I’ve rented homes. Owning can be burdensome in many ways: geographic and capacity friction, unpredictable capital risk, etc. Whether or not I have wealth, I may prefer to rent than by for valid reasons. It’s okay (and good) when someone in my community can provide the service of selling me shelter that suits my current needs for a reliable price. I’m willing to lay some premium for that.
Now, I don’t know what your relationship with your tenants were and if you have other reasons to feel like you were being exploitative, but please don’t toss out the valuable market role of landlords because there are some (and perhaps increasingly too many) that might be playing an unfair game. And certainly think carefully before you include yourself among them! You seem like a thoughtful and well-intentioned person — landlords like you are the kind that do good for communities!
I appreciate you expanding your thoughts. You are certainly free to feel how you feel, but I want to offer you one different angle:
For the sake of my career, I have moved a lot, six times as an adult. The first time I moved, I was able to buy a house in a cheap city. When I needed to move again it was a nightmare, the market was down, and it was very difficult for me to get that financial obligation off my back. Subsequently I have rented. I am very grateful that there are landlords who have housing units available for people who have reasons not to buy, and I have the opportunity to live in a place temporarily.
This is a complicated topic, and I fully acknowledge that there are bad landlords out there. But I do believe there is such a thing as a good landlord, providing a valuable service. I also believe that if we had a much more abundant housing supply, it would be much harder to make any money without being a very good landlord, and that would drive prices down, as well as driving the grifters out.
I think there are fundamental differences between landlords and ticket scalpers that must be taken into account despite the similarities in other ways.
In addition to the obvious duties of maintenance, landlords Supply the capital for the house a tenant occupies. In this way they are more similar a company providing a car lease, fixed duration business loan, or home mortgage. They generally do so with fewer financial protections in my opinion.
A tennant pays a monthly fee instead of a large Capital investment and debt obligation. The landlord takes on substantial costs ( opportunity and real) as well as substantial risks when renting, which warrant some profit margin at a debatable rate.
Are all forms of rent control like this? Including rent stabilization or whatever else they're called? Because my impression was that at least some forms of it keep the rent low even if the tenant changes, in exchange for lower taxes or such.
The issue is that rent control leads to supply shortages since it disincentivizes building new units so you end up with a waitlist to get an apartment. Similar issue that prop 13 creates. No one moves because it is either impossible, or would require paying much more.
Thanks but I feel like that didn't answer my question? I was asking if all forms of rent control allow increases when a tenant moves out, which seemed to be the claim and the reason cited in the comment.
As I was trying to say the end result is the same. If the law allows rents to increase when people move then no one will ever move since it will cost them money. If the law doesn't allow rents to increase when people move then no one will move because there will be a shortage and whenever a unit does open it will go to landlords family member or friend.
9) Vacancy taxes: Also high taxes and oversight on properties used as rentals.
In specific, a home lived in by the owner for at least 35% of a tax year (or unlivable due to disasters/etc) should be taxed at a low rate, while any OTHER home should be taxed at a much higher rate and inspected as a rental unit, including being kept ahead of minimum rental code (which would be a more stringent baseline than minimum code).
13) new builds expressly purchasable only by first time home buyers
Sounds reasonable to me. I'd maybe use a slightly different designation for primary residence (e.g. you can choose one residence to be your primary residence, which you must occupy for 35% of the year).
And I'm sure #13 would run into legal hot water, but heck, if it gets people housed, I'd give it a shot.
This allows for 'winter' / 'summer' homes (snowbirds) as well as moving, but is SLIGHTLY larger than 1/3rd which makes it impossible to have more than two homes, while allowing the maximum chronological allowance for moving and the minimum requirement for using such a vacation home or log cabin etc.
This is selected to minimize friction from those who vote but don't actually use their properties as rentals.
hard disagree. it basically ends up being a transfer of wealth from new residents (who have to pay higher rents) to older residents (who have locked in lower rents).
>5) Affordable foreclosure insurance
What exactly is insured here?
>12) Right of first refusal laws (tenant opportunity to purchase)
What problem is this intended to solve? If someone is renting, how likely is he going to be able to pony up cash to buy the house that's about to be sold?
Typically RoFR laws do require tenants to seek financial support from a lender or developer. The tenants front some of the capital, get a loan for some of the capital, and offer some incentive for a developer. This is typically for people whose multi-unit apartment building is being sold, where there's the possibility for the tenants to band together to create a co-op.
These programs are also sometimes eligible for government assistance -- essentially helping subsidize communities into owning their own housing.
> What exactly is insured here?
Typically the lender is protected at the owner's expense. Rates can be quite high, and increase the cost of living, pricing people out of housing.
> Rent control
You disagree that rent control reduces the power of landlords? Do you think it has a positive effect or no effect for the power of landlords?
A co-op ownership of a building typically is not seeking to profit from the tenants in the building. They may charge fees to cover the maintenance and upkeep of the building and sustain their administration. Some condos operate similarly -- everyone buying a condo, with minimal fees paid to the developer to cover the maintenance of the building, with the developer making the bulk of their income from the sale of the units.
I'm not sure that's true. I'm a big proponent of co-ops, for housing and other endeavors, but co-ops can seek to make a profit. Not in the sense of a return to investors or owners, but they may have other objectives in mind. The co-op owned apartment building May seek to purchase an additional building for example, and charge tenants more than the cost of maintenance.
For sure. Hence "typically". In the usual case, the coop is designed to be operated by the tenants, who are not operating it as a profit seeking venture and it's run democratically. It's not impossible that what you say is also true -- I'm sure there are housing coops that are run as you describe.
Social housing, specifically distributed low rise, well maintained
Why "low rise"? High rise is more efficient. High rise has a bad reputation but all the reputation stuff has been pretty coordinated by those who don't want public housing at all. And sure, well maintained.
I'm in favor of rent control but with enough dense housing, rent control won't be fighting supply and demand.
The reason I prefer low rise (especially in the 3-6 floors range) is because they require less specialized service. Maintaining the systems for a 40 story building requires specialists in hvac, elevators, plumbing, fire suppression, window washing, painting, siding, etc. that are simply less available than the folks who know how to get up on a ladder and just fix it.
Low rise also decentralizes services needed to support social housing, and allows local communities to build relationships that are less adversarial with the housing. (Which, imo, might be a uniquely American view that social housing is for the poor only.) So, in the initial rollouts, I think it makes it appear more palatable to American communities.
Now, I agree, high rise is more efficient across other axes. And I'd take well maintained high rise social housing over the current status quo. I have preferences here, but I don't believe that high rises are wrong. Just not my preference.
1. Land ownership should be an exclusively human right. Any ‘vampire’ entity (such as a corporation) that doesn’t naturally die shouldn’t be able to endlessly accumulate land.
2. The property tax rate should double for each additional property you own.
I bought forestland that is uninhabitable and remote. I am restoring it to healthy forest. When I die, I want to ensure that it continues to be forest land.
The best way to do that is via a conservation trust. I appreciate your sentiment, but I worry it edges out cases like mine.
Whole traditionally white collar industries across the western world are experiencing similar issues, and I believe underlying it all is the financialisation of housing. We’ve managed to keep many other costs roughly in line with inflation despite growing populations, so housing now being so far beyond the reach of many full time workers should be pause for concern for economists and leaders far more than it seems to be.
I have spoken a few times about my thoughts on where this is heading, and I can genuinely see some cities fading out as they lose their service workers followed by lower paid professionals. Sydney and New York come to mind as places where a minimum wage just isn’t enough to exist within commuting distance of the metropolitan areas. Where are coffee shops and restaurants going to find workers when those same workers live elsewhere due to costs? I could happily pay more for coffee but even a doubling in price wouldn’t allow cafe staff in Sydney to live less than an hour from work, and honestly there’s cafes they could work in closer to home, so why work in Sydney? Entry level professional work has the same problem. Sure there’s potential for future growth but if you can earn the same money as a data entry clerk in a suburb, why sacrifice your time and any spare money commuting to a major city?
We quantify the amount of spatial misallocation of labor across US cities and its aggregate costs. Misallocation arises because high productivity cities like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area have adopted stringent restrictions to new housing supply, effectively limiting the number of workers who have access to such high productivity. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009.
We can collectively choose to dramatically increase real material resources for a large proportion of the population, including teachers, by liberalizing housing laws.
Goolsbee also has a working paper on how these onerous regulations have lead to construction being one of the only industries that has seen productivity decline over the last 50 years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30845
My wife is an architect who is working with a school district to build affordable housing for its teachers. The district has received a grant, and the district has plans to build the housing with developers building neighborhoods that feed into its new schools. The affordable housing would only be for teachers, and not for other groups that may qualify for affordable housing.
And the broader community (i.e. the city in which the housing would be built) is fighting it because they don't want affordable housing to hurt the values of homes that already exist in the area. Everyone supports the teachers -- until it affects their home values.
The problem with these approaches is now you’ve turned the teacher into an indentured worker. They can’t leave their job because they wouldn’t be able to find comparable housing for a comparable price.
And then what happens when you want to fire a low performing teacher? Do you also show up with moving boxes to her subsidized apartment to make room for her replacement?
At the deepest level, the core problem is that people who own houses do not have real empathy for people who do not own houses. They don't understand what it feels like, and mostly they don't care either.
Except all of us that do own houses were in fact once people that didn't, often not that long ago. Those of us that have owned houses a long time are pretty likely to have kids that don't (but hope to at some point soon), one would think we'd feel some empathy for them.
> When benefits such as healthcare were taken into account, the total compensation penalty was 14%, the widest gap since 1979.
So teachers are compensated 14% below what you'd expect for their education. In return, they get a permanent job that it is very difficult to be fired from, and "get" to work with kids.
This doesn't seem far off from what should be expected? There will be professions paid less than average for as long as there are professions paid more than average.
> “Educators are educating astronauts, physicists, doctors, lawyers, construction workers, plumbers, electricians,” says Cecily Myart-Cruz, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). “However, educators who have two and three and four degrees are not making enough or more than all of the professions that I brought forward.”
LOL you're not educating any of those. (except construction) The people covered by teachers unions are, at best, preparing people for college. At worst, they're shitty babysitters.
>In return, they get a permanent job that it is very difficult to be fired from, and "get" to work with kids.
That's not a plus, it's a big minus. Go check out /r/Teachers on reddit; American kids are so horribly behaved these days that it's driving a lot of people out of the profession. They should be paying teachers 5x as much for dealing with these monsters.
Agreed that it's very much only a plus for some people, and may be more of a plus in theory (when people are picking professions) than in practice (when you're actually dealing with children).
There are a number of important jobs in the US (like PT, speech, teachers, nurses) that are becoming increasingly not economically viable. It's difficult earn enough to pay down your education debt while finding a place to live. Yes, there's PSLF, but you can only get credit toward that if you work in a public institution or non-profit. And certain political elements are keen to end that program--who knows if it will be around 10 years from now. There's also income-based repayments with forgiveness after 20 years, but, depending on how the political winds blow, you might owe tax on the amount forgiven, which could have ballooned to huge amounts over two decades. You're risking being in debt until your dying day.
This isn't a great position to be in, nationally. The US education system has grown increasingly fucked over the last 40 years and we're all going to pay when it breaks.
All of those jobs are sometimes called "caring positions". They have a number of things in common:
* They all work directly with people who are not fully capable adults (due to age, illness, etc)
* You are expected to find fulfillment in caring for other people
* They're all relatively low paid despite requiring significant education, and often require extended hours
* In the recent past (19th century) they were not professional jobs at all
* They're all traditionally filled by women
* They're all low status
These jobs are hard to keep economically viable because we don't take them seriously. They should be high status jobs because they're so important, but they had been performed by family, often mothers or wives. They didn't receive a salary for it. It was part of their general duties, and they were assumed to be happy to take care of their loved ones.
We continue to resent paying for these as they professionalize, and that pushes down salaries. But economics bites back: people are no longer forced into them, and they'll no longer tolerate "But you love your pupils/patients and they'll suffer if you leave".
That's not the only reason the education system is fucked, but it's a doozy. They're finally feeling it, and having a hard time hiring teachers. That might lead to a fix, but only after people are willing to admit that these are important, demanding jobs and they need to spend money to get people to do them.
Southern California starting salary is 80k and student loan forgiveness. After a few years and education attainment increases most teachers are making well over 100k for 10 months at 35 hours per week.
Why doesn’t the article list salary, or list it in comparison to median for the location.
I don’t think they’d win anything from it. Plus parents would be riled at their State subsidized babysitters shirking their primary duty.
The root of the low salaries isn’t a demand problem anyway, it’s a supply problem. There’s tons of people who can teach and they’re willing to do it for the current wages.
I disagree: I think it would be better to keep public servants from living anywhere near these places that they can't afford.
Let's see how all these NIMBYs like not having any teachers or firefighters. If public servants can't afford to live anywhere near a neighborhood, why should that neighborhood have any public servants at all?
I’m a college teacher in a union. I don’t know much about what happens in k-12 but I do know my union is not responsible for our low pay in my system. What evidence do you have for your claim?
Police unions are far more powerful that public k-12 teacher unions.
I do not know what the other poster is referring to, but things like this are often indirect consequences. The unions may not be literally, directly suppressing wages, but their other policies may be strongly causing it.
Across history, trying to "do good" by force/law/policy has caused a lot of negative side effects.
In my system what happens is a contract is negotiated for a period of time. During this period of time we agree to not strike. Once the contract ends we can strike. In 20 years in my system I have never experienced a situation in which a new contract was negotiated before the old contract ended. While we negotiate for a new contract, and after the old contract has expired, we can strike. Don’t know if things are different in Washington but I doubt there is a blanket ban, in all possible circumstances, on striking.
Power as it pertains to a union is about their ability to negotiate working conditions, pay, and worker protections. I know of no large group of public employees with better worker protections.
What worker protection has the police union negotiated that the teachers union failed to get? Qualified immunity isn't due to the unions, and there is no reason to give it to teachers since teachers aren't required to be violent to do their job. If teachers were required to be violent then they would have qualified immunity as well.
Police hold municipalities hostage if they don’t get their way in terms of protection from prosecution for violating peoples’ civil rights and for exerting nonjudicial punishments. In my city a councilman complained about police brutality and the police purposefully responded to non violent 911 calls hours after they were made. When they would show up they would tell people to thank their councilman for the delay. Police commit more domestic violence on average and get prosecuted for this violence at a much lower rate than non police. In some municipalities police are effectively a gang.
My police union's president has been fired from the force 3 times because he literally abused people, including children at the school he was supposed to be protecting, and each time the union sued and got him reinstated. Meanwhile teachers are fired regularly.
Sure, but a police officer has much (much) more power than 5 teachers. I can't remember the last time teachers benefited from qualified immunity or civil forfeiture.
I have never heard people chant "Defund the schools" though, so it seems like teachers has much more political support and power overall. Qualified immunity isn't thanks to police unions, the supreme court decided that because they thought that policemen shouldn't risk go to jail just for doing their job, the police union didn't seem to have much involvement.
> I have never heard people chant “Defund the schools”
Hah! That says more about what you listen to than what’s being said. People have been fighting loudly to pull money out of public schools for longer than most people on this site have been alive. It provided more election debate and more massive ad and PR campaigns through the 80’s and 90’s than any police reform politic could dream of, and it continues to be a major part of today’s more crowded debate.
We aren’t talking about private schools. We are talking about whether or not there is a chant similar to “defund the police” for public schools. The answer is yes there is.
I’m inclined to agree, especially because teachers also receive pensions for the rest of their lives after retiring, in average before the age of 60 according to a quick google search. Young teachers make less to support these pensions.
I would be interested to hear an argument that refutes your claim.
Anyone can retire at any age. Those in a defined benefit pension typically get around 2% per year worked of the average of the highest 5 years of pay. This benefit has penalties for retiring before the standard Social Security retirement age. I could collect my pension right now but it would be around $1,000 dollars a month. If I start collecting at 65 it will be much higher.
Aren’t you supporting my point? Your current salary is lower because you are also earning a 1,000/month income in perpetuity for the rest of your life. And people who teach for longer, like you said, will get more.
Teacher salaries are low because unions have negotiated them to support pensions, especially pensions of teachers that last long enough to get a “much higher” pension.
I think you might not understand the situation. A person can’t realistically live for 30+ years at $1,000 per month. So while it is true that I can retire right now it wouldn’t be efficacious to do so. You mentioned retiring at 60. I’m pointing out that this is a meaningless fact. What matters is at what age one can realistically retire.
EDIT: My pay might be lower due to the pension but it isn’t much lower as a result. The pension is not good in my system. I’d have been better off with the defined contribution plan.
Your comment is misleading. Yes, the union has the ability to decide how the pie is allocated within teachers, but if the teachers are underfunded there's a systemic problem about making sure the teachers get a big enough pie.
I'm a communist, I've been on HN for 8 years or so.
I've found that the political bent of HN is much, much more varied than "taken over by commies". In general, I've met many folks here from across political spectrum -- from arch-capitals to libertarians to progressives/socialists/leftists to neoliberals.
When we can be up front about our own beliefs and share our perspectives on them in a non-demonizing way, the discussions can actually be quite enlightening.
I might not agree with a libertarian ethos, but I've met many libertarians here I could have elucidating chats about things with.
And before you ask, "Why bring politics into hacking at all?" I'd argue that hacking is, by it's nature, a political activity (whether that's hacking in the cyber-crime sense or in the 'assembling something from spare parts' sense.) There's something about operating outside of systems, about putting one's mark on the world, about expressing yourself through what you choose to build and how to build it that is inescapably political.
Politics doesn't have to be a team sport. We can disagree and still converse.
Do you realize that you contradict yourself? You claim to be a communist yet you expect to be free enough to express yourself and choose what to build? Discuss politics and being free to disagree in a communist state?? You either weren't thaught XXth century history at school or you are very confused. Saying you are communist is like saying you are a nazist, it makes no sense. IMO you are confused.
There are many flavors of communist, my friend. You might be familiar with Stalinism and Soviet/Maoist communism -- the authoritarian forms of communism that dominated the use of the word. I am not a fan of those, and indeed do not consider myself a Stalinist.
But there are other types of communism, in both theory and practice, that do not require authoritarianism. I'm comfortable in asserting that I'm fairly well read on different histories and theories -- from the anarchist writings of Kropotkin and practiced in communes in Europe in the early 20th century, to democratic workers councils, to neoMarxist works.
I'm more than happy to discuss the topic in more depth, and I think it might be interesting to some folks on HN to have a communist who isn't interested in petty sniping or scoring political points, but that conversation has to start with something other than "You are a confused Nazi."
And it's not even the debate I enjoy. I'm not here to win, which is unfortunately how many debates are structured.
I'm happy to listen to others beliefs, challenge them lightly, ask questions, and learn. And in turn share my beliefs, have them challenged lightly, have questions asked of me, and teach.
We can walk away from that thinking, "Wow, I strongly disagree with the way they view the world" and still have those moments of "But I'm glad we chatted, because that's a perspective I wasn't familiar with and I think I understand it better."
Of all the professions, teachers deserve the least sympathy. I have never seen a more self-aggrandizing bunch of pseudointellectuals in my life. Mandatory schooling needs to be abolished. If you want to go to school be my guest, don't shove it down anyones throat.
If LAUSD gets around 15% more money per student, why is their pay so much worse? More administrators? Higher rate of special ed students? Lawsuit payouts? Buying bitcoin for ransomware authors?
* California's school funding is kinda complicated and a whole topic in and off itsf. Mostly the extra complexity is for a good reason, there's a gnarly formula to avoid the problem where quality of education is directly proportional to local property tax revenue. Richer parts of California often actually have less money in their schools, because schools with more economically disadvantaged students get more money in the formula. When schools have high local revenue, the state uses an offset to balance things out. The only exception I know of to that general rule is Beverly Hills. The BH property tax is so obscenely high that it doesn't matter that they get less money from the state+feds, especially taking into account that the area has relatively few children per capita.