James Aumack
Cape May, New Jersey
In regard to your recent story about teacher salaries I can truthfully say this! It took me 38 years to earn a salary in the $75,000 range on one job! It also took a Masters Degree +30 more post grad credits. This story makes the casual reader believe that you just walk into this salary…not so! It takes years to reach this level. Most teachers don’t stay in the profession for 38 years. They burn out or simply quit because of the work load or politics. I worked in the second largest city in New Jersey, in the inner-city. In many cases, the students were the offspring of kids themselves. The simplest expectations just weren’t met because the parents didn’t have any education regarding parenthood. It all fell on the teacher as well as the curriculum designed by some individual that likely never taught under these circumstances.
Inner-city Teaching isn’t for sissies. I’ve seen guys that survived wounds Viet Nam walk out of the classroom and out the front door in frustration with the behaviors of politicians within the city and the school system. You have to learn to fight the battles that you have a chance to win and deep six the others. Many people simply can’t deal with ‘what is’ and not what it could be. Teaching is among the toughest professions….if you really care about your kids.
The above is from a classroom teacher that was jailed for ten out of thirty days for striking and defying a court order. Later our jail time and sentences/records were expunged because it was found to be true that the Mayor of Jersey City and the Hudson County Democratic State Senator were embezzling State and Federal funds from the Board of Education and City Treasury. We knew this to be true but we couldn’t negotiate a decent salary because the money disappeared. Our strike was illegal under State Law but it opened the secret box of what was really happening. The Court apologized in the only way it could, it expunged our records. However, a further insult is that the politicians named the school after the Principal that fingered everyone on her staff that participated in the strike. She was afraid she would loss her job if she didn’t comply with he Mayors request. We won the war but we lost that battle. Our ‘guts’ so to speak, encouraged the Federal Authorities to look into our ‘strike’ and interview key people in our NJEA Teachers Association/Union. They looked into City building records and found that many were missing. The 10% kickback suddenly appeared after some of the contractors were interviewed. Pay to play was the only way they could get a building contract and keep their people working.
To augment my salary, I always had several after-school jobs. Finally I helped start a ‘Not For Profit Corporation’ and started to apply for State and Federal funding to operate an ‘Afterschool Program’ that supported children and also fed them a hot meal every evening before they were transported home to their front door. Almost all of our staff were teachers with a Master’s Degree or better and years of experience. This project employed not only teachers but also support staff as well. This part of the staff was made up of excellent high school and college students that wished to work with children and learn about teaching as a lifelong profession. This project lasted for over twenty five years and expanded to after school and fulltime entire summer daycare as well. It employed a complete fulltime office staff to deal with the enormous amount of paperwork that goes along with the ‘Grant Process’. This process also required a attorney, Medical Doctors and secretaries. All of this and more was written into the Grant Proposals that funded the entire operation. This project lasted for over twenty years, after-school and summer as well.
Teaching isn’t for cowards, it takes a good deal of brass to stay and teach for over three decades.
James K. Aumack
Retired after 38 years teaching Inner-City Elementary School
Jaumack64@email.com
