Retired teachers make twice the wage scale, plus they do not have to pay union dues. Whereas, the newly minted teacher are force to pay union dues. Now if the boards used more newly minted teachers, they would save a bundle of money to a tune of 16.8 million, and the union will received increased dues.

Now that is only 10 boards, The average is 1.68 million. Rough and inaccurate estimate, but in total for Ontario, was 108.3 million that retired teachers collected on top of their pension. 108.3 million could have paid for a lot of positions for newly minted teachers.

As a teacher said in the G/M article, and bears repeating, ““It’s a real morale buster,” said Laura Drexler, a 37-year-old supply teacher who lives in a one-bedroom student apartment in Waterloo, Ont. Despite the broad expertise of three university degrees and her willingness to drive between three school boards to find work, Ms. Drexler earns a quarter of what she could earn full-time.“

It is time to close that particular loop hole, and put a dent on that long list of newly minted teachers whose desire is to work. For retired teachers, the few that have heavy experience can become reading specialists, and literacy expertise, to help children , and where the teachers’ college, and the unions think reading and writing skills are not part of their qualifications.

Yes Doug, the province makes the rules, and the union dictating the rules to the province.

Do you just guess these things Nancy,

Retired teachers do pay union dues based on how much time they supply.

In the past, the retired teachers could work 90 days per year every year without deductions from their pension. That was recently reduced to three years of 90 days at which time they can only work 20 days per year.

If you don’t allow this, they don’t retire as early and cost much more.

Not to put too fine a point on it Nancy but you are wrong about everything here. Allowing the retirees to supply saves the board money and the boards know this.

Do you not read the articles that are provided?

In the second link, “Young graduates need experience to land a full-time job, but supply-teaching opportunities often go to retirees padding their pensions with contribution-free income. Part of the modest income of the young teachers that do make it onto the supply list goes toward a pension plan that’s facing an imbalance: For each beneficiary, there are only 1.5 paying members, and that ratio is expected to decline to 1.2 within the next decade.“

The key is the retirees padding their pensions with contribution- free income. Whereas the young teachers, part of money earned, goes toward a pension plan.

I am beginning to question your reading ability, especially how you boast on your degrees.

How does it save the board money, when the Toronto board is already spending 18.7 million on retired teachers, and if they used young teachers, the savings would be 7.6 million dollars.

The G/M got their figures straight from the government.
“The Globe’s nine-month investigation, which included multiple access-to-information requests, has for the first time determined the practice’s cost to taxpayers. The Toronto District School Board, for example, doled out almost twice as many supply assignments to retirees than to new teachers in 2008-09. These veterans earned double the new teachers’ rate for long-term assignments without paying into the pension plan. (Both groups earn the same for daily supply work, the bulk of which goes to retirees). “

If you want to correct, you better go after G/M, but not one in the education system, question the numbers, but rather to defend the status-quo, or to get rid of it.

People like me Doug are the majority in this province who have no children and no need for the program and would like to see that money spent on healthcare and to keep taxes down rather than piddle it away on a program designed to keep teachers employed and stealing jobs from ECE folks.

Yes, the government is stupid for putting education in the same company as healthcare when they suggest they want to protect both.

Stupid also are the bureaucrats and thinking carrots who advise the gov’t in coming out with elaborate promises only to fill in the details when no one’s looking.

#1) Your big problem Sheep is that you believe that only people who recieve a direct service are in favour of that service. Most people favour the ELP by a better than 2/1 margin. Grandparents like it as well.

#2) The ECE people are happy as clams with the ELP and have told the government this. I was on TV with their leader and she agreed.

#3) Even the Sun said today, taxes will have to go up, the idea that they won’t is a dream but get used to it, they will go up. Oregon state just passed a new tax on high incomes and corporations only to pay for education. Nothing could be fairer than that.

I don’t think you understand politics very well sheep. When the Liberals consider decisions they only poll in the riding they already have and the ridings that are close. They ignore the opinions of people who live in ridings that alwys vote Tory. All parties do the same. The NDP only polls the opinions of 40 ridings that give above average support to them. The PCs do the same. If you live in a riding that always votes PC the others ignore your opinion.

Nancy, I think you need a little lesson in school board economics.

If the retirees cannot count on the supply work they do not retire which cost the board much more.

The boards know this, the ministry knows this and the teachers know this.

The principals prefer the retirees.

There are already limits on the retirees.

When the retirees do retire they free up a job at a much lower wage.

So the Ontario Liberals only poll other liberal ridings?  This kind of stuff, from the uninformed, makes any political party look bad. To spend money on a poll, and called it random polling, is not very scientific at all.

ECEs should be happy, being paid at $24 or $27 per hour. But as some have suggested, and reported in the news, the ECEs may actually be newly minted teachers, who could not find work as a teacher.

No one is against ELP, but most opposed the setup and how the teachers union will choke it for purposes that are usually not in the best interests of the public purse. How the government has set it up, eliminating the non-profits that were running the daycares at the school, or had a close business relationship between them and the schools. What will happen to the after-school programs, that were run by the non-profits, along with the daycare at some of the schools?  The after-school programs were run below costs, and it was made up, by the daycare fees. Places that have the boys and girls clubs, the Ys, are once more going to become busy places.  Very few would be willing to pay for the day care portion. or the after-school programs.

There is a chart, at the bottom of the first link telling you exactly what it has costs the boards using retired teachers, and what would be the savings using new teachers. The retirees who are working, some are abusing the system, and working well beyond the 90 hours. No one is watching, and this is why it has taken the G/M to get the data, Nine months for this one, and a couple weeks ago, the news item on how many kids failed, no one had available stats on kids who have been retained. The excuse it would break the privacy act. ,

How come any part of the education arms, never have the available stats for such things as breakdown of the resources being spent on a school, or the failure rate?  It is only when one of the arms are fighting for something, like the union, the stats get pulled out, to get your raises, and than tucked away, out of the public’s eye, until needed again.

Nancy, all 3 parties poll the same way. From the Liberals POV, it only matters what people think in seats they already have or seats lost by a fairly close margin. What people think of ELP in deep blue Tory ridings does not concern them beause they can’t win those ridings anyway. All three parties poll like crazy in the ridings that can actually change hands from one election to the next. In Ontario these days that is 905 region + Scarborough, + one London seat, 2 in Ottawa area, Belleville, Barrie, couple of others. If ELP is popular in these ridings, it doesn’t matter what other ridings think. Guess what? It is popular there with commuter moms. You understand now?

No doubt that’s why even people who were involved in setting up the system now agree that it has outlived its purpose; keeping teachers working when there was a teacher shortage.  That’s certainly not the case anymore.

The problem is declining enrolement not retirees.

The solution is smaller classes, not a focus on part time jobs.

The government already cut the days from 95 to 20 after three years.

The Globe and Mail didn’t mention an important fact. I have a friend who has done supply work for the TDSB for years. She told me that the TDSB this past year,and the year coming up, filled most supply teaching jobs -the longer term ones—replacing teachers on mat leave, surgery- with contract teachers. This was to prevent layoffs. So they are using permanent employees for many of those jobs, not supply teachers.

My friend said in two schools she regularly supplied in all the LTO jobs were taken by contract teachers. Only day-to-day jobs were available.  I would think other boards with declining ewnrolment and oversupply of staff might be doing the same thing.  Growing boards are not in that position, yet.

There must be more to it than that. The person must be off the entire year to be replaced by a permanent teacher.

There are only about 6 public boards and 4-5 catholic boards actually growing.