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Posted
2 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

A quick reminder that this is the last week of school for Austin ISD.  A few surrounding districts have already had their last day, but I forgot to post before then.

It is OK to give your kid's teacher a gift.  HEB gift cards are great, Amazon gift cards are great.  No one straight up gives cash, but there's not a rule against it.
Lots of kids give small Starbucks gift cards, which is nice for a coffee but it does not bring groceries home.

If every elementary kid dropped $300 in gift cards on their teacher, and every kid in middle and high school gave $50 to each teacher, teacher income would rise about 10%.
That's not *that* much to give, it's about $1.50 per day.  I think most parents would be OK doing this, but folks tend to forget.

If you are in the mood to help out a teacher, buy some gift cards or go to your local ATM and make it rain.

Also, force your kid to write a nice note to their teachers ... my wife has a folder of them that grows every year.

You think every kid (‘s parents) should give their teacher $300?  So let’s assume each teacher has 30 kids (complete guess, as I have no kids in school), so that’s $9,000?  
 

I mean, shit yeah, I’d love a $9000 tip at my job too. Seems…unlikely. 

Posted (edited)

They'll get their $15 Starbucks/ Whataburger card and like it.

There were some parents who gave out $50 cards to the teachers.  Never heard about the $300 variety.

One of wife's previous Districts had a $75 limit on accepting gifts from parents.

Edited by Iceman
Posted
23 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

You think every kid (‘s parents) should give their teacher $300?  So let’s assume each teacher has 30 kids (complete guess, as I have no kids in school), so that’s $9,000?  
 

I mean, shit yeah, I’d love a $9000 tip at my job too. Seems…unlikely. 

Not to mention that nearly 60% of Texas students are eligible for free lunch. Those families don’t have 300 bucks burning a hole in their pockets to hand out as a gratuity at the end of the school year. 

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Posted (edited)

I'm here to provide comfort to any single struggling lady educators. 

Sure it's only a few minutes with a little weeping at the end.

Edited by MissingInAction
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Posted
4 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

You think every kid (‘s parents) should give their teacher $300?  So let’s assume each teacher has 30 kids (complete guess, as I have no kids in school), so that’s $9,000?  
 

I mean, shit yeah, I’d love a $9000 tip at my job too. Seems…unlikely. 

Yes, it would really help retain teachers, which would provide next year's students with more experienced teachers.  $2 a day for elementary, a quarter a day for each high school teacher.  I know it sounds crazy but it would help.  Ideally the leg would be doing this but I've given up on that.

Elementary teachers have about 20-22 through 4th grade.
Secondary teachers have maybe 180-200, teaching 6 out of 8 classes with about 30-34 kids per class.  

Give what you want, but I sized my number to give them about 10% more than they get.  Any amount is helpful and appreciated.  Very few parents give anything, but some give a small amount with a nice note from the kid and it totally makes my wife's day.

A lot of teachers today are able to teach because they have a spouse who earns much more money, or they are doing it as a second career and they've already got money from a previous career.  Teachers straight out of college without another source of income are getting squeezed.  They teach for 3-5 years and find out that they can make a lot more money doing something else ... and if they ever want to buy a house or maybe a new car, they need to move on from teaching.

I have seen some really great teachers leave the profession because of money.  They want to keep teaching and you would want your kid to have them.  But the salary is not enough, so they're gone.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

A lot of teachers today are able to teach because they have a spouse who earns much more money, or they are doing it as a second career and they've already got money from a previous career.  Teachers straight out of college without another source of income are getting squeezed.  They teach for 3-5 years and find out that they can make a lot more money doing something else ... and if they ever want to buy a house or maybe a new car, they need to move on from teaching.

Most teachers now only are teaching because it’s the next step up in the career ladder. They can make 3X to 4X the money being assistant principals and principals, but they need the 3-5 years in the trenches as classroom teachers before they can apply for AP roles. I remember being in high school and the teachers were old ladies or old coaches who had been there for 20+ years. It’s not like this anymore with the younger generation of teachers and the younger generation of shithead kids who can’t go 5 seconds without their phones. 

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Posted

I love that the guy whose spouse is a teacher has come up with a creative way to increase his household income by suggesting that parents need to be tipping teachers. Fucking hilarious.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Yes, it would really help retain teachers, which would provide next year's students with more experienced teachers.  $2 a day for elementary, a quarter a day for each high school teacher.  I know it sounds crazy but it would help.  Ideally the leg would be doing this but I've given up on that.

Elementary teachers have about 20-22 through 4th grade.
Secondary teachers have maybe 180-200, teaching 6 out of 8 classes with about 30-34 kids per class.  

Give what you want, but I sized my number to give them about 10% more than they get.  Any amount is helpful and appreciated.  Very few parents give anything, but some give a small amount with a nice note from the kid and it totally makes my wife's day.

A lot of teachers today are able to teach because they have a spouse who earns much more money, or they are doing it as a second career and they've already got money from a previous career.  Teachers straight out of college without another source of income are getting squeezed.  They teach for 3-5 years and find out that they can make a lot more money doing something else ... and if they ever want to buy a house or maybe a new car, they need to move on from teaching.

I have seen some really great teachers leave the profession because of money.  They want to keep teaching and you would want your kid to have them.  But the salary is not enough, so they're gone.

I wasn’t trying to be a dick with my initial response. Well, maybe a bit, it is surly. But I’m very aware and empathetic to the plight of teachers. Several of my friends, and my sister in law, were/are teachers. They get the shit end of the stick all the time and it is extremely thankless. 
 

I just thought $300 per teacher was a bit ambitious. 

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Posted

lol at a $300 end of year teacher gift. I say that as someone who’s wife was a public school teacher and never received anything close to that, and as someone who tries to be very generous to the teachers at our kid’s preschool.

Anyone who gives that level of gift most likely has their kids at a pricey private school. Casually suggesting that it should be the norm for an average family is a bit out of touch.

Posted (edited)

Three hundred as a single gift at end of the year is dumb. We kick in in 25-50 dollar increments a few times a years directly for gifts for our elementary school aged kid's teachers. A few hundred to the elementary PTO, and a few hundred more to the district education foundation stuff. The latter through their gala situations. After elementary shit gets pretty opaque in terms of tracking the money directly to the benefit of the teachers, and with sports involvement dollars start to flow to the booster clubs.  

Edited by Anastasis
Posted
I'm here to provide comfort to any single struggling lady educators. 
Sure it's only a few minutes with a little weeping at the end.

What are you crying about?
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Posted
lol at a $300 end of year teacher gift. I say that as someone who’s wife was a public school teacher and never received anything close to that, and as someone who tries to be very generous to the teachers at our kid’s preschool.

Anyone who gives that level of gift most likely has their kids at a pricey private school. Casually suggesting that it should be the norm for an average family is a bit out of touch.

So we are not all billionaires here?
Posted

Hey everyone, don't get caught up in my $300 number.  Perhaps it was too high.  The point is ... what was the point again? 🙂  The point is the school year is ending and if you want to give your kid's teacher a little gift with a nice note from your kid it will make the teacher's day.  About 95% of families do not do this.  I do think that most families appreciate their teachers, they just don't think about it with summer coming up.

BTW, Prop A last year in Austin ISD raised about $170,000,000 in new taxes.  There are about 5500 teachers in Austin ISD.  So you say, well, that's about $30,000 per teacher, go get it from that pile!  ... not ....   The state took a 75% cut and the district used less than half of the rest of the money for teacher raises.  About 90% was gone before it made it to teacher raises, and we will pay the Prop A tax every year.

It's really a shame, because if we could take that pile and give it to teachers and staff, we could make a big dent in their ability to live in Austin.

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Posted
On 5/25/2025 at 6:23 PM, MrBig said:

Most teachers now only are teaching because it’s the next step up in the career ladder. They can make 3X to 4X the money being assistant principals and principals, but they need the 3-5 years in the trenches as classroom teachers before they can apply for AP roles. I remember being in high school and the teachers were old ladies or old coaches who had been there for 20+ years. It’s not like this anymore with the younger generation of teachers and the younger generation of shithead kids who can’t go 5 seconds without their phones. 

Where the hell are your numbers coming from? It’s pure absurdity. Do you really think assistant principals are making 150k or more a year?

After 10 years of teaching in AISD I made 55k. After 4 years of being an AP I made 67k. As a principal I made 104k.

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Posted (edited)

My wife would do $100 worth stuff for the parents at Christmas time and another $100 for end of the year (Teacher week or whatever they would call it) every year back in the day. Can confirm that teachers appreciated it and for the siblings coming up through the pipeline behind them it helped turn those 88's and 89's into 90's on the ole transcript ;)

Maybe it's placebo in my mind, but teachers are humans and in a jump ball they probably bias for the kids/families they like, was always my guess.

Edited by Vegas64
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Posted
13 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

also not legal.

When has that ever mattered to this regime? 

Posted
On 5/25/2025 at 7:23 PM, MrBig said:

Most teachers now only are teaching because it’s the next step up in the career ladder. They can make 3X to 4X the money being assistant principals and principals, but they need the 3-5 years in the trenches as classroom teachers before they can apply for AP roles. 

Um, no. None of this is true.

(I’m in higher ed but my sister is a high school teacher/coach.)

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Posted
On 5/25/2025 at 6:23 PM, MrBig said:

Most teachers now only are teaching because it’s the next step up in the career ladder. They can make 3X to 4X the money being assistant principals and principals, but they need the 3-5 years in the trenches as classroom teachers before they can apply for AP roles. I remember being in high school and the teachers were old ladies or old coaches who had been there for 20+ years. It’s not like this anymore with the younger generation of teachers and the younger generation of shithead kids who can’t go 5 seconds without their phones. 

You're an idiot.

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Posted

TEA announced today that it is extending the takeover of HISD for an additional two years, now through 2027. Once the state moves in, they will never go back to local control. It’s a cautionary tale for AISD.

Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, royiv said:

TEA announced today that it is extending the takeover of HISD for an additional two years, now through 2027. Once the state moves in, they will never go back to local control. It’s a cautionary tale for AISD.

I noticed in the TxTrib story about the STAAR bill failing that the Senate had slipped a provision into their version of the bill that would allow the TEA to take over, and appoint a conservator for, any district that sued the state/TEA, about anything.  It's a blessing that bill failed.

Edited by sasquatch69
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Posted
16 minutes ago, Pancho said:

Lol

A&M is joining six other institutions to create their own accreditation board.

 

"Come attend our university!  It is now 'WHOOP!' certified!"

Where do I sign up?

Posted

Regarding the gift giving culture that permeates elementary school classrooms these days, it’s fucked up I should be expected to give gift cards 4-5 times a school year to teachers for doing their jobs instead of being able to send my kids to public school I pay for where the teachers are paid enough not to need my Target and Starbucks gift cards to supplement their income. Plenty of people work for similar salaries and don’t have  these expectations. Also it’s mainly a middle class and up school districts where this happens and those teachers are not dealing with the worst of worst conditions that lower class and poverty stricken schools and districts are dealing with. So yes we fall into the peer pressure of a couple hundred bucks a year to help our kid’s teachers out that my mom never got teaching in lower income areas. But my wife’s mom taught in nicer areas and thinks it’s the norm so then so does my wife.

 

/rant over

Posted
29 minutes ago, Covri said:

Regarding the gift giving culture that permeates elementary school classrooms these days, it’s fucked up I should be expected to give gift cards 4-5 times a school year to teachers for doing their jobs instead of being able to send my kids to public school I pay for where the teachers are paid enough not to need my Target and Starbucks gift cards to supplement their income. Plenty of people work for similar salaries and don’t have  these expectations. Also it’s mainly a middle class and up school districts where this happens and those teachers are not dealing with the worst of worst conditions that lower class and poverty stricken schools and districts are dealing with. So yes we fall into the peer pressure of a couple hundred bucks a year to help our kid’s teachers out that my mom never got teaching in lower income areas. But my wife’s mom taught in nicer areas and thinks it’s the norm so then so does my wife.

 

/rant over

While I don’t entirely disagree with your premise, I want to note a key distinction here: these teachers are not using those gift cards to “supplement their income”. In the case of my wife and many of her colleagues, they’re using those cards to buy classroom supplies that they are given no budget to purchase because of the continued degradation of school funding in our state - or, using them to buy protein bars to keep on hand since budgets for free breakfasts and lunches have been severely cut by our esteemed governor.

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Posted

I'm a middle school teacher so I don't really expect any gift cards, but I do still typically get  5-10 at Christmas and during teacher appreciation week. (I generally have in the neighborhood of 140-150 kids on my rosters).

Any Amazon cards I get are spent on crap for the classroom. Pencils and folders and such. Starbucks cards go to my wife. Whataburger cards are used by me, usually during inservice training days.

It's nice, but not required or expected. I appreciate a card written by the student, where I can also tell they've written something they actually believe and not something their parents dictated. Those are better than the gift cards.

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Posted
3 hours ago, sasquatch69 said:

While I don’t entirely disagree with your premise, I want to note a key distinction here: these teachers are not using those gift cards to “supplement their income”. In the case of my wife and many of her colleagues, they’re using those cards to buy classroom supplies that they are given no budget to purchase because of the continued degradation of school funding in our state - or, using them to buy protein bars to keep on hand since budgets for free breakfasts and lunches have been severely cut by our esteemed governor.

The poster TexasJeff was asking for money to supplement teacher pay. That's what I was responding to. We provide supplies too as classroom parents and through teacher supply drives. I was just venting about the endless ask for more parent money to supplement what our taxes should be paying for to being with.

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Posted

For me it’s similar to how former servers usually tip well at restaurants. When I was a teacher, I drove uber two days a week. That was Fridays after work and Sundays after lesson planning. It was hard to live in Austin on 55k and have any kind of financial goals. I don’t have kids but try to take care of the teachers I know now that I make more.

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Posted
12 hours ago, Covri said:

The poster TexasJeff was asking for money to supplement teacher pay. That's what I was responding to. We provide supplies too as classroom parents and through teacher supply drives. I was just venting about the endless ask for more parent money to supplement what our taxes should be paying for to being with.

Ideally the tax you pay should pay for everything .. teacher supplies, the teacher, the building.  Austin ISD raises plenty of money through taxes to pay teachers enough.  But the state takes half of it away, and so there it goes. 

I've thought about ways of getting teachers more money so they can afford to live in the community they serve.  I welcome everyone's ideas.  The only thing I've come up with is gift cards or just handing over cash, since district revenue is strictly controlled by the legislature, and they are not even covering increases in inflation.  I get that not everyone can donate.  And it's also not fair to schools with higher numbers of poor kids, and our schools are very economically segregated.  All true.

About 5-10% of my wife's students give her a gift card at the end of the year, and most cards are $10-$20, and about half of them are Starbucks, and we don't drink coffee.  This is at a 10% eco-dis school, so not the poorest parents in town.  If you do like a teacher and want to give them something at the end of the year, HEB or Amazon cards are probably a better choice.  If your school is hitting you up for teacher gifts 3-4 times a year and you are giving $20 each time, you are in the top tier of givers.

I have seen good teachers leave for a non-teaching job with 2x or 3x the pay.  Teachers want to teach, but they also want to someday own a house and maybe have a newer car.  If your school is known for a good program ... a good robotics program, or a good band, or chemistry or advanced mathematics ... that good program that the school is "known" for is likely the result of the efforts of 1 or 2 teachers at the school.  Many "good" schools are one or two teacher attritions away from losing their best programs.

Should it be this hard to collect enough money to build good schools, attract and keep teachers, build good programs, and ensure that all kids have access to a good education and all teachers can afford to live in the communities they serve?  Seems harder than it should be.

Posted

All valid points I don't disagree with. One thing I will suggest is if your wife has a classroom parent that helps coordinate and organize activities she should tell her where she prefers the gift cards come from. That's basically how it is at my kid's school. If a teacher likes target then they get a bunch of target gift cards, if they like Starbucks then they get a bunch of Starbucks gift cards. My oldest son, his teacher this last year liked to go to the movies so my wife got the money from the rest of the parents and went and picked up one big Cinemark gift card to give for teacher appreciation week.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Texas Jeff said:

Ideally the tax you pay should pay for everything .. teacher supplies, the teacher, the building.  Austin ISD raises plenty of money through taxes to pay teachers enough.  But the state takes half of it away, and so there it goes. 

I've thought about ways of getting teachers more money so they can afford to live in the community they serve.  I welcome everyone's ideas.  The only thing I've come up with is gift cards or just handing over cash, since district revenue is strictly controlled by the legislature, and they are not even covering increases in inflation.  I get that not everyone can donate.  And it's also not fair to schools with higher numbers of poor kids, and our schools are very economically segregated.  All true.

About 5-10% of my wife's students give her a gift card at the end of the year, and most cards are $10-$20, and about half of them are Starbucks, and we don't drink coffee.  This is at a 10% eco-dis school, so not the poorest parents in town.  If you do like a teacher and want to give them something at the end of the year, HEB or Amazon cards are probably a better choice.  If your school is hitting you up for teacher gifts 3-4 times a year and you are giving $20 each time, you are in the top tier of givers.

I have seen good teachers leave for a non-teaching job with 2x or 3x the pay.  Teachers want to teach, but they also want to someday own a house and maybe have a newer car.  If your school is known for a good program ... a good robotics program, or a good band, or chemistry or advanced mathematics ... that good program that the school is "known" for is likely the result of the efforts of 1 or 2 teachers at the school.  Many "good" schools are one or two teacher attritions away from losing their best programs.

Should it be this hard to collect enough money to build good schools, attract and keep teachers, build good programs, and ensure that all kids have access to a good education and all teachers can afford to live in the communities they serve?  Seems harder than it should be.

Dude, your plan sucks. There’s just no other way to put it. It benefits one very, very small subset of teachers who happen to teach in public schools with wealthy parents. Normal workaday parents can’t afford to tip teachers. They’re struggling to put food on the table themselves and many of them make much less than the teachers. It’s a dick move to suggest that these folks should dig out their wallet and hand over cash to their kid’s teachers. But, by all means, your wife should get a gratuity because she has the good luck of teaching in a wealthy school while those other teachers working in the poor schools dealing with tons more social issues and challenging students can suck it. Maybe your wife can drive over to the poor part of town and hand over some of that cash to her colleagues in those schools.
 

I sincerely appreciate your knowledge and commentary on educational funding in this state and I haven’t read a single thing on the subject that you’ve written on this topic that I disagree with except for this particular item. On this one, you come across as unmoored from the economic realities faced by the vast majority of public school parents. 

Edited by royiv
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Posted
25 minutes ago, F250 said:

Conversations about tipping teachers. How did we get here? That was a rhetorical question. What a fucking world.

 

Tipping Teachers should probably be discussed in the Teachers Gone Wild Thread. 

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Posted (edited)
20 hours ago, Pancho said:

Lol

A&M is joining six other institutions to create their own accreditation board.

 

 

embarrassing. abbott's UT won't be far behind

 

  • DeSantis criticized the diversity, equity and inclusion standards of college accreditors and said Florida had faced accreditor pushback on new higher education laws and policies. “They exert all this power over our education institutions,” DeSantis said during the news conference at Florida Atlantic University. “That stops today.”
Edited by tx 3 putt
Posted
21 hours ago, Covri said:

Regarding the gift giving culture that permeates elementary school classrooms these days, it’s fucked up I should be expected to give gift cards 4-5 times a school year to teachers for doing their jobs instead of being able to send my kids to public school I pay for where the teachers are paid enough not to need my Target and Starbucks gift cards to supplement their income. Plenty of people work for similar salaries and don’t have  these expectations. Also it’s mainly a middle class and up school districts where this happens and those teachers are not dealing with the worst of worst conditions that lower class and poverty stricken schools and districts are dealing with. So yes we fall into the peer pressure of a couple hundred bucks a year to help our kid’s teachers out that my mom never got teaching in lower income areas. But my wife’s mom taught in nicer areas and thinks it’s the norm so then so does my wife.

 

/rant over

You are complaining about having to give a gift card, call it $500 a year in sum, to a school that you are paying for already via property tax.

Now try being a parent or grandparent of private school kids paying full tuition but still paying into a public school and not having a way to flex that down.

My point isn't that private school families should not have to pay for public school. My point is, It is what it is and you shouldn't complain.

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

You are complaining about having to give a gift card, call it $500 a year in sum, to a school that you are paying for already via property tax.

Now try being a parent or grandparent of private school kids paying full tuition but still paying into a public school and not having a way to flex that down.

My point isn't that private school families should not have to pay for public school. My point is, It is what it is and you shouldn't complain.

So don’t send your kids to private school? Not sure what your point is? This makes you sound like a bigger asshole than me complaining about the teacher gifts. I’m sure those private school teaches get gifts too.

 

 

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

You are complaining about having to give a gift card, call it $500 a year in sum, to a school that you are paying for already via property tax.

Now try being a parent or grandparent of private school kids paying full tuition but still paying into a public school and not having a way to flex that down.

My point isn't that private school families should not have to pay for public school. My point is, It is what it is and you shouldn't complain.

Well, the answer to all of this is that public education, in its best conception, is a social good.

It's not a quid pro quo for your tax dollars.

If you choose not to avail yourself of it, that's your choice.  As it is your choice to send your kids to private school.  It doesn't absolve you of the obligation to pay for the social good.

If it isn't well funded enough that parents have to come out of pocket, that's a policy failure, not a choice (although the decision to help out is a choice).

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted
3 minutes ago, Covri said:

So don’t send your kids to private school? Not sure what your point is? This makes you sound like a bigger asshole than me complaining about the teacher gifts. I’m sure those private school teaches get gifts too.

 

 

They do. I think the point is you sound out of touch by complaining about it and feeling entitled to not having to support or spend (above and beyond) what you already spend in taxes to fill the gap until it's filled by policy (if at all). You are griping about things outside the schools and teachers control.

Posted
2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, the answer to all of this is that public education, in its best conception, is a social good.

It's not a quid pro quo for your tax dollars.

If you choose not to avail yourself of it, that's your choice.

If it isn't well funded enough that parents have to come out of pocket, that's a policy failure, not a choice (although the decision to help out is a choice).

Well said and fully agree.

I think my quibble was with the complaining about it. It's not the teachers or school fault, largely.

Just now, Covri said:

How about I change the subject and complain about all the got damn dress up theme days the school comes up with every year?  

Gotta keep the Gen Z's with attention spans of goldfish interested, I guess! haha

Posted

Fat Boy’s DOJ pressured the UVA president to resign due to a “civil rights investigation” which really means the UVA president was pushing back on DEI initiatives that Fat Boy’s DOJ told him to get rid of.

 

 

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