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business newsYesterday's TV, Today's Economy: "Welcome Back, Kotter"
The public education system would have a hard time hanging on to the Sweathogs' mentor.
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Oh sure, Kotter endured frustrations aplenty at the fictional James Buchanan High, which was inspired by New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood. But back then, even in a dysfunctional public school system, being a teacher actually meant something -- it was a solid middle-class profession that generated an above-average salary in a city where even average people could afford to live.
But the economics of teaching began to change after 1979. From that time until 2006, salaries of school teachers fell 13% relative to comparable workers, a trend that has only recently begun to reverse.
These days, the average salary for a US teacher is $51,000. New York-area teachers have fared better than most -- if a teacher like Mr. Kotter stayed on the job from 1980 until now, he would be earning around $90,000 per year.
For Kotter, that kind of salary would make for a comfortable life in Bensonhurst, a mostly Italian and Jewish district that's still affordable. According to New York brokers, a two-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood can be had for less that $1,500 a month.
Mr. Kotter’s wages would also be protected by the United Federation of Teachers, a powerful union that has lately come under fire for making it difficult for the New York Board of Education to lay off some of its most undesirable teachers.
As reported in an attention-getting New Yorker article, there are some 600 teachers across the city’s five boroughs who get paid every day to sit and do nothing, literally nothing, in one of the city’s infamous "Rubber Rooms." (They are officially known as Temporary Reassignment Centers).
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Photo by ABC Television/Getty Images
Then again, there’s always the possibility that Mr. Kotter would have given up on his beloved Sweathogs by now, especially given the sweeter deals being offered at New York area’s charter schools.
Funded by a mix of public and private money, these schools are run according to goals outlined within their own charters. They're also able create their own rules about salaries and curriculum.
In Manhattan’s largely Hispanic Washington Heights neighborhood, for example, a charter school called The Equity Project is testing the hypothesis that "teacher quality is the most important factor in achieving educational equity for low-income students," according to its website.
The school is reallocating its public funds "by making an unprecedented investment in attracting and retaining great teachers." It pays its chosen few $125,000 a year, according to a New York Times story.
Sounds like a philosophy, and salary figure, that Mr. Kotter would welcome.
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