geep

Typically, in my area, salaries run approximately 80% of the total budget for a school district. All teachers MUST belong to the union (closed shop state). Many of the other employees belong to the union, in some cases only a very few supervisory and administration personel do NOT belong to the union. In many districts- my own included- some or all of the elected officials of the school board are card carrying union members. There are also many PRIVATE schools where the teachers are members of the union, whose numbers are NOT included in the above total. My number may be larger. Oddly enough, in many states the amount the state spends on education is around half of their total budget. Here's another big blow to the education is under-funded myth. As a % of the GDP, education spending has almost TRIPLED since the 60's and is more than DOUBLE the military spending of the U.S., while military spending as a % of the GDP has dropped by nearly 2/3. I helped my kid with a paper for high school on the subject. He got a "C" because the teacher didn't like his subject matter.