Assistance offered to teachers
June 20, 2000 10:25 AM   Subscribe

Assistance offered to teachers in Santa Clara, the county with the highest median house price in the US [from fark] See attached flame inside>>>
posted by plinth (7 comments total)
 
The idea is nice, but it just doesn't wash.

Let's say that a teacher is buying a median-priced house from $500K at an interest rate of 8%, and manages to put down 5% on a 30 year mortgage. Annual taxes are about $5400. Plug all this into my handy PTTI calculator and the monthly payment, including $500/year insurance, is $3977. If you subtract out Intel's $500/mo offer, that's $3477/mo, which comes to $41724/year or only $4000/year higher than the average teacher's salary. Oh, and unless private mortgage insurance is waived for not being able to meet a 10% downpayment, that's an additional charge per month.

In other words, thanks for nothing, or say 'hello' to your new room mates.


posted by plinth at 10:36 AM on June 20, 2000


Median = middle, give or take. People start kicking around the 1/2 million dollar number and others lose site of the fact that there are problably a bizillion homes worth over 2M dollars (or much, much more).

Why I found this cozy little number in a matter of seconds. Mind you... it is a shit box, but it is a steal at $128,888.

Just like clerks at BP don't line in the middle-of-the-road lawyer's house, teachers can't expect to live in the middle-of-the-road millionaire software developer's house.

Apartment.
posted by internook at 3:56 PM on June 20, 2000


Not to worry, the whole 'dot.con' economy is built on hot gas. The overinflated real estate market has already started to deflate there and will continue to do so. Let's just hope that Silicon Valley doesn't turn into a ghost town.
posted by Mr. skullhead at 6:48 PM on June 20, 2000


Apartment? Sure. Except that Intel offered $500/mo for mortgages not rent. As I said before, thanks for nothing.

For Intel, that's like offering shoes to amputees. It's great PR, but it doesn't actually help. If they want to help, subsidize rent for teachers, or better yet: subsidize their salaries.
posted by plinth at 9:03 PM on June 20, 2000


Really, the best thing these people could do (it'll never happen, but I can dream) is to simply quit en masse. No threats, no strikes, just a mass, two-weeks-notice resignation. No sane teacher in the country will consider moving into that sort of economic hell; the rich citizens will have no choice but to either bring the teachers' pay in line with the out-of-control inflation they themselves created, or do without education for their kids.
posted by aaron at 9:13 PM on June 20, 2000


Really, the best thing these people could do (it'll never happen, but I can dream) is to simply quit en masse.

Atlas shrugging? It could work: the teachers probably have a union, and some bargaining power... Hey, in Massachusetts we've started a program giving new teachers signing bonuses. If the country needs teachers, and it probably does, the market (presumably) will balance out to pay them what they're worth. Of course, the government is signing the checks, so it may take a while to reach equilibrium...
posted by letourneau at 10:47 PM on June 20, 2000


Not only do teachers need to be able to make more money, their pay scale has to change. Seniority's all fine and well, but a talented, beloved teacher, one of those ones who dramatically changes lives (I've been lucky enough to encounter a couple of them) deserves more money then the read-the-text-book-in-a-monotone-voice-for-the-entire-class-and-leave-at-3:30-quicker-than-the-students kind of teacher.

Hard to rate? Definitely. But it's fairly well-known in pretty much every school who the good teachers are, who the absolutely terrible teachers are, and who the hard-assed but fair teachers are.
posted by cCranium at 10:49 AM on June 21, 2000


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