PPTA wants $1.7 billion!

Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche points out:

The PPTA’s current set of claims would cost taxpayers $1.7 billion over four years. That’s equivalent to an extra $67,000 for every full-time secondary teacher. It’s unaffordable, unreasonable and unrealistic. 

I’d like to see the best teachers earning over $120,000 a year. But that would require a pay scale that isn’t automatic progression based on time in job. The sad reality is that the inflexibility in the teacher pay agreements means that any increases for the best teachers are unaffordable because the same pay goes to each and every teacher who has been there long enough.