I agree with you in every particular, even to the point that my numbers were inflated (although not in the way I expected). Class sizes are significantly lower than 24, and cost per student is significantly higher than $11,000. From the Mpls web site: http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/about/facts.shtml # of teachers : 4,658 Mpls school budget : $662,683,442 # of students : 48,991 Some derived numbers... 'Revenue' per teacher: $142,268 Cost per student : $13,527 Again, if you assume a teacher costs $72,000 / year (which is the equivalent of a full time worker making $80,000/year), that leaves $70,000 overhead per teacher. That seems a little high but not extremely so. If you assume a teacher makes $40,000 / year (a cost of $48,000), that means an overhead of $104,000 / teacher / year. I think I'm done. I wish I had the $13,000 / year to educate my son. "Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote: > > Assuming your numbers below are correct (and I believe them to be quite > inflated), we should not necessarily be paying our teachers more because of > the amount we are putting out, we should find out where the hell all that > money is going. When we know that and take care of the buracratic financial > drain, we can then decide whether we should now increase salary, leave it > the same, decrease it or what not. We don't pay the teacher, we pay the > taxes, which pays the government which pays the hog that is the school > buracracy and they decide what to pay the teachers. If they take 95% off > the top and the teachers are still paid adequately, the problem is not the > teachers pay, it is what the 95% is being used for. We need to look at the > entire picture and fix the system, teachers are but a fraction of the cost. > > Tom Veldhouse > veldy at veldy.net