The listed salaries are in the $110k to $120k range. To reach $150k, you need to add benefits such as healthcare and employer matches to retirement contributions.
Those numbers are marginally higher than the median individual income for someone with a bachelor's degree in San Francisco ($106.5k in 2023, according to some estimates). Even the best-paid teachers only get an average salary, while most are paid much less. And because it's San Francisco, that average salary is worth less than the average salary in an average location.
There are many conflicting estimates of the annual working hours of teachers. But according to most of them, teachers work more than the average full-time job.
the median individual income for someone with a bachelor's degree in San Francisco
Do you believe that teachers working at SFUSD schools are comparable to the median person with a bachelor's degree in San Francisco?
you need to add benefits such as healthcare and employer matches to retirement contributions
Why would you not include those in the comparison? For most private employers, these amounts are single digits or zero. But for SFUSD, being able to retire and still be paid 90% of your salary indefinitely is a major part of the total compensation story.
If you compare base salary only, you're not comparing like with like. You get closer to comparing like with like if you compare SFUSD total comp with private sector current comp (base salary and bonus).
You appear to be very strongly invested in this completely bizarre narrative that teachers in SFUSD are not low paid, and basically every number you’ve used is wrong or misleading. Nobody is getting 90% of their salary as a pension. If you retire at 62 after 30 years teaching you will get 66% of your salary as a pension.
Personally, in my private sector job, my healthcare and retirement matching is more than the benefits amount for SFUSD, so excluding that is just ridiculous.
Nobody is getting 90% of their salary as a pension
If you work from 27 to 65 (38 years) as a teacher at SFUSD, your pension would be calculated as:
Years of service * 2.4 % * final salary
In retirement, you would earn more than 90% of your final salary.
Personally, in my private sector job, my healthcare and retirement matching is more than the benefits amount for SFUSD, so excluding that is just ridiculous.
oh man, you're right - there are some people in California who get that! I should have said "90% permanent salary replacement is so far from normal that nobody can in good faith call it a major part of the compensation story. Anyone who used that as advertising for the job would be sued for lying. The average length of service at time of retirement across the entire California public education system is only 25 years. Only around 11% of all CA education employees even hit 35 years at retirement, and less than a quarter of those make it to 40, so a maximum of 5% of all education staff end up with a 90% salary replacement - and this group is more likely to be administrative staff than elementary school teachers, and more likely to be out of SF than in it."
BUT for the arbitrary reason that it supports my argument, we are going to ignore any teachers that are getting 90% salary replacement, as a fair way to compensate for arbitrarily discarding all private sector benefits from the comparison. So I was right after all - nobody in the comparison group is getting 90% salary replacement.
The point was that teachers earn less than what they could get in other jobs in the same area.
Comparisons should be based on the lifestyle the compensation enables rather than some abstract numbers. People generally have the greatest need for money when they are buying a home, starting a family, and raising kids. Money in hand today is much more valuable than mandatory retirement benefits you can only enjoy decades later.
Most pensions are not purely free money. Employees are usually required to contribute a nontrivial fraction of their nominal salary towards the pension. For SFUSD, the typical rate seems to be 9%.
