[Letter to the Ithaca Journal, February 27, 2001]
Recent Ithaca Journal articles report that both Fall Creek and Northeast Schools are in need of more paraprofessional support workers. These stories highlight the important role paraprofessionals -- teacher aides, teacher assistants, family liaisons, bus aides and security staff -- play in the schools. They don't, however, highlight poverty wages paid to these employees. My own experience as a parent of a school-age child confirms how much paraprofessionals mean to our children's education. I have seen, for example, the critical role paraprofessionals play in assisting and supporting children with special needs, so they can have the same educational opportunities in our schools as all other children.
But paraprofessionals do much more than this. They are everywhere in the schools: providing direct instructional support in the classrooms; working one-on-one or with small groups of students; assisting in the development of teaching resources; utilizing their special skills in areas like music, foreign languages, arts and crafts; greeting all the children as they come into school each morning; assisting during recess, in the cafeteria and on the playground; providing school security; assisting on the buses; and working with low-income families so that these children are not left behind.
Knowing all this, I was shocked to learn how poorly the school district treats these employees. With a starting wage as low as $6.72 an hour and with 30-hour workweeks as the norm, over two-thirds of all full-time paraprofessionals earn less than $13,000 per year. Truly unbelievable: one-quarter of all the full-timers earns less than $10,000!
These salaries are not only low in and of themselves. They are also much lower than what nearby cities pay for similar work. Teacher aides in Ithaca are paid about 7 percent less than aides in Syracuse and Binghamton, despite a cost of living in Ithaca that is often 30 percent higher!
Valued workers in our city schools deserve better. Using federal poverty guidelines, it is clear that most paraprofessionals who are single parents or even some in two-parent households are eligible for federal poverty programs, like Food Stamps, School Lunches, Low-Income Energy Assistance.
Using our local living wage standard of $16,500 (amount of income and resources needed for a single person to adequately meet his/her basic needs and remain self sufficient without public or private assistance, as determined in a 1998 Alternative Credit Union study), at least three-quarters of the paraprofessionals do not earn a living wage.
We in the Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition are insistent that full-time workers should be paid a fair wage, one that is sufficient to satisfy their basic needs without public or private assistance. Anything less is unfair to these workers, unjust in a society filled with wealth, and immoral in a community that values families and education.
The Ithaca Paraprofessionals Association, the union representing these workers, is currently negotiating with the School District for a contract that values these workers and pays them a living wage. We are supporting the paraprofessionals in this effort. We urge you to do the same.
For more information on how you can help the paraprofessionals, or to join our Living Wage listserve, call 277-5670.
Carl Feuer
Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition
Our minimum wage still leaves people in poverty -- especially unconscionable in our current culture of wealth and commercial happiness. A living wage ordinance certainly wouldn't solve poverty, but would be an immediate step in the right direction.
Some might argue that a living wage for city contract employees would hurt the people that it's supposed to help by increasing the costs for, and thus, decreasing the viability of contracted small businesses. However, I believe that better wages for low-paying jobs would offer the city reduced costs and better quality work.
A living-wage would make lower-paying jobs more attractive, reducing turnover and thus, the costs of retraining new personnel. Workers with more of an incentive to keep their jobs would become more experienced, raising the quality and efficiency of their work.
A living wage won't cost us nearly as much as the costs of poverty such as dependence on government programs and crime. All of these problems will only be amplified the longer we wait, as more children grow up hungry, insufficiently educated and disconnected. Ithaca should join Boston, Baltimore, and the rest of a national movement and support a living wage ordinance.
Jono Deschere
City of Ithaca, Jan. 18
Because the federal minimum wage does not rise with inflation, but only with occasional, grudgingly-passed raises by Congress, it falls to state and local governments to pick up the slack (if they choose to do so). One way to do this is by setting a higher minimum wage within a state.
Another way is by setting living wage ordinances at a local level. These ordinances generally apply to workers employed by the city or by corporations which have taxpayer-funded contracts or subsidies from the government. The idea of such ordinances is that no local government should be perpetuating poverty by contracting with employers who pay less than a living wage.
The living wage argument can be used as well to say that all workers should be paid a wage at which they can afford to feed, clothe, and house their families, and set aside some savings for the future, so they are not living each day hand to mouth.
Glancing back at that first reading I was assigned at the beginning of our living wage unit in economics, I see that the first question I jotted at the top of the page was, "Is there a living wage in Ithaca?" Unfortunately, the answer I've found so far is, "Well we're working on it."
I applaud the efforts of those who are currently campaigning for a living wage in Ithaca, but I have to wonder why such an essential, humanitarian law is not yet in place.
I hate to bring up that old, tired "most enlightened" thing, but I feel I have to ask the inevitable question: If we here in Ithaca are as enlightened as we like to think we are, why aren't we paying all our workers the wages they need and deserve?
Rachel Ornstein
City of Ithaca, Feb. 19
