Crazy

Texas High School Coaching Salaries dan skognes motivation blogger speaker teacher trainer coach educatorPeople outside of Texas have long suspected that Texans were crazy. Well, we have come out and given everyone proof today that we have lost our minds. The front page of the paper today showed that we are paying high school football coaches twice as much as we are paying our teachers. One affluent district around Austin is paying their head coach $155,156. That is $30,000 more than the Principal makes, and three times more than what the teachers make. Wow. Just wow. We have lost our minds, apparently.

Don’t get me wrong. I love football, but I also love teaching and have a great respect for what teachers do to prepare kids for life. Should we really be paying a coach two to three times more than the teacher that is teaching your kid English, Math, Science, or History, Music, Art, etc.? Really, is football THAT important to us as a state?

I don’t fault coaches for making six figures. I fault tax payers for letting this happen and not giving equal pay to the thousands of other teachers who are educating their kids. Oh, I get it. We can’t “afford” to give everyone a raise to six figures. Um hum; right. I think we find a way to justify whatever we want to do as a society.

I am just shaking my head at the absurdity of the situation and wondering how this happened in the first place. How did anyone in authority have the audacity to think this up? Football has always been a religion here in Texas. Sadly, it distorts for our youth what matters in life.

Anyone who has been an athlete realizes that there is life after football, and you had better be prepared for that. It sure helps if you can read, speak, write, comprehend math, and know your science and history.

To all my coaching friends, this is not an indictment against you or anything you have done. I love you guys and I love the sport of football. I just think we need to put it in perspective with the rest of education. Who knows, maybe I am the crazy one.

Shalom!

Dan Skognes

5 Responses to “Crazy”

  1. Almas says:

    No, you’re not the crazy one for sure! After parents, the teacher is the most important person in a child’s life. If a society doesn’t nurture and respect teachers, how can they give of their best to our children?

  2. Diane says:

    I am so shocked at the coaches salaries that I can’t even articulate an outraged reply. I am literally and figuratively speechless! Something is very wrong here.

  3. Bryan D Williams says:

    As an educator and coach who is not represented on this list, I certainly understand peoples shock. Further I am the first to identify educators as significantly under paid and undervalued but I would caution not to undervalue the role of a positive coach / student relationship. In more than 20 years of coaching I can state without question that the role of coaches in our public schools is one of the most significant positive influences students have. Coaches, in many cases, teach just as many students as any other educator. We teach core classes, deal with testing, PLC and all to often are the ones that somehow get the tough kids year in and year out because we can “handle them”. In the case of our campus, we feed students daily in our locker and classrooms, we pick them up, take them home and are the ones tutoring our guys after practice. Many times it is these men and women who stand in the gap when parents can’t or won’t. We are the ones our players look to on Senior night because we have been there for 4 years through the good and bad and their parents have never been able to see their child play. 99% of these men and women are not now and will never be on this list, we do it because we love our students (athletes and otherwise) and realize that on a kids worst day we maybe their best or only hope.

    Please don’t take my comments as anything other than my strong feelings about what I am created and called to do. Just felt I needed to be the voice for the other side of the list.

    All the best Coach Williams

    • Dan Skognes says:

      Dear Coach Williams, I appreciate your comments and actually agree with everything you said. My concern is not so much what head coaches are paid…they earn every penny and then some. My concern is that the gap between the pay for coaches and that for teachers. That has left me stunned. I am not sure how then numbers got so skewed, but the priorities have somehow been lost.

      I would never underestimate the love, mentoring, and education that a kid gets from a good coach. I get that. I just feel we need a wake up call here and start recognizing the value that teachers bring to the table that goes way beyond the game of sports. If a kid can’t read, write, do simple math, understand geography, have a grasp of history, music, the arts, etc., how will they ever function in this competitive world.

      I am probably one of the most competitive people I know. I hate to lose and I teach kids daily how to compete, but I do it in the classroom….on the whiteboard…or in tutoring. I help the understand that what they are learning will help them get what they want in life. I realize from your response that I am preaching to the choir here, but the frustration level in teachers is at an all time high. Teacher burnout is a critical problem…the elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to address. I hope and pray that the article I read in the local paper and the blog I wrote at least underscore the need to address the pay for teachers and bring their pay up to a level that reflects their contributions to the children of America.

      Thanks for what you do. I am sure you are a great coach and I know the kids appreciate your heart and your vision.

      Shalom!

      Dan