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a rant about schooling featuring teacher pay

Minimum teacher pay in Tennessee is $50k. Teachers work about 190 days a year, which works out to about $32/hr.  (40hr/5day/wk workers with 2 weeks of vacation and 10 days of sick leave work 240 days/yr. And nobody has that anymore because everyone has "comp time" that may or may not be approved.) That doesn't count generous health insurance and retirement benefits. The current Tennessee plan is the state contributes 9% toward retirement (and the teacher has a mandatory 7% contribution) (minimally this is more than $200k in 20 years, and many teachers teach for 30-40 years). Health insurance for the employee and their family is about $600/mo.

So, $50k, minus $7,200, minus $3500, equals $39,300, equals more than $3000/month which is, frankly, a lot.

My dad, who ironically married a teacher, taught me this. This doesn't mean I'm anti-teacher or education, but it provides perspective that teachers whining about not getting paid is overblown. 

School systems get around $20k per year per student. That's more than many students' families make.  Could we better improve  those students lives with direct relief to families?

The single to largest state expenditure is for primary and secondary education (Medicaid is bigger $ wise but comes mostly from federal funds that are just passed through the state.) There is so much to look at there and so little backbone willing to look.

The school reform that I would most like to see is the end of compulsory attendance. That plus UBI and single payer universal coverage healthcare would be ideal because schools (and prisons) are just mirrors of the rest of society's problems.

How would you reform a system that is clearly broken?  Comments that do not directly address that question will be deleted.