Dear Editor:
It was with open-mouthed amazement that I read your editorial
March 18th about teacher layoffs and merit pay.
Dear Editor:
It was with open-mouthed amazement that I read your editorial March 18th about teacher layoffs and merit pay. I have never before seen an editor’s piece full of so many errors and so much ignorance. You need to spend some serious time at school board meetings.
1. You imply that school boards are lazy and myopic for taking the easy route and laying off teachers rather than cutting other items in the budget. Where have you been, boys and girls? School boards across this state have been cutting for years and years, and there is just no waste left. While the governor flashed cards in your face about the wonders he was doing for education, he was cutting hard at the foundations. For example, he gave schools an increase but concurrently cut credit for any student absences. When Johnny is absent, the building still gets heated, the yard duty and classroom teachers are still there, and the costs go on. Before, excused absences were paid. Now, there is no such thing as an excused absence and in fact, schools are now cut money for tardies! Education in California has been picked over like a hapless patient in a dental chair being poked with a wire hook.
From the day the lottery was enacted, it has been the state’s practice that every lottery dollar that comes to schools is subtracted from what the state gives to schools. Fooled, weren’t you! YOU ARE NOT THERE when the Boards are agonizing to keep cuts away from the classroom. Nevertheless, most of the money goes to teacher salaries because where the rubber meets the road in education is in the classroom.
2. Merit pay for teachers? This has always been considered a good idea, but no one knows how to make it work. How do you measure what is a good teacher? Test scores? Then every special education teacher should be fired, because their kids do not keep up with the others. As we have seen with merit pay for the API scores, the first money went to Los Gatos, Los Altos, Burlingame and other such wealthy areas where the state spends much more money than it does in Gilroy. Here’s the hard line: Teachers did not participate in the boom times, ever. While every 12th employee at Cisco was a millionaire, not one teacher in Silicon Valley could qualify for an average home based on his or her single income.
Our CHILDREN are our sacred charges. Little Tamara only gets second grade once in her life. Already, more than 50 percent of the new teachers are quitting within five years. Now, you want to rip away the teacher’s union?
3. You strike out at teacher tenure. No California teacher in grades K-12 has tenure. Tenure was abolished several decades ago after too many teachers were dismissed to make room for nieces and nephews, and after being let go because of their strictly personal beliefs not expressed in the classroom, the union negotiated a “for cause” law. All that permanent teachers have is the right to demand that their dismissal be “for cause.” That means a little effort and documentation is necessary, but no more than is required in any business. Unless the situation is extremely urgent and serious, principals have no time to develop the documentation to show that a teacher makes significant mistakes. This happens because principals are constantly taken away from their schools to go to meetings where they are given endless tasks that satisfy the perceptions of high administrators who rarely visit schools. Since principals serve strictly at the pleasure of the Board and superintendent, they are not in a position to say no. Those who quietly protest and apply reason, just disappear. Knowing this, they work 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.and at least 30 days longer than teachers every year trying to satisfy the district office while attempting to meet the needs of the school.
4. Cutting administrative salaries to keep “thousands” of teacher jobs? Now, there’s a silly thought based on zero research. Has it ever occurred to you that the work of good administrators makes it possible for teachers to concentrate on meeting the needs of children in their classrooms with a minimum of paperwork?
Tony Weiler, Gilroy, San Jose Teacher
Submitted Friday, March 21 to ed****@****ic.com
