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Teacher Benefits Warranted Article
Topic Started: Jul 9 2010, 12:50 PM (1,257 Views)
writersblocked
Advanced Member
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Debating the specifics of hours and rates is all well and good, but frankly it's a distraction from the larger financial reality. It's not that teachers make more than they deserve, it's that everyone else tends to make less than they deserve, using the same arguments. Even after you subtract the costs of mandated teacher training, the salaries and benefits are still exorbitant relative to the economy.

Teachers are righteous, intelligent people, many of whom I'm proud to call my friends. What remains lacking from their argument, though, is the full acceptance that their pay is inexorably tied to public funds, which are themselves based in the wealth of the private sector. When the private sector declines, and public funds decline, public school employee salaries can be resistant, but not immune.

When my boss cuts my pay 10% so that I can keep my job, and my teacher friends get their step increases while their union plays a shut-out game against the reforms of the Legislature or their local schoolboard, I perceive a problem. Maybe the system that funds teacher salaries isn't perfect and could stand to be improved, but working with our current funding mechanism, I can't feel the weight in my friends' arguments. It's all rhetoric about fairness that is oblivious to present circumstances, or references to workloads which might be significant, but are not really all that disproportionate to many private sector salary jobs.
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Teachers defend their turf


Hire talent, not diversity
With regard to the article "Schools hiring stirs debate" (July 6), diversity for diversity's sake is really saying that external factors or a person's heritage are more important than what's inside a person or that one automatically holds certain beliefs and values because they belong to a certain ethnic group. When considered, this is insulting and belittling, and it won't further the cohesive society we desire, nor critical thinking, for that matter.

Thomas M. Doran, Plymouth

Protect teacher benefits
Teachers took lower pay over the years to ensure a certain income at retirement. To take that from them without making up the pay forgone is state thievery ("Blocking reform," June 23). Teachers beyond a certain number of years of service that would be considered vested should not lose their benefits. Others should be made whole for lost pay. It is one thing to reduce current salaries and non-vested pensions. It is quite another to attempt to redo the past to survive the present.



Carman Conforti, Chesterfield Township

Question critics
As an educator and parent, I am concerned about the negative attitudes held by some about public education and educators. It is increasingly frustrating to listen to elected officials spout data about how much teachers make per hour, what our salaries should be and how we are given far more benefits than other professions when their facts are based on creative math to mislead the public. Question their facts.

Mindy Ritter, White Lake

More money needed
The U.S. Senate needs to pass the Keep our Educators Working Act, which contains the $23 billion education job fund. When educators lose their jobs, children lose, too. Layoffs lead to more crowded classrooms, fewer counselors, fewer nurses, fewer reading specialists and other critically needed educators. Congress must pass this legislation to keep kids learning and educators working.

Carole Chi, Sterling Heights

Salary is earned
As a tenured public school teacher in Detroit, I would like to respond to views about the union "stranglehold" on education in our state ("Time to end teacher union stranglehold on education," June 13). I think I do pretty well for what I am paid to do. I do pretty well for what I'm paid not to do, too, like school safety patrols, tutoring students before and after school and organizing field trips, to name a few.

Mark Crowley , Detroit



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100712/OPINION01/7120304/1007/rss07#ixzz0tbzrX1Pf
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