Comments

I think that the issue you raise about work-to-rule not being an effective strategy may be worthy of discussion, but I can't agree with you about teachers having to have low expectations with regard to pay. Says who?

My reading of local history is that Berkeley teachers have already done more than their share of sacrificing pay for program. Way back when the voters of this State imprudently passed Proposition 13, most Districts, my own included, simply cut program. I remember distinctly a School Board meeting at which an earlier agenda item to increase graduation requirements for academic improvement was replaced by one to decrease them for fiscal solvency. We went from a six to a five period day and teachers received a modest salary increase. Meanwhile, back in Berkeley, teachers took a pay cut in order to fund the existing program.

I have known several generations of teachers in Berkeley and I am confident that if they have come to the point of withholding services, the situation must be dire. I also know that Berkeley has managed to maintain a more extensive academic schedule than other Districts, and I appreciate that, but not to the exclusion of being fair to those who provide the most critical service in public education - teaching. While these teachers are making themselves unavailable now, my experience is that they typically can be found in their classrooms later in the day than teachers in most other places.

For sure, the funding problem is being generated at the State level by a Governor who at this point in time can be seen happily careening around the State Capitol in a Humvee as part of the opening campaign of his war against teachers, and in the Board rooms of the HMOs; but it is also a product of decisions made about how to use what funds there are by those who run and oversee the schools. To be sure, the community is supportive of teachers but, even so, if circumstances required local funding initiatives, it would be easier to extract more local money to restore lost programs than to increase salaries.

Teachers, like other people, also need to be able to live, and living here is expensive. A teacher has to pay rent or a mortgage, operate a car, and send his or her own children to college. I hope that you can consider the action that your teachers are taking at the moment in this context.

Dad

This is obviously a contentious issue, and to be frank, both sides seem to have equally valid points to make. But I don't know anyone who disagrees with the notion of paying teachers more, which begs the question -- what is the answer?

Money is money is money, and money is a finite resource. Unlike friendship, the more you give, the less you have. There is simply not very much of it here, so if you decide that supporting teachers is a high priority (which I wouldn't contest), then you've got to figure out where the money's going to come from.

The teachers can't just draw a line in the sand and demand change; the district isn't a rich uncle who can just say, "Oh, very well, I'll raise your allowance." It's true that it's not the business of the teachers to draft and balance the budget, but even conceptually, they have to understand the realistic significance of what they ask for.

I think the thing for me is that, at this point I do, understand that the district has significant finicinal problems, all I personaly am asking for is not to have my pay cut. As I understand it the district is asking teachers to begin paying more to cover health care cost, which by on its own sounds reasonable but with out a cost of living adjustment that comes straight out of my takehome pay. So, to me it's worse than the fact we haven't had a pay raise, it's that the district is asking me to take home less money each month, and that just not right. Given teachers already historicaly low pay. Other districts are giving COLAs where is our district spending its money? I suspect they don't even know.

As stated in the article, the students who are in most need of the teachers' time have parents that do not know who to contact to get change or how to contact them. Can somebody please place the info here so that we CAN complain and get the ball rolling?

Thank you.

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