Ron Littlepage should chip in too

Ron Littlepage, just back from a week long vacation at the beach, thinks it’s reasonable in these troubling financial times that public employees take a two percent pay cut. Teachers however, should just loose their raises; after all they buy school supplies for other peoples’ children. Though I guess if you can afford a week at the beach, these times might not be so troubling for some.

Littlepage also doesn’t think, teachers should take the move by the school board to break the contract as anti-teacher. Instead it’s just tough financial times, financial times by the way that have seen the school board hire a public relations person, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and travel, buy a million dollars worth of new cars, spend millions on the Shultz center, have a middle management, people by the way who on average are paid more than teachers and who don’t work directly with children, that is so big it could dam a medium sized river and start capital projects that are costing tens of millions of dollars. In these troubling financial times, it seems like the school board has money for everything, everything but teachers that is. Teachers by the way who this year will also be absorbing more of their medical costs than ever before. A friend of mine with two children has seen her health insurance payout raise by sixty-one dollars a paycheck. Which is a lot more than any raise she would have gotten.

To give you an idea of how big the raises are; a second year teacher would receive an extra 127 dollars over the course of the year. That’s a six dollar and thirty cent a paycheck raise, or three dollars and fifteen cents a week. I could figure that up by hour if you wanted me to.

I get it though, times are tough and everybody should chip in and sacrifice some. The problem as I see it, is it’s always teachers that are sacrificing and they are expected to do so in both good times and bad. At what point do we draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough?

Finally Ron thanks for thinking school teachers are underpaid and even though I don’t remember seeing any editorials from you calling for an increase in teacher’s salaries when times were good, I do appreciate that you have at least noticed. I was wondering however if you wouldn’t mind kicking in two percent of your salary, I promise I will spend it on school supplies. What do you think; I mean we are all in this together right?

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher