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Proposals for Year-Round Schools

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Your story (Dec. 5) reporting that 26 people at a recent public hearing spoke against year-round proposals for six Santa Ana elementary schools gave statistics about increased student enrollment and the causes and demographics of the increased and current elementary school population.

However, nothing was said about who the 26 speakers were (e.g., school teachers and administrators vs. taxpayer citizens).

This omission was important. If most of the speakers were school employees trying to protect their historical work schedules, it is understandable, but not indicative of what the taxpaying community or the school-parent community wants or would accept.

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Schoolteachers who speak out against year-round school schedules are hurting their own chances of closing the gap between their annual incomes and those of people in the for-profit sector of the economy.

I’m all for higher salaries for teachers if they are willing to cooperate with the taxpayer and work most of the extra weeks that the facilities lie vacant.

Yes, we all need more time off to rest from our jobs than we are getting. Probably four to six weeks per year.

If both schools and the for-profit sector would move toward the middle, an improvement in all of our lives would result. And the needed parity between teachers and other types of jobs could be achieved.

Year-round schools are the only way to get teacher productivity and facilities productivity up by enough to make a meaningful difference.

JAMES MONROE

Irvine

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