Let Teachers Share Our Prosperity

The national interest and the need to create a fair economic package for our public school teachers require that we take a fresh look public school strike in Los Angeles.

Let’s get away from the question that leads nowhere: Who loves the children most, the striking teachers and their union, or the school district administrators and their negotiators? Let us, instead, turn to matters of the public interest and the salary issue.

The first teacher salary demand was for an increase of 21% over the next two years on average, 10.5% each year. Later, Wayne Johnson, president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, reduced the demand to a 26% overall increase during the next three years on average, about 8.5% per year. The union thus eased its demand despite learning of an unforeseen tax surplus of $2.5 billion which has now accrued to the state, and which is largely earmarked for public education.

The Los Angeles Board of Education’s position on salary, as best it can now be gleaned, is the offer of a 24% increase over the next three years, or an average of 8% per year.

Although salary seems to be at the center of the dispute, other policy factors deserve mention. First, these times find the economic prognosticators in disagreement regarding the danger of severe inflation--which to the extent it occurs can wipe out any benefit expected from a salary increase. Housing costs already have skyrocketed.

This is a time when teaching should be one of the nation’s top priorities. We spend less money per capita on education than does any other industrialized democracy. The disparity is close to a national disgrace. And yet we must compete against the very countries that outspend us in education to train children for future markets. We must help our children to build their skills to a level that will elevate this country’s production of quality goods and services. Only by so doing will we succeed in the long-range competition on which this nation’s prosperity and economic health depends.

For this reason alone, public judgment ought to coalesce and take shape as a local and national resolve to make the teaching profession the best that it can be: That means we must insist that teachers be provided with income befitting their critical role and important professional responsibilities.

A glance at the domestic scene confirms the soundness of such resolve. In certain sectors of American society we are going through a lush period. Eleven of the highest-paid executives in 354 companies last year received between $10.9 million and $40 million each. Also, the average member of that top class of executives is receiving $2 million or more annually.

The contrast between teachers and chief executive officers is startling. In 1988, the average salary of those 700-odd CEOs rose to 72 times the average salary of a schoolteacher.

Yet the teachers form the cutting edge of our educational system. The teachers serve the children; the school administrators and the educational hierarchy should be deemed to serve the teachers. The relationship should be comparable to the way a public hospital administrator serves the hospital physicians who in turn treat the patients. The public concern ought to focus on how teachers and teacher morale can be supported and top teacher talent attracted. Teachers should be allowed to concentrate not so much on the struggle to make ends meet, but to make the children ready to meet the challenges of adult life in an increasingly challenging world.

There is one more circumstance that should be mentioned. The board has customarily maintained a salary pyramid. The essence of that arrangement is a guarantee that any time the teachers get a raise, the administrators, with salaries already markedly higher than the average teacher, will see their pay go up further, not by an equal amount of dollars, but by an equal percentage. When the teachers move up, the administrators move up faster. In effect, the board guarantees that our teachers will never catch up.

The public interest requires that we bring the teachers up to economic levels consistent with their professional obligations, start to close the gap between teachers and administrators and thereby serve national objectives and goals. The board should accept the union’s modest proposal for a salary increase and end the strike.