EYEWITNESS: HELEN BERNSTEIN : Caring People, Sinking Morale : Teachers: They were ‘there’ for our kids after the quake; when will salaries, school funding, reflect their value?

I thought it was remarkable the way teachers responded to the earthquake. They have really risen to the occasion. Teachers are holding classes in their homes. Teachers are calling parents to see how the kids are, giving them assignments over the phone. People have really gone above and beyond what was necessary.

This has been very heartwarming, considering the fact that most of the people we’re talking about are incredibly demoralized. They just took a 10% pay cut, and they don’t really feel a commitment toward this district, don’t have very much faith in its leadership and where it’s going. They’re confused. They just came out of this big battle of having to defend public schools (over the voucher proposal), and they see themselves entering into another battle over the next budget and feel very underappreciated.

I was eating lunch in the cafeteria at a school in the San Fernando Valley last week during an aftershock. Instead of dropping under the tables, the teachers just ran out to the kids, and I said, “Where are you guys going?” They said, “We’ve got to be with the kids!” And they get out there and their kids are all eating lunch and aren’t the least bit frightened. Actually, the teachers were much more shaken up about the earthquake than the children were.

So I want to reassure people who are afraid to let their kids go back to school, to let them know that the people they are leaving their children with are really caring people and their kids will be safe.

I think schools are always safer than the streets, but in this case I’m talking about emotional stability for kids, about people who are really loving and caring and understanding. And I’m not sure that the average parent who never talks to their child’s teacher, who really doesn’t have much connection, understands this--because we have so much transiency in Los Angeles, and so many kids who are bused.

It’s not a matter of just having kids come back to school and drawing a picture saying what’s wrong--in fact it gets kids more frightened to do that. What you have to do with kids, and what I’ve seen teachers doing as I’m going around from school to school, is say to them: “What would make you feel better, what do you need to feel less afraid?” It’s helping the kids put together a picture in their heads that they actually have some control over this--not a lot; you can’t stop the earth from shaking--but there are things you can do. They talk about safety and about where you should be and how you should take care of yourself and what you should have packed up at home, and they’ve been really responsible about all this.

I think it’s funny--it’s not as if teachers all went to a workshop on Tuesday after the earthquake and were told: “When you get back to class here’s what you need to do.” They all instinctively--at least the vast majority of them --knew what they needed to do, and there was no curriculum guide. And maybe that’s the way we have to have schools, where you allow the classroom teacher to just do their own thing, instead of (being directed by) this terrible bureaucracy.

What inspired me the most is that teachers were doing this despite their own problems--20% of our teachers in the Harbor area live in the Valley--that’s a huge percentage traveling across town--and we have thousands of teachers who live in the Santa Clarita area. On the Monday that school opened after the earthquake, we had the highest attendance among teachers of any Monday in the school year! At my school, Marshall, we had 100% teacher attendance--I can’t remember when we ever had 100% teacher attendance.

There was a compelling feeling that we had to come back and be there for the kids and get things back in order. When they were under a great deal of stress, when it would have been easy to say, “Listen, I’ve got to take care of myself,” they were at school helping kids.

I think that people who can react this way, and who are trusted with the safety and well-being of the young people of this city, ought to be treated with more respect and certainly be reimbursed in a way that they can stay in the profession and not be driven out.

I was at a Federal Emergency Management Agency meeting and they said that a family of four is considered in the poverty range at a starting teacher’s salary--$25,000. There’s something all screwy about that.

I have a master’s degree and I’ve been with the system for 25 years and I make a big 47-something. I get a teacher’s salary as union president. That’s the top teacher’s salary. I don’t consider that, for a lifetime of work and a master’s degree, all that fabulous.

If I lived in Des Moines, that would be one thing, but it’s not very much in Los Angeles. I, for instance, could not afford to buy my own house back. I wouldn’t even qualify for a loan. But the principal at my school makes $90,000. The custodian at my school makes as much as a teacher. Bus drivers make $52,000 with overtime.

Our children spend a third of their day in school under the influence of a teacher. Why someone with that much influence is relegated to the bottom of the ladder is beyond me--but that’s the case.

It was just a mere year ago that all the counselors that everybody wants in the schools now (after the earthquake)--the counselors, psychiatric social workers, psychologists--were being laid off. The irony is that now everybody’s so concerned about the conditions of the schools and getting the kids back into school. We’re talking about 650,000 kids influenced by these very same people that everybody a year ago was saying, “Aw, what the hell, cut their pay 10%.”

People are really concerned about the school buildings and how they held up in the earthquake, yet they haven’t passed a bond issue for the schools in 20 years. Do people think the schools can somehow be retrofitted for free?

The educational tax rate in this state is 47th out of the 50 states. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania pay twice as much per student as we do. And they’re getting it from somewhere. There are districts in New York state that spend $12,000 on a student--we spend $4,000.

We opened the school year in September and there were 1,000 vacant teaching positions. It’s going to be worse next year. Every district in the L.A. Basin pays higher salaries than the L.A. Unified School District. I think we’re 41st out of 43 districts in terms of teacher salaries. Three years ago we were first. Our principals, our school secretaries and other staff positions rank first, second or third in their categories in terms of salary of the 43 county districts. Los Angeles has one of the highest-paid superintendents. Teachers are at the bottom. And the working conditions are worse here--class sizes are bigger, for example. The last class I taught had 39 kids.

In a crisis like this, schools are the one place that bring a community together. Where is it they put all these Red Cross centers and tent cities? They’re in the schools, in the gymnasiums. They’re the center of the community. The public school building means a lot emotionally to people in the United States, and it’s getting lost. Yet when we have a crisis, it’s the first place people turn to.