Teacher Salaries

Your editorial (“Don’t Waste the Windfall,” Aug. 14) asks California school districts not to “squander” the $1.9-billion windfall for public education in the state budget.

While you’re tsk-tsking over shabby school sites, shortages of books and the absence of computers, may I direct your attention to a basic truth about education? Teachers are the program. All else--the books, buildings, blackboards, school buses--are there solely to support the teacher’s efforts to educate students.

Real learning doesn’t happen without the teacher. You can have the best-equipped classroom, crammed with books and a computer at every desk, and nothing will happen till you have a teacher in front of that class who knows how to teach.

The teacher is the key to student achievement. Yet the teacher is the one component most often overlooked in calls for education reform.

That’s certainly the case in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Far from supported, teachers here are constantly asked to do without. Without training, for one thing; last year, 4,000 non-credentialed teachers were working the classroom with emergency permits.

A decent salary is another thing we’re asked to do without. L.A. teachers have suffered a pay cut the last four years. It’s no big surprise 50% of new teachers leave after their fifth year. LAUSD opened the 1994 school year with over 1,000 vacant positions.

The best investment for education dollars and our children’s futures? Priority one is to fill California schools with well-compensated, well-trained teachers.

HELEN BERNSTEIN, President

United Teachers Los Angeles

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* Before you pontificate on how school districts should spend their windfall, you should personally observe a few schools to see how students mutilate their textbooks, desks and even the walls of their classrooms.

Yes, new money should be spent primarily on students. But classes with reasonable numbers of students, appropriate learning materials for all students, and teachers who are respected and fairly compensated for their dedication and effort are the key to student success. Spending a fortune on computers will not magically transform our schools.

BETTY RASKOFF KAZMIN

Teacher, LAUSD