2% Bonus for L.A. School Employees

* This letter is in response to your Nov. 20 editorial, “Well-Deserved Bonus in LAUSD.”

I have been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 27 years. In 1991, we took a 10% pay cut, not 8% as stated in your editorial. This was done unilaterally, despite teacher objections and without collective bargaining. It then took us until this year to receive full restoration, without interest. We have not had a pay raise since 1989, a period of six years.

Teachers should not be lumped together with all of the other LAUSD employees. We hold the future in the palms of our hands. We are held responsible for educating the children of L.A. We face 150-175 students each day when we work. We face the administrators, the parents, the lawyers and the stacks of papers and daily preparation. That’s right, the teachers do all that.

A 2% “bonus” is an insult to the 30,000-plus teachers of the LAUSD.

The old adage, “You get what you pay for,” is never more apparent than now. Millions for athletes and entertainers, and a 2% bonus for teachers. Send my bonus to charity.

STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ

Canyon Country

* In your editorial I found a very noticeable bias toward the suffering of the teachers here at LAUSD. I’m a member of the California School Employees Assn., Chapter 500, that represents the nonsupervisory classified employees at LAUSD. Our central office members took pay cuts a full year before the teachers did, in addition to cuts in personnel. In the last six years we’ve lost over 1,000 of our unit members and those who remain have had to double and triple their workloads.

In the future you should spend a little more time getting other perspectives of LAUSD’s problems and stop making martyrs out of the teachers.

BRIAN CAGLE

CSEA-LA 500 Negotiations Chair