Pay Raise for Teachers

* In its Nov. 9 editorial, The Times recommends that the teachers union, UTLA, ought to agree to the standards applied to the superintendent and his deputies and that the salary raise be given only if the district as a whole shows improvement. I would like to point out that the superintendent and his top deputies were recently granted a 6% salary increase, retroactive to the 1997-98 school year, based on having met the criteria you cite. If the LAUSD top brass met the criteria and there was improvement as a whole throughout the district, doesn’t The Times believe that the gains were achieved in no small part due to teacher efforts?

How could there have been gains without teachers? Your editorial ends with “additional raises should be tied to individual and collective performance” and I agree. Let’s stop criticizing teachers as if they are the sole reason for the miserable state of public education in Los Angeles and grant them the much-deserved raise.

CHARLES F. SERIO

Los Angeles

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As a veteran teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, I strongly object to your editorial against raising teacher pay. Teachers get a 2% raise, while prison guards got 12%. Has The Times condemned this inequity? I figure a veteran teacher in LAUSD lost about $15,000 during the bad times. This is the equivalent of a couple years’ tuition for a child at a Cal State university, a car or money in a mutual fund with dividends for retirement. I want restoration, and it should not be tied to accountability.

Teachers have very little or no control over the measures developed by the superintendent. Teachers do not determine the number of advanced placement courses offered at a high school, the number of students who take college prep classes or parent involvement. The tests currently being used do not correlate with the standards. For example, ninth-graders are tested on macroeconomics and Supreme Court cases taught in grade 12.

Is The Times forgetting a basic economic law of supply and demand? There is a shortage of qualified teachers. If you want more qualified people to enter and to stay in the profession, you need to raise salaries.

CAROL PERRY

Redondo Beach