Phone Access Still a Hang-Up for Our Teachers

Of all the indignities suffered by schoolteachers, perhaps the worst is being denied a telephone.

Their pay is insulting--it starts at roughly $27,000 and tops out in the mid-$50s. Working conditions often are depressing: no central air, leaky roofs, busted faucets, dust balls everywhere, bland lunches, long lines at the copy machine.

They’re harassed publicly by politicians who create scapegoats to cover their own failure to invest adequately in education. (California still ranks 35th in the nation in per-pupil spending.)

But for sheer inconsideration, it’s hard to beat refusing somebody a phone call. How many other professionals do you know who don’t have a phone on their desk? For most teachers, there isn’t even one in the room where they work.

“It’s a matter of treating people like professionals,” says Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncans Mills), an elementary school teacher for 24 years. “It’s an embarrassment.”

For years, Strom-Martin has pushed legislation to require a telephone in each classroom of every new school starting in 2000. Her bill is strongly backed by state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin. But twice it passed the Legislature and was vetoed by former Gov. Pete Wilson. With Democrat Gray Davis as governor, she’s more optimistic.

In fact, “now that we’ve got everybody’s attention” with the Columbine High School killings, says Strom-Martin, she may amend her bill to require teacher phones even in existing schools. Lack of classroom phones at Columbine hampered communication with law officers.

“But the phones are needed for more than safety,” Strom-Martin adds. “They’re needed for Internet connection and for teachers to connect with parents. . . . It’s really a professional question as much as a safety question.

“You go to school, get your degree, get your teaching credential--and yet you’re put in this box without any connection to the outside world.”

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A significant step was taken Tuesday when Davis announced he had persuaded AirTouch Cellular to donate 10,000 cell phones to high schools in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Sacramento counties. AirTouch also agreed to pay the air time for three years.

Davis said he’ll lobby other phone companies to do the same. “By the time I’m through,” he vowed, “every [high school] teacher will have a cell phone.” That will require another 55,000 phones.

But there’s a big hitch to this deal. These portable phones will be programmed to dial only one number: a law enforcement agency in an emergency.

“That’s very generous,” says Strom-Martin, “but I really think the phones should be used for purposes other than emergencies. . . . As a teacher, I had to stand in line at 20-minute breaks to call a parent.”

There’s no disputing the safety need, however. Strom-Martin has collected a 2-inch-high stack of single-page, handwritten personal horror stories from teachers who needed a phone when none was around.

Just one L.A. example: A kindergarten teacher, doing extra work on Saturday, was sexually assaulted by five boys ages 12 to 15. All the school staff had left, locking the gates. So she had to climb a fence to find a phone.

“In this age of technology,” she wrote, “it seems criminal to expect teachers to operate in an environment of antiquity.”

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Annie Webb, principal at Locke High School in Watts, can tell stories too: A fleeing bank robber ducked into the typing class and the teacher had no phone. A shooting suspect ran into a shop class; a phone was there, but it didn’t work. . . .

“A few teachers have their own cells, but they’re kind of expensive,” she says. “It’s crucial I have one because I’m out and around the campus, so I pay for it myself--about $55 a month.”

What other CEOs have to pay for their own cell phones?

Webb was excited about the newly donated cells until told they’d work for only one number. “That’s a lot of money to spend just to call one place,” she says.

“When you tell teachers they can only call the police, you’re undermining their credibility and professionalism. They’ll say, ‘Keep your phone.’ I know my teachers.”

Of course, we must guard against these teachers making any purely personal calls on their office phones--like everybody else in America does.

It’s not like Sacramento doesn’t have enough money to cover some air time. Next week, Davis is expected to announce that the state treasury is overflowing with roughly $2 billion in unexpected income tax revenue.

A cell phone is a nice gesture. But a teacher should be allowed to actually use it. Otherwise, it’s just one more insult.