Teacher Pay

Re your April 9 editorial: Few people go into teaching for any other reason than to feed young minds. However, a mind crowded with video games, action movies, TV, junk food and perhaps alcohol and/or drugs is hard to fill with knowledge. Absent and/or neglectful parents, low pay for teachers, moneys that do not go to the classroom and parents who are more invested in getting and spending than what their children are doing contribute to the problem. It is not the teachers who are the problem but the people who would single out a teacher for special pay in the absence of any action toward equitable pay for all.

Merit pay is a popularity contest. UTLA’s threat to strike over its objection to merit pay is well-founded.

ROWENA SILVER

Riverside