Teacher Salaries and Poor Conditions

* After 18 years of dedicated service to inner-city children in the LAUSD, I am offended that [school board members] Genethia Hayes, Mike Lansing and Caprice Young (“Reward the Teachers, but Not at the Expense of Education,” Commentary, Jan. 24) and The Times (“LAUSD: Trust Isn’t Enough,” editorial, Jan. 25) blame me for the inadequate conditions my students face. It is stunning to discover that my paycheck (out of which I personally buy $2,000 worth of classroom materials yearly) is the reason my students have dilapidated bathrooms and limited textbooks.

Why is it that the only place we can find funds for students is out of the teachers’ contract? Might we not look also to hundreds of highly paid advisors, superintendents, deputy superintendents and assistant superintendents for cuts? Maybe the new carpets being installed in district offices could be scrapped. Maybe other mismanagement (Belmont, etc.) could have been averted to provide for my students.

I provide for them daily out of my knowledge, expertise, energy, passion and even my salary. I am not unique. Please stop conveying the image of greedy teachers benefiting personally on the backs of the very people we give our lives to every day.

MARTA GARDNER

Los Angeles

*

The three school board members who do not support the proposed UTLA contract have some explaining to do. They say that our schools will not be clean, have supplies, textbooks or sufficient space, due to the expense of the teachers’ salaries. Since we do not pay the teachers as much right now, how come these problems have not been solved previously? They have existed for years, but now all of a sudden we are to believe that the district can’t take care of them because of a salary proposal?

These problems and others could easily be addressed by reducing administrative overhead. Do the “mini-districts” really save us any money in administration? There seem to be just as many people. Last year teachers were sent to numerous meetings on “performance assignments” that proved meaningless and “social promotion” that became so watered down by the end of the year that it was a joke. The school board and the district need to get their act together and stop blaming everything on the teachers. (I am not a teacher.)

SUZANNE SHISLEY

Woodland Hills