What teachers want -- and do not need

Re “Schooling the union,” editorial, May 17

It is clear that you don’t know much about education or what needs to be done to improve L.A. schools, and it is certainly the case that you don’t know what young teachers or, for that matter, old teachers want.

Yes, they want good wages and affordable housing, but upward mobility? Most teachers are interested in teaching, not in becoming administrators.

Fat pensions? Do you mean like those that corporate CEOs get? I don’t know very many teachers who receive fat pensions, but teachers, even young ones, are interested in receiving a decent pension. The private sector doesn’t provide enough good pensions for workers and could stand more vigorous unions to protect workers’ pensions and benefits.

As for “lifetime sinecures,” I don’t know many teachers who are interested in a position “that requires little or no work but provides a salary” (American Heritage Dictionary). You spend an average day teaching and tell me about lifetime sinecures.

GARY NAGY

Gardena

*

Here we go again. Your editors continue to beat the drum against United Teachers Los Angeles. The district continues to have a bloated bureaucracy with out-of-classroom expenses running out of control. Teachers should receive competitive salaries and benefits if you really want the best teachers. Also, my retirement “package” will be mostly funded by my frugality, sacrifice and many hours spent researching how to best invest my money because of the district’s lousy 403(b) choices.

KERRY KOERBLING

Los Angeles

*

I am a young teacher in the L.A. school district, and I take comfort in my job security and retirement benefits. Yet you are right: I would be willing to give up some of my protection for a good wage, as long as it puts me in line with other professionals’ salaries (lawyers, doctors).

When you make someone work as hard as I do, yet pay him as little as I am paid, you get either incompetent workers or martyrs, and martyrs by their nature are a dying breed.

This blame-the-teachers attitude has got to go because it is one of the main reasons young people are scared away from teaching.

If there are young teachers who don’t care about retirement and benefits, it is because they are like many young teachers: putting in a few years -- a good deed -- teaching after college before moving on to a job that provides them with the respect, appreciation and compensation they deserve. You can’t blame the teachers union for that.

JONATHAN COOK

Los Angeles