Well, please forgive my double-post on this subject, but I feel pretty strongly about it!

The comment below was the last one on yesterday's thread, and no one really chimed in to agree or disagree with me. Truly, isn't this the context in which we should consider teacher pay and benefits? Below...

Still inadequate
Submitted by Tamara Shepherd on Wed, 2007/08/08 - 3:11pm.
"Well, leave it to the beancounter, here, to ponder that $100 per day times 5 days per week times 52 weeks per year equals just $26,000 annually.

Until the day society ceases to value a 21 year-old chemical engineer at $51,000 annually and a 21 year-old mathematics teacher at $31,000 annually, we should lend our support for whatever manner of teacher pay increase presents itself."

A few years ago, one of my children had an excellent elementary teacher with a masters +45 and 13 years teaching experience in a neighboring school system (and who would say "Excuse me?" repeatedly until her students spoke to her using correct grammar, "please," and "thank you"--I loved it).

She confided to me that her starting salary with KCS in that, her first year in Knox County, had been $30,000/year. She stayed with KCS that one year only, and left the profession.

KCS has since begun recognizing for compensation purposes teachers' years of service earned in other school districts. It was a long time coming, though, as was that 25 minutes for lunch they now get, just since about 1995.

Some people point to teachers' "summers off," but if you're a parent, you know how that break is shrinking with each successive school calendar (note that school started this year today, August 9). Teachers return to class a week or two earlier, of course, and continue to work beyond the time kids' school year ends.

Through the school year, they work well beyond eight hours daily.

Every school in Knox County opens at 7:10 am, including middle and high schools in which classes begin at 8:30, and teachers must be there first. In elementary schools, teachers rotate duties attending the bus loading docks, the car riders lines, and the crossings used by "walkers," both before and after school, and some monitor the "bus room" in the mornings. In middle and high schools, teachers sponsor numerous clubs and organizations and offer study sessions, before and after school both. Those club sponsors often give their time on weekends, too.

They're at parent orientation sessions, open houses, and PTA programs evenings and they're often gracious enough to schedule parent conferences before or after school, or occassionally on those 25 minute "lunch hours."

They undertake paper-grading *every* night and many still share thier home phone numbers and/or e-mail addresses with families (my elementary-aged child's teacher last year told me she spent one hour nightly speaking with parents of the 120 5th graders who rotated through her classroom each day).

There is a reason young children think that their teachers live a their school.

I didn't mean to slight you, Brian, I just couldn't recall who had sponsored the measure.

I think the "25 minute lunch hour" was a "perk" delivered from the state legislature?