To the Editor,
It alarms me that people are not more supportive of teachers during this strike. It seems we are far too focused on teacher salaries rather than classroom conditions for our province’s students.
Focusing on salary and calling teachers greedy is just plain ridiculous. The government agrees that teachers deserve a raise and they and the BCTF are only apart by one per cent with regards to wages. The issue of wages could have been settled easily when bargaining first began if this was the main concern.
Secondly, in what other profession do you have to fight for your product? Would you ever see another union on strike because they didn’t think their company was making a quality product? Absolutely not. Yet teachers have given up their wages for just that, the ‘product’ in this case being children’s educations.
Teachers are standing on picket lines receiving no pay to persuade the Liberal government to properly fund education.
Lisa Cunnianvia e-mail
To the Editor,
In regards to the teachers’ strike, I have never seen such a group of spoiled so-called professionals.
The average teacher makes $74,000, plus the enormous benefit package they enjoy.
Is it really about the children? Why then do they demand pay raises that are out of proportion to the private sector and paid for out of taxpayers’ wallets every time they come to the bargaining table?
Final exams, graduation, summer school and field trips have all been disrupted or cancelled. I suppose this is all in the best interest of the children.
What is needed is a dose of reality. We should shut down the schools for an entire year. Maybe then if they got to work in the private sector they would realize how lucky they have it.
Garry DietrichNanaimo
To the Editor,
I don’t agree with what some of the teachers want in their contract, but class size and composition is an issue.
When I went to school we had 32-36 students in our classes and there wasn’t a problem. It was the same when my sons went to school, then the government closed special needs schools. To have several special needs children in the classroom plus trying to teach the others must be very stressful on the teachers and students.
There should be special classrooms for children with learning disabilities run by teachers who are trained to work with them.
Theresa KowallLadysmith